Crazy in the Coconut

"That boy needs therapy", goes that song by the Avalanches.

Science is a walking demonstration of the difference between clubability and watchability. No, of course you wouldn't want him as a neighbour, let alone a flatmate, but he's delivering excellent value inside the BB house. "Why was you not who you was when you were with Lesley?" Science recently asked camp chameleon Craig, "I preferred you when you was before. You defended me when you was being that, which you were before."

It really would be almost too much to hope for to witness the surprise but long-overdue exit of agent of divine providence Makosi Musambasi tomorrow. "I used to have servants" she crowed yesterday. Ok, but now you live in the First World and you have a washing machine. Get over it.

Compared with Science's family Makosi's are distinctly un-modish: servants they may have had, but what they now have is a furry orange sofa in High Wicombe. As for Makosi's afro wig, it's starting to look a bit tatty, rather like one of my old teddy bears.

Derek, reputedly the only Black member of the Monday Club, is very much the dark horse this year. He was once asked by saboteurs how he could approve hunting animals in the company of white people who 200 years ago would instead have been hunting the likes of him. "That is no problem", he replied: "300 years previously, my ancestors would have been eating them." The longer Derek stays in the show the more prominent the oriental half of his ancestry seems to me...yet it is clearly the particular combination of blackness, gayness and poshness that defines his nascent celebrity in the public consciousness. The drink driving conviction that prevented him from standing for Parliament in 1997 is unlikely to remain a serious impediment to his political ambitions once he finally emerges from the BB kindergarten.

With Orlaith and Vanessa around it's no wonder that there's been such an outbreak of sexual ambiguity. Excessive exposure to the likes of those two is likely to cause an chronic case of misogyny. Derek asked for the psychologist yesterday because on seing Vanessa tuck into her sixth piece of toast he experienced emotions similar to those you feel "when you are about to murder someone". Careful Derek, remember that upcoming vacancy at the top of the party!

So who's going to win? (BB, not the Tory leadership election that is.) Hard to say really. There aren't really any deserving cases, though Anthony's endearing lack of gorm and native wickedness could catch him the big prize. In Eugene he has a competitor for the sympathy vote, though pity might be the more appropriate emotion in his case. There are times when I would rather listen to the drone of a helicopter.

Kemal is another hedgehog, and one of those one-trick wonders won last year. (Though in the Diary Room he's been more Victor than Nadia.)

Overall, this year's Big Brother has been more Machiavellian than Orwellian. It's almost as if the whole show is being masterminded by an arch-manipulator that has given each of the dominant personalities in turn just enough rope to hang themselves with.

Even when he's at his most relentlessly ratty, you can't help empathising with Science- there's just something little boy lost about him. "Keep your head down son", advised his ultra cool dad, echoing Derek's "be a soldier not a kamikaze". V would now like to see him beat the odds and win.

In the stories of Jorge Luis Borges the hardened compadres of the Buenos Aires slums have their hands on their knives ever ready to preemptively avenge the merest bruise inflicted on their thin-skinned honours. Yet if Science is anything to go by, the macho-posturing in the ghettos of West Yorkshire is a lot more barking than biting.