Big Brother housemates - you saw them arrive blinking and bewildered into the celebrity world only a few short months ago, you watched them grow, you watched them change, you watched them cry, you watched them want to punch the eternally irritating Travis in the face.
And then you watched them get booted unceremoniously from the show. But what then? What happens after that?
Well they, like their second cousins from Australian Idol and The Biggest Loser will need to deal with being famous - or at least notorious. They’ll have to learn how to give everyone that cares to stop them in the street two minutes of sunshine – whether they’re in the mood for it or not.
And to work out that if they don’t give people what they want they’ll be heckled and abused: “You’re just some dickhead from Big Brother, you know”.
Their mind will be pretty scrambled by the experience – the psychological bruises of being locked up for months with nothing to do, while being watched and prodded by a group of producers.
Not that the months before that were easy. The audition process is enough of a trip with its hundreds of pages of questionnaires about the most intimate of matters. Psych tests, photo shoots, auditions, meetings and medical examinations. And most of all the months of thinking about the show - adrenalised weeks with fingers crossed in hope.
But after all that there’s more mind scrambling that needs to be done. Right now they’ll be criss-crossing the country, appearing at gin palaces and shopping centres. Being flown to strange cities to be wheeled out at midnight to wave and answer questions in nightclubs full of teenagers with egos so fragile they’re unsure whether to worship or deride them. And after the inevitable gallon of booze and whatever else they’ll be scraped from their bed the next day by some strange minder to be driven to the airport to go to the next city to do it all over again.
And for the 21-year-olds it will probably be all too much – they’ll wake up after a two-month hangover wondering where it all went.
They’ll have to learn that their dreams of bigger and better things – a job as a TV presenter like Ryan ‘Fitzy’ Fitzgerald, Bree Amer or Wesley Dening or a career as a model a la Krystal Forscutt - might not come as easily as they thought.
And they’ll see people crash and burn all around them – like Simon ‘Hotdogs’ Deering whose short lived ‘Hotdogs Up Late’ was canned to near universal howls of derision.
And they’ll see how fame works better in economies of scale – that if you’re from Adelaide or Perth or somewhere smaller your chance of parlaying your fame into a media job is that much easier.
And they’ll see those like Chrissie Swan, Camilla Severi and Nathan Morris work their way up through hard yakka, talent and organisation until they’re hosting their own breakfast radio show.
They might even realise that the more immediate aims of someone like Merlin Luck – to use a massive national show to bring the issue of refugees to a fresh audience, only to sink without trace - might have had infinitely more dignity than trying to continue on as wannabe personalities.
They’ll have to realise that a continuation of the false celebrity they’re beginning to take for granted might just not be possible – and to watch on jealously as others get opportunities while they are left behind.
They’ll realise they’re no different from a band that’s had a big single and is desperately trying for another or an actor or presenter who’s frenetically trying to snag another high profile gig.
In the fickle world of celebrity you’re only as famous as your latest project.
Fame is like a drug and most HM’s will have to go cold turkey. Some will become gigolos for the gossip column photographers at envelope openings.
But they will find the media, that once filled pages with praise about them and titbits about their life, will now brand them as ‘Reality TV rejects’ and ’Channel Ten Trash’.
The magazines and newspapers that once sold ads around stories building them will now sell just as many ads while tearing them down. This is their reward for doing what many freely admit they could not do - expose themselves to the voyeuristic gaze of the nation.
And they’ll notice that the invitations from charities and other groups for a slice of their time will start to get fewer and fewer. And that even with a skill, like the tonsils of an Australian Idol finalist, showbiz is a tough, tough slog.
It’s probably no wonder that we see in brilliant living colour the beginning of the journey of Big Brother housemates. Because the death throes of their adventure are as normal and boring as their lives before the whole circus came rumbling along in the first place.
