8 Out of 10 Cats

09 September 2010

As Ultimate Big Brother was drawing to a close, Aisleyne made yet another BB-related TV appearance, this time in an 8 Out of 10 Cats Big Brother Special, first shown on on Channel 4 on Thursday September 9th, and repeated the next evening as part of the BB's final night.

The programme was chaired by Jimmy Carr, team captain Sean Lock was joined by Jarred Christmas and BB8 winner Brian Belo, and on Jason Manford's team were BB11 winner Josie Gibson and Aisleyne's great friend Charlie Brooker. Aisleyne was on the front row of a small side panel of ex-housemates, where she sat between recent UBB evictee Makosi Musambasi and the Marchant twins, with John James Parton, Eugene Sully and (Mr Health & Safety himself) Mario Marconi sitting behind.

Not surprisingly, the housemates were often on the receiving end of a variety of barbed comments from chairman and panellists - "Is that where you sit at the call centre?" being one of the more repeatable (if not very original) gibes. In the event we thought Aisleyne got off quite lightly, certainly compared to some of the things said to and about Makosi!

As usual, the programme was based around panel members trying to second-guess the public's response to various survey questions, though this was mostly just a pretext for them to fly off on some amusing(!) tangent. Thus Mr Belo regaled us with a tale about a train journey which rendered Jimmy Carr speechless (a rare occurrence), while Mr Brooker embarked on one of his characteristic rants about the Big Brother Friday night eviction crowds (with the heartfelt endorsement of Miss Horgan-Wallace).

One question asked was "Which housemate's diary would you most like to read?", and after Charlie Brooker had alleged that Eugene's diary would be "written in binary" he engaged in a little banter with Aisleyne about her autobiography. Jimmy Carr then asked Aisleyne what was the title of her book. Ash was more than happy to give her book a plug on national TV. "Surviving Guns Gangs and Glamour", she replied. At this point an audience member shouted "Baad gurl!". Jimmy Carr replied "Shut your mout' you (probably unrepeatable patois)!" to the delighted heckler, who we suspect was one of Aisleyne's "boiz" (tr. "friends"). After some more (literally!) near-the-knuckle jokes at Makosi's expense it finally transpired that the survey concluded that the most interesting diary would be - Aisleyne's!

It may be just coincidence, but it was noted that sales on Amazon of Aisleyne's book DID show an increase over the next day or so, though it must be said that sales have in fact been very healthy recently anyway, and there have been a lot of favourable comments about it on Twitter. And why not?

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