Supposing ...

Galloway really tried to balls up his career

I was at the Big Brother house on Wednesday night. Not to hurl bags of crap at George Galloway, you understand - I was there researching something I'm writing. And besides, security confiscated my bags of crap at the gate.

Anyway, once in, I was given the full tour. I got to go in the camera runs and everything. I peered through a window while Chantelle fixed her makeup. I witnessed Barrymore making a cup of tea in blistering close-up detail. I saw Maggot adjusting his balls. This was history in the making.

And it was also incredibly spooky: occasionally they shoot glances your way and you think they can see you - but all they're looking at is their own reflection, which, being celebrities, they never tire of.

Seeing Pete Burns' face-shaped surgeon's folly at close quarters sent a chill down my spine, but the most haunting sight was Galloway, pacing up and down in the kitchen, awaiting his inevitable eviction. It was like watching a polar bear losing its mind in the zoo, shuffling endlessly to-and-fro in a bid to silence the unhappy bellowing in its head.

He looked like a man on death row: a brightly coloured, Scooby Doo kind of death row, but one with real doom lurking at the end of it. Or maybe that was just me, projecting what I knew of his utter public humiliation on to him. Maybe he was simply concentrating: picturing the mountainous stack of adoring fan mail from young voters he assumed he'd receive.

"Dear George - you is the best politician I has ever seen! I love the way you is so political with all your politics and that. Please can I have a signed photo because you is so sexy! Yours sincerely, a Nubile Fan Who Lives Within Driving Distance."

But alas. About an hour later, he was out the door, to be greeted by what sounded like an explosion in a boo factory. Some crowd members shouted so hard their lungs exploded. Bits of splintered ribcage flew through the air. If Galloway wanted to make an impression, he succeeded. And if he wanted the impression to be that of a seething, swaggering, self-important bully, he succeeded spectacularly.

Because he could've ridden out all the cat stuff, all the dressing-up games. That's easily defused: just chuckle about it in your eviction interview, and hey, it's just a bit of fun. The humiliation would've been real, yet fleeting. What'll stick in people's minds, however, is his jaw-droppingly unpleasant behaviour in the days leading up to his eviction. Rounding on the nice-but-dim youngsters, taunting a recovering alcoholic, spluttering paranoid bile at every opportunity - I mean really. WHAT a tosser.

In PR terms, it's hard to think of anything worse he could've done during his stay in the house. But I'll have a go. He could have 1) masturbated repeatedly on camera, staring the viewer straight in the eye; 2) pooed into a big bowl of flour in the middle of the kitchen; and 3) killed at least nine of his fellow housemates. But those are the only worse things I can think of. He's screwed.

Even so, you've got to hand it to him: when he shoots himself in the foot, he uses a cannon so big it takes his whole leg off.

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