It's testament to the waning light of the Big Brother franchise that no-one has even bothered to write about it yet on these pages (until now of course). It's obvious that Celebrity Big Brother isn't the guffaw and hoo-haa it once was and with that, the producers have decided to stop messing about pretending to be some kind of 'social experiment' and gun straight for the freak show.

Related: Our Big Brother Section

Initially, I was going to do a straight review of last night's show, but that would be daft as there's other stuff that needs mentioning from previous episodes. Admittedly, I was having way too much fun over the festives to watch the series opener, but I did catch some of the live-feed on the opening night. First impressions?

Well, the most unusual inclusion on the show is Verne Troyer. You'll know him as Mini-Me from the Austin Powers flicks. Of course, the first thing you notice about Verne is his height... or lack of it. I mean, he's under 3ft tall right? It pains me when I focus on something so blindingly obvious, but there's no getting away with it with Verne. I mean, he's a stuntmen for movie-babies. With that, there was a certain amount of morbid fascination from the cameramen and producers of the show, who, on opening night, lingered for some minutes on Troyer eating. The subtext was Look At The Funny Little Baby Man With Food On His Face. When he'd had enough of the day and scootled off to bed on his 'Dwarf Buggy', they shot him in nightvision, leaving me thinking that I was watching mentalist Chris Cunningham short, 'Rubber Johnny' (go and look on YouTube if you're curious... don't blame me if you puke).

Another weird element to the show was the smoker area. Not only do the resident tokers have to sit in a giant ashtray, but they're also glared at by hallowed out doll heads, staring with deathly eeriness from some hellish underworld. What next? Dripping eyeballs lodged in obese guts from the fridge and the wrinkled corpse from The Shining beside the bath?

Naturally, the producers have once again, picked a load of slack-jawed idiots. Coolio, one of the lamest rappers in history, is unsurprisingly load mouthed and self-opinionated, and fills the Dennis Rodman slot quite nicely. There's some gobshite Scottish politician who hates America too, who will no doubt don a cat suit and say "Would you like me to be pussy?" while he tries to lick his own balls in front of Mutya from The Sugababes.

For the now mandatory 'Fit One To Shower Under The Waterfall' reality-gal, the producers have picked Lucy Pindar. Last night, they tried to get her to do a News-in-Briefs, which failed as she didn't derobe into her smalls, and thereby left thousands of young onanists frustrated. As this is taking part in the coldest of snaps, we won't be seeing the usual sunbathing in bikinis in the garden.

Elsewhere, we've got Terry Christian, Latoya Jackson, someone from Liberty X, someone from a boyband no-one remembers apart from the depressingly sad (that'd be me then), Ulrika Johnsson and Tina someone or other, who is the single biggest gobshite I've ever set eyes on.

Once, I will have safely assumed that I'd get sucked into the barrel to scrape the bottom with the best of 'em, but really, like many, I think the whole thing feels far too familiar and there's nothing anyone can do about that, unless the show actually starts killing people off. I strongly predict that there will be one more, non-sleb Big Brother, and that'll be it. Kaput.