They say there is no rest for the wicked. I was hoping for some sort of a breather between the tumultuous end to the Honey Bachelor and the start of The Bachelorette. I mean after all, it’s not like this is my actual job!
But then last night I saw our man Osher sitting in the audience of the Survivor finale (#teamShaneGould) and I realised that he just doesn’t take a break. Of course, he would be spending his off-season stalking Jonathan La Paglia, because when it comes to devising silly games and delivering cryptic clues, is there anyone better than JLP (maybe Grant Denyer, but Game of Games is ATROCIOUS)? It’s like Osher is just waiting for JLP to set one foot wrong and he will be in there. The student will overtake the master…
But until then, Osher has his own job. He has to introduce “Australia’s most beloved Bachelorette, Ali.”
Hmmm. I’m thinking that could be disputed. Nikki who was cast aside by Richie? Tara, Matty J’s reject? Brooke? My god. It’s only been six days. Surely we can’t have forgotten Brooke already. OK. I’m prepared to concede Ali is probably in the top…25?
I sure hope Anna Robards isn’t sitting down for a nice night of Channel 10 tellie, because if she did she would be having to relive all those Bachelor highlights where her now husband was performing flirty calisthenics and playing tonsil hockey with Ali. We know how that all turned out of course, and how then Ali fell straight into the Grant trap in Bachelor in Paradise.
Anyhow, Osher promises to find Ali love, but I must confess, the trailer, where Ali is hunched over double, vomiting onto her shoes, doesn’t instil much hope.
Still, it’s early days and Ali appears on the path, a vision in red, although I find myself a little distracted contemplating the structural engineering that has gone into supporting Ali’s enhanced bosom in her off the shoulder frock.
Ali is committed to taking things slowly this time. She is going to give it the full ten weeks before confessing her undying love.
Good on her.
Then Charlie hops out of the car, and he is a builder and he has rough hands and he made her a journal ALL BY HIMSELF and he ruined it a bit by writing in it first, but OMG, Ali is a little bit in love.
Then Robert strolls down the path and apparently his fly was undone the whole time:
“He’s a stallion!” gasps Ali, clearly impressed, and she falls a little bit in love.
And then Bill arrives and he’s tall, he’s beautiful, and he’s a snappy dresser. But he has a deep dark secret. He wasn’t born Bill, he was born…
…he was born…
…David.
And the nation gasps a collective sigh of relief, because we were all sure he was going to tell her his birth name was … Adolf.
And Ali is a little bit in love.
Come on, Osher. Do something about this.
And he answers my prayers in the form of Paddy, who in the history of douche-bags to be paraded before an Australian bachelorette, he is the king. He actually seems to forget that he is wearing a suit and thinks he is board shorts and a string singlet and has rocked up to Geordie Shore. He claims to have played soccer in England, which is kind of like me claiming that I have played basketball in Australia. It may be true, but means…fuck all. He’s shit at soccer and he also recites a poem of his own composition with the word “tits” in it.
This can only mean one thing. There will be some other wanker who will arrive on the scene and we are going to have to put up with them both for far too many weeks.
Cue Nathan – a twenty-three-year-old who likes nothing better than admiring his own form in a mirror while he bench-presses at the gym, and…partying.
Ugh!
There are a string of blokes named Dan/y/iel, a couple of long-haired model types (one in a kilt), a real-estate agent named Pete, and a Taite (not a typo).
Then it appears that Osher has irresponsibly failed to return all of the segways to the hire place after The Bachelor and some bloke named Jules with a string of medals across his chest and a handle-bar moustache steams in like he is Prince Leonard of Lichtensbourg VIII – a land so far away that they haven’t heard that blonde highlights died when Wham! broke up.
One of the last to arrive is Dan, who brings a lamb with him. He’s a country boy, and Ali feeds his lamb and she falls a little bit in love.
Dan heads into the cocktail party, but that’s the last we see of the lamb, although I’m sure in the background I can see a couple of the fellas chomping on “chops with handles”.
The last to arrive is Todd. He has committed to a plastic suit of armour that farts every time he moves, more so on leather sats, particularly awkward when he has to share a limo.
He gasses up the path and pulls his helmet off to reveal a perfect head of hair and a glistening smile.
“I asked my horse if I could ride up here. The horse said ‘Nay’.
Part knight, part court jester, entirely hot.
“Holy moly quackamole!” (and yes I’m sure she pronounces it like that).
Ali is a little bit in love.
All the men are assembled inside and Osher arrives, and I must say I am a bit disappointed how quickly he adjusts to the testerone n the room:
“Ossssssssssh!”
“Hey, O-Dog!”
“My man, Osher! How they hangin’, maaaaaate!”
There is much man hugging and arse-slapping.
“I feel fricken awesome!” shouts Osher, skolling a tinnie and pumping his fists.
Something smacks him to his senses though and he remembers that he is there to tell the blokes about this seasons surprise – the WILD ROSE.
Somewhere, Nick Cave just vomited into Kylie Minogue’s mouth.
This monstrosity of a prize gives one of the men the power to steal a date from one of the other men.
Needless to say, the cocktail party is excruciating. At least when there are twenty women pining over one man you can count on a couple of them to drink themselves just short of a stupor and slink off and cry on the shoulder of a producer. Then there will be a couple of bitchy ones who will form a coven and stand back and start their backstabbing journey.
But no. The men have to start puffing out their chests and strutting their wares. They drag Ali from pillar to post and a couple of them only just stop short of dragging her by the hair.
Paddy is like a “Soccer Hooligan Ken Doll” with a string in his back that when pulled makes him jump up and down on the furniture, skoll beer and repeat on a loop. “She’s so fucking fit. She has great tits. That’s because she’s so fucking fit.”
Even though the mansion isn’t that large, we are expected to believe that Ali observes none of this, but no matter, because Nathan does.
“That bloke’s a fucking wanker,” observes Nathan in no greater case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Pete runs to Paddy and dobs on Nathan and Paddy believes Pete, because if you can’t trust a real estate agent, then who the hell can you trust.
Paddy confronts Nathan. Apparently there is something called a Bro Code, and the fifth amendment of the Bro Code clearly states: “Thou shalt only call a bro a wanker to his face and shallst not name onest Bro as a wanker behind said Bro’s back.”
Someone pushes the other, and not wanting Ali to be embarrassed by such a scene, 85-year-old Damian hobbles in:
“Look, you young whipper-snappers. This isn’t how young gentlemen behave. Now just shake hands and settle this like civilised fellows.”
Except Damian is only forty-two, has a tattoo on his neck, a background in security and according to today’s Courier Mail, is facing assault charges on the Gold Coast. How ironic.
While all of that has been going on, country boy Dan has managed some alone time with Ali, and Ivan has had enough time to assembled his boyband – “No Sync” – who cut a few moves in front of all gathered and I can hardly watch that train wreck.
After way too long, Ali gives the WILD ROSE to Bill.
It’s because he has a nice smile, is confident and says that a relationship is based on compromise. It’s like his crap dance moves have been all but forgotten. She gives him a kiss.
A really hard, sucking kiss…
“All the boys are a bit deflated,” observes Pete.
And finally it is the rose ceremony.
In no surprise, Paddy and Nathan get to stay so they can throw sand in each other’s faces for a few more weeks.
I feel sad when the last two are eliminated. I mean, I didn’t have time to learn either of their names. How cruel of me!
One seemed like a fairly decent chap, sacrificed for the drama that Paddy and Nathan can offer.
The other one to go was some poor fella who was only ever chosen because he looked like Nick Cummins’ love child.
But let it be known: there is only one Honey Bachelor, and as much as his decisions were sometimes dodgy, even he wouldn’t gift a girl a kangaroo scrotum…
Not on the first date, anyway. Hahaha.
friday night with kath 