SundayTimes
By Katelyn John
23dec05
I WAS imitating the rump of a rather large horse when I first questioned whether auditioning for Big Brother was something I really wanted to do.
There had been other moments: when an auditionee pretending to be a dog cocked his leg and peed on my head, or when another sniffed my backside.
But it was when making a horses ass of myself that I really questioned whether I wanted to do the same on national television.
But any and all concerns were quickly thrown aside as my competitive streak won over.
For one moment, the humiliating games and pathetic hopefuls seemed desperate and beneath me, and then I was there with my best "pick me" face on, hitherto reserved for school yard team picks and taxi queues.
The truth is, no matter what your background, education or body shape, we all crave our 15 minutes of fame, and at least people applying for the sixth series of Big Brother are being honest about their ambitions.
After waiting hours out in the hot sun, filling in forms and then waiting some more, I was put into a group of 20.
My auditioning group was as I imagined most groups would be.
There was a bisexual Asian princess, a Cleo bachelor finalist, an ex-con, a female jock, a pale-faced nerd, a dreadlocked Christian teenager, and a little Vietnamese man who promised to "bring out the tiger within".
As the producers put us through our paces, which were reminiscent of drama classes at school, I took a look around the 20 faces standing in our circle.
Bouncy, short-skirted, high-pitched girls were the order of the day, standing alongside trendily dressed guys trying desperately not to look desperate.
Each of us preening and posing in front of the producers, promising sensational scandal, sex or nudity, and for some, slight mental imbalance.
After imitating rock stars, dogs and winners of Big Brother '06 and making human Sydney Opera Houses, cars and, of course, horses, the producers got us to answer the tough questions.
Had you ever shop lifted? Ever been arrested? Ever kissed someone of the same sex while sober?
People answered 'yes' to all the questions - unfortunately for some, often before they had thought of an appropriately sensational story to go with their answer.
Then the tough three - why should you be on Big Brother? Who in this group would you evict? And who in this group would you "pash or shag"?
It's no accident that all the contestants who got through answered that they would like to sleep with almost everyone present.
I was surprised I got through, given that I said the only person I would shag was the nerd, because I thought he needed one.
Everyone had apparently made reciprocal picking pacts in the queue to ensure they appeared popular for this question.
Not me, though. I wasn't picked by anyone, not even the pasty nerd who I had so generously offered to deflower.
Just four of us got through to the next round, where the desire for sexually fruity and experimental contestants was even more obviously laboured.
"You say on your sheet that you are heterosexual, but you have kissed a girl. Would you say you are bisexual?"
"No, it was just once."
"But what about if we just say you're bi-curious?"
"But I'm not. I like men."
"Ok, how about we put a big circle around the hetero and a little circle around the bisexual?"
This next round of questioning is a little more frightening, with 10 of us sitting in chairs in front of a hardened and slightly cynical looking producer in an unbearably hot room.
We had two minutes to tell the scary lady exactly why she should love us for her television show.
In this time, she is sizing us up for our looks, our personality and our corruptibility. And a pre-prepared answer will not do, she wants to catch us off guard.
"Tell me something about you that we don't know or might not guess from looking at you."
All of a sudden the stereotype we have been trying to cling to - I'm the flirty blonde, I'm the sarcastic eccentric, I'm the crazy Vietnamese guy who thinks he's a member of the big cat family - is blown apart and we have to admit to something we have tried to hide from the producers.
"Actually, I'm a natural redhead. Alright, I've only ever slept with three people," said one hopeful.
Another girl, who had been trying to cultivate a party look, came up with, "I actually get quite crazy and loud when I'm drunk".
What a non-surprise.
I can't take the heat in this round and, unable to give her a good answer to what's the craziest thing you've ever done (apparently quite a few people have gone skiing and they were looking for more skinny-dipping-in-a-piranha-infested-river-in-the-Amazon type adventures).
We walk out of the room, the stunning blonde lawyer, grungy gorgeous life guard, tiger-man and the recently declared sometime bisexual in one direction to be further prodded and provoked by more producers and us rejected wannabes in another.
As I walked out of the room, the woman was told I was a journalist and explained why certain people didn't get through.
The blonde-haired diamond jeweller/wedding planner was a surprise but according to the producer, had a "bung eye" and would have made bad television.
Bitter cries of "I didn't want to be on this show anyway," and "They're only looking for boring model-types anyway" reverberate through the corridors. But I'm not bitter.
The truth of the matter is, they're looking for good TV - good looking kids who aren't afraid of playing up in front of a few producers because they're going to have to act up in front of a couple of million viewers if they get through.
And if Andy Warhol is right we will all get our fifteen minutes of fame anyway, so what if reality TV is not for us.
Who wants to shower naked in front of millions of people anyway?
Big Brother series six will air on the Ten Network early in the new year.
