The Honking Box: Big Brother's Worst Housemates

After eleven series, nearly 200 housemates and well over a thousand hours of tellytime, the institution of infuriation that is Big Brother is due to close. Cunningly, Endemol will be wheeling out some of the greatest housemates of all time for a final stint beginning Tuesday, so we’ve chosen to highlight some of its best and worst characters to mark the show’s climax. And where better to start than with the bad news...?

We’ve chosen to omit the more beige housemates, such as Steve, Elizabeth, Kara-Whocares and the majority of Series 4, focusing on the more active bastards as opposed to the aforementioned furniture. Also missing from the list is the original scoundrel, Nick Bateman, who, in hindsight, was actually a brilliant – if entirely loathsome – housemate.

Other housemates narrowly missing out on a place include Shabnam, Ahmed, Seany, Alexandra and her mans dem, Gracefucker Mikey, Little Man Sezer, jungle cats Jason and Victor, Charley, Casual Racist Emily, and ol’ Crab Eyes himself, John-James. But they shouldn’t feel too bad – there’s been a hell of a lot of villains to choose from...

10. Kitten Pinder (BB5)
Political-agenda lesbian Kitten stomped into the house, all guns blazing and calling for blood, merely because she failed to spot her girlfriend in the crowd. It gave her the dubious honour of being the first housemate to enter to a chorus of boos, and her time within the house only echoed this. Kitten was turfed out for rule-breaking, which gave her the opportunity to roar obscenities about the Queen live on Channel 4. The woman clearly needed medication, but Davina McCall’s expression made it all worthwhile.

9. Tom Oliver (BB10)
The perfect example of the perennial “Why did you even APPLY?” housemates, posh-boy and all-round vortex of relevance Tom entered the Big Brother 10 house halfway through the series, often a tool designed to shake things up. However, his contribution amounted to moaning, questioning himself, wearing vile flip-flops and pretending to fancy Noirin, before walking nine days later.

8. Nicole Cammack (BB9)
Brought in as the girlfriend of brilliantly-bastardly house-eel Rex Newmark, her arrival should have mixed things up something rotten. But Nicole’s presence was an utter atmosphere vacuum, her whining second only to that of Nikki Grahame’s, albeit without the volume, charisma or hilarity. Highlight: asking a blind man to carry a boiling chip pan to her on the other side of the room, because she couldn’t be arsed to get up and check for herself whether the food was done.

7. Mikey Hughes (BB9)
...And here’s the man himself! It’s perhaps unfair to say that Mikey’s disability carried him to the final of Big Brother 9, but it’s virtually impossible to determine what actually did keep him in. The ranting and the volume issues were bad enough, but in the show’s history, no other housemate has been quite so stomach-churningly disgusting to observe hygiene-wise, with weeing in a communal drinking receptacle apparently common practice in Mikey’s world.

6. Charlie Drummond (BB10)
Introducing new levels of shallow to the house, Charlie’s brainlessness and triviality made Brian Dowling look like Socrates. His main concerns were his reflection, toadying up to Lisa, and the trashier end of Girls Aloud’s back catalogue. And if that weren’t enough, his casual rendition of 3 Of A Kind’s Babycakes alone was enough to warrant life imprisonment.

5. Tracey Barnard (BB8)
A self-styled (mind you, how does one use the term ‘style’ when the subject resembles Worzel Gummidge?) crusty raver, Tracey brought the promise of comedy Prodigy-spoof psychosis to the house, yet did little other than sit stewing on the side like a used economy teabag, speaking only to criticise or to bark the words “HAVE IT!”, apropos of nothing.

4. Dennis McHugh (BB9)
Trumping even Charlie Drummond as the worst gayer in Big Brother history, the truly repugnant Dennis was rightfully frogmarched out of the house after spitting in lovable oaf Mohamed’s face. His superficiality, attention-seeking ways and generally vile demeanour could potentially have made Dennis the inadvertent official poster-boy for homophobia worldwide.

3. Lisa Wallace (BB10)
Unemployed, scab-riddled tramp whose unrelenting whinging and bitching redefined the concept of passive-aggressiveness. Her key tactic was to stir the pot, then run away and play victim when it threatened to come back to her – in short, the worst kind of bully. Lisa’s lone moment of glory came on a day trip out of the house dressed as an alien. Big Brother would’ve been wise to leave her there.

2. Sandy Cumming (BB3)
Grumpy old walrus who, for no apparent reason, thought he was above the whole thing and steadfastly refused to play the game. Having barely engaged with his fellow housemates – aside from the wormlike Alex Sibley and his painful, incessant droning – Sandy left them a parting gift of a binful of piss before dragging his flabby self over a wall and running for the hills. At least he left an impression of some sort, as his personality certainly didn’t.

1. Grace Adams-Short (BB7)
And the most odious, unpleasant housemate ever to pass through the slightly-unreliable sliding doors of the Big Brother house is, without a doubt, Horseface Grace. Adversary to Aisleyne, troublemaker extraordinaire and all-round bully, her parting shot was to throw water in Susie’s face and leggit out the door, proving her to be little more than a sad, insecure coward. However, she’s since paid the price, having had many a pint chucked over her (yay!) and been seriously attacked (boo). Presumably, she’s since grown up a wee bit as a result, but her jealousy, her bitterness and her superiority complex made for one of the bitchiest, most hateful reality contestants of all time.

And with that hefty serving of negativity out of the way, pop back tomorrow, when we’ll be unveiling the ten greatest housemates of Big Brother. Sneak preview: it doesn’t feature Belinda Belinda Belinda.