for those who have reality tv as their guilty pleasure

Gabby Milgate appears to be one of the contestants on Excess Baggage who will be going to give the viewers a few laughs if this clip of her as Julia Spillard is anything to go by.

Gabby Milgate is best known and loved for her iconic line in Muriel’s Wedding “You’re terrible Muriel” but she also appears to have a talent for satire.

Excess Baggage starts on Monday 30 January at 7.oopm on Channel NINE.

This blog post was requested as a stand alone post rather then as a part of Reality Tidbits, which says a lot about what my readers want to discuss.

Tim Gunn the lovely and not unattractive mentor on Project Runway has revealed that he has not had sexual relations in 29 years. Yes  folks that is nearly three decades. It is not for any political reasons like wanting to save himself for marriage but it has not been legal for him to do so.

Dlisted writes that Tim Gunn revealed on his TV show that he had not had any horizontal or non-horizontal action for 29 years by his own choice.

Tim Gunn revealed:

“I haven’t had sex in 29 years. Do I feel like less of a person for it? No. Not even remotely.

It’s very personal. I was in a very intense relationship for a long time. And my partner ended it, saying that, quite frankly, he was impatient with my sexual performance.

I’m a perfectly fulfilled person, but it’s very physiological. I have feelings. It’s not as though I’m some barren forest. I don’t want to imply to anyone that I have a mandate that says no sex. I don’t. I don’t know what’s around the corner.”

It is not unusual for people to not have sex for up to 20 years but that is because it is illegal for the first 16 years of our lives, obviously the ex-boyfriend was emotionally abusive. Tim Gunn deserves a nice guy who do you think he should hook up with?

Jamie Durie gets an Order of Australia for his services to reality TV, only joking it was for charity work. (Source: TV Tonight)

Paul Kalina from SMH on the set of Excess Baggage. (Source: SMH)

Simon Cowell no longer engaged and single? Well this article says so. (Source: Daily Gossip)

Speaking of Simon Cowell he has announced a new reality show he is working on with Jada Pinkett-Smith looking for the best DJ. He won’t be a judge on the show. (Source: Daily Telegraph)

The Stafford Brothers starts on Fox 8 on Friday night at 8.30pm it is a reality program which follows two Australian DJ’s around the world. (Source: Herald Sun)

Mel B is selling her house in LA with a dodgy rumour she is moving to Sydney. However there are rumours she will be on Dancing With The Stars. (Source: Daily Telegraph)

Seal talks about his marriage breakdown with Heidi Klum, it doesn’t appear to be too vexatious. (Source: Daily Telegraph)

Also the other The Voice Australia Joel Madden’s marriage to Nicole Ritchie may be in trouble. (Source: Front cover of Famous Mag, Ok that source is spurious)

Project Runway mentor Tim Gunn has not had sex in 29 years, and it appears to be a voluntary choice. (Source: Dlisted)

The cast for The Amazing Race Season 20 has been revealed. (Source: Huffington Post)

Masterchef UK host John Torode has split from his wife. (Source: Daily Mail)

Top Chef judge Gail Simmons says the most overrated TV chef at the moment is Paula Deen, and Fabio said Anthony Bourdain was the judge he liked the least. (Source: Huffington Post)

Jersey Shore star Snooki is now promoting fat burning pills. (Source: Daily Mail)

Speaking of low rent reality TV shows – the Geordie Shore cast have released a perfume that smells of kebabs. (Source: Daily Mail)

Bethenny Frankel gets her own talk show, as does Rocco DiSpirito. (Source: Reality Blurred)

How well timed to have a ferry race on The Biggest Loser race screen on Australia Day, in real life there was a result for today’s race on Sydney Harbour but viewers of the show will have to wait until Monday to see  who won. Very frustrating.

Some quick thoughts on tonight’s episode:

• It was interesting how Commando took no responsibility for Alex’s ruptured achilles tendon which had him on bed rest. Commando said his injury occurred because of years of neglect, poor diet and lack of physical activity. No mention that maybe he had been over-trained too fast…
• Over the last two episodes the viewer had to watch for ten minutes scenes on whether a contestant would take on the immunity challenge, no one did. Why bother showing it?
• I wonder how Brenda’s ex-fiancee is feeling about her saying she has lost the love of her life,
• How many times did they have to tell us that the ferry was 110 tons – it was entrenched in our memories after the third time;
• Commando got to row for his team because of Alex’s injury, however they did have the liability of having to tug him as well.
• Tiffiny was getting cranky about her team not being able to get their oars moving together. But wasn’t that her responsibility as she was the one who was the cox-man.  Michelle Bridges was yelling out the stroke and her team of over 30 year old women were leading at one point.
• Hamish the 20 year old appears to struggling with snacking and not working out hard enough;
• Looking at the previews for next week, none of the trainers are ever going to win a best actor Oscar.

Best line of the night was from James when he said “If I thought the first training session was bad the second one was armageddon”

This week The Biggest Loser is struggling in the ratings, and maybe the reason is now that it is in the 7pm time slot people would be still eating dinner and they don’t want to see people puking in buckets. Also dumping a whole truck of fat probably doesn’t help either.

One thing I do like about this year is a lot of the contestants, they seem a bit more articulate then the previous series, particularly the girls.

Tonight Hayley got the contestants together for a group therapy session where they had to talk about their heartache of being alone. There were tears and it was sad when Lisa was talking about losing her son Brayden, and Simon marriage breaking down.
However I think Luke who wants “the ideal wife” needs to realise there is not one, and he will be disappointed if there is. Again James gave Michelle a look when she was talking about never having been kissed.

Tonight it was all about telling them finding out their biological age and on average they were about 15 years older then their real age. Alex who is 50 was told his biological age was 71 which must have been quite a shock.

However I did think Dr Norman was a bit insensitive about talking about Brenda’s infertility and how her weight had effected this. “How long have you been trying to have a baby?” he boomed. She broke down and said seven years. At forty she would know that even after she loses the weight that it will still be very difficult to get pregnant.

Then it was off to their trainers and Tiffiny again made her girls feel like shit by say ”Twenties are the best years of my life”. I am not sure how she can be an authority on this topic as she is only 27 herself.

Also the blue team of under 30 boys appear to be slackers they were up later then 6.00am and Ryan’s only exercise appeared to be rolling around like a beach ball on the lounge room floor.

Then it was onto the immunity challenge, I am not sure why none of them were not going for it. No use taking the higher moral ground and risk of getting eliminated. It appeared the whole group had made a pact not to go for immunity which quite frankly takes the tension out of the show. Also the plate with the highest number of calories was a ham and cheese sandwich, so if you spun it just don’t have dinner. No big deal.

Oh and where is Commando we have barely seen him, except for his cameo tonight handing the nicorette patches over to Shane in a very obvious product placement moment.

What do you think of The Biggest Loser? Has it done enough this week to keep you watching?

After K-Fed collapsed on the set of Excess Baggage, A Current Affair, did a story on whether reality weight loss shows push their contestants to far.

Here is the link to the video.

Excess Baggage producers and Channel Nine must be loving that The Biggest Loser ratings are sitting in the 800,000 viewer mark. Clearly the early start for Loser is not working at the moment.

Jane Carrey who is actor/comedian Jim Carrey’s daughter auditioned on American Idol and made it through to Hollywood.

She seems kind of sweet, with an OK voice, heard better but also have heard worse. Jane is a 24 year old single mum, and waitress. I thought this was interesting considering her dad in the past has made $20 million a film that she does not have a trust fund or indeed went to college.

Having said that maybe she is such a sweetie because she has had to support herself.

News.com.au also raise the issue that she got special treatment at the auditions, that she did not have to queue. Personally I don’t have a problem with that.

A Queensland University has done a study on where you are placed to sing on talent reality can effect the voting patterns.

The news.com.au article states the study found the person who sang last had an advantage over the other contestants.

It states:

They found that even after accounting for a contestant’s talent, those who performed later in the show had an advantage over other contestants.

American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson regularly performed later and went second in the final show and has gone on to become arguably the world’s most successful Idol contestant.

Researcher Dr Katie Page said the later a contestant performed in a show, the more likely they were to not be in the bottom two in the following round.

Is this what academics do studies on these days? I thought universities are about intellectual rigour?  Any fan of the show would have been able to tell these researchers that the last spot is commonly known as the pimp spot, as that is where the producers will regularly put their favourites in to help keep them on the show. Remember which position Reece Mastin was put in the week after he landed in the bottom two in the last season of The X Factor Australia?

At least she acknowledged that where you perform is not pulled out of a hat, it is where the producers decide where you should sing.

The study also found contestants who performed first were more likely to be judged favourably than those who went second or third, which were found to be the worst positions to perform.

Apparently this has to do with memory of the voters, but I would also say that a lot viewers also can miss the first few songs as they not be settled in front of the TV yet.

Anyway I hope by the time my kids get to university this quango research has been replaced with some academic rigour, because I can just save the not inconsiderable fees and teach them this stuff at home when they are in fourth grade.

Are Michelle and James the pair that get together on the show? Or is that all too obvious? There was the camera pan to his face with a twinkle in his eye when she went to get weighed. Then there is the obvious love of music they both have. He even declared he felt a tingle all over.

It would be surprising if TEN gave the game away this early in the series, considering they have been tantalising the viewer with the rumour.

If the point of the show is to build up the contestants, Tiffany was ensuring the only person with a smidgen of self esteem Bek was having it busted out of her. Tiffany thought she was going to give her trouble because when she looked in the mirror Bek saw the inner person not the fat person.

Tiffany spat out “No one THAT overweight can be happy”.  How appalling is that? There would be some people of that size who are perfectly content about the way they look.

Tonight the episode continued with the weigh ins in front of their family and friends.

Alex who is 50 weighed in at 161.6 kgs and he said he was on the show to find love and to be loved.

Simon who is 40 weighed in at 164.3 kgs and is a father of two sons he will look good once he loses weight if his photos of his young self are anything to go by. He said one of the reasons his marriage broke down was because he was overweight.

Shane is 38 and is 164.8 kgs and it was touching his mother left the house for him as she was overweight as well and does not like to go out.

Graham is 36 years of age and 209.3 kgs. He has never had a girlfriend. He dreams of being a family man.

Michelle, 24, weighs 110.4 kgs. She can’t remember she felt beautiful or pretty. Not only did she have to strip into her bra and pants in front of strangers, but they made her sing. Her voice was quite good.

Kasey is 26 and 132.8kgs and she has never had a boyfriend, she has not been getting much air time so this must mean her back story is not as interesting as the others.

Bek is 26 and 126.3 kgs – Her sense of self is higher then the other contestants as she sees a beautiful person staring back at her and she doesn’t see the weight. However she does see her weight as a limitation.

Selena is 22 and weighs in at 163.5 k she  has profound deafness in on ear. She just seems lovely.

Luke is 26 and 145.2 kgs his philosophy was it was easy to reject then be rejected.

Hamish is 20 and 148.7 kgs He is a cutie but again he has not had much air time.

James is 22 and weighs in 136.3 – he has had a girlfriend but not for awhile.

Ryan is 29 and weighs 241 kgs which made him the biggest contestant in biggest loser history. This means he has to lose over 100 kgs. Walking must be near impossible.

Hopefully the teams won’t play tactics and boot out Ryan too early because he really does need to be there. In the training session Lisa was the first one to hit the spew bucket with Brenda not far behind.

So it is now game on on The Biggest Loser.

Channel Seven has just allowed the other channels to duke it out in the 7.00pm time slot, and has announced that My Kitchen Rules one of the veteran reality shows will premiere on Monday 30 January at 7.30pm. It will air Monday to Thursday at 7.30pm on Channel Seven.

This year the only new twist that we know about this season is there is a team from New Zealand and the prize money has increased to $250,000. For a look at the cast go to this blog post here.

The other show on Mondays is going to be trashtastic is Please Marry My Boy. It will screen at 8.30pm on Monday. I will post a review of episode one soon. This show based on the US program Momma’s Boys is a dating show where the mother selects the date for her sons. Go here to see the cast list for the show.

My Kitchen Rules on Channel Seven – Monday to Thursday at 7.30pm

Please Marry My Boy on Channel Seven – Monday nights at 8.30pm