Iain Maciver writes …

IT IS DIFFICULT to find the time to watch Celebrity Big Brother every night. I actually have a life. But I am rooting for my mate to win.

No, it is not that most young looking and perhaps one of the most surgically-enhanced 52-year-old women in the known universe, LaToya Jackson.

I’ve never met the woman and dreams don’t count.

It is, in fact, the man who has been ordering Ulrika to wash her hands. Dirty girl. It’s Tommy Sheridan. Me and Tommy? Oh yeah. We’re like that.

He has got to win. Come on, the poor fellow is down on his luck, so he needs the cash as he is just a student nowadays.

It is a masterstroke to have a committed, serious politician sharing with a bunch of, well, slightly less-serious individuals. The potential for strife is almighty. It worked well with Gorgeous George Galloway right up until he became a pussy.

Vitriolic exchanges between him and Barrymore and the no-marks in with them were just delicious.

“You are the most selfish, self-obsessed person I have ever met in my life,” roared Gorgeous. “So put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

Only for the gangly star of Kids Do the Funniest Things to wound him with: “If you’re that sad, George, it’s no wonder Blair threw you out.”

Sheridan is my mate. He and his bonny wife came to see me when he was up in Stornoway to address a Scottish Socialist Party rally in the Caberfeidh Hotel a few years back. It was before all those distressing allegations which saw him making several other personal appearances in recent years – in the witness box.

He was in great form that day and tried to drag me along to the Caber to hear him put his eminently sensible case for his own particular brand of state ownership of, yeah, everything. So I thought why not.

Then I wondered what would happen if I disagreed with what was being said by the great man? Could I bite my tongue? Gulp. The thought of Tommy Sheridan and Dan Murray’s beard trapping me in a corner of the Willow Suite was too much. I had to make my excuses.

I don’t see Tommy making the same mistakes that Gorgeous George made. He can rant and rave like the best of them, especially outside courthouses, but there is no way the perma-tanned Bolshevik will be purring or licking anything but his own lips in the house. See? Glaswegians can be cool. Almost.

So why doesn’t the Gaelic channel put on its own version, Big Brathair? But who would be the personalities that we should put in for maximum entertainment?

Well, Dan Murray, that’s for sure. Fired-up lefties bristling with indignation about injustices are always good value, although there are only a handful still around. There’s Tommy, Dennis Skinner, Dan and, er, that’s it.

I fear it would have to be a big-money offer to take Dan away from Big Kenneth’s side at the BBC on Friday mornings. So, yes, Dan and his bristles – but only if we have the budget.

We will need a wealthy business type for him to argue with. Angus Campbell, the council leader, would fit the bill if we could get him speaking anything other than unintelligible Battery Gaelic. If not, most Hearachs are incredibly rich nowadays, particularly, I am told, the ones to be found down by Scarista.

We will need an established TV megastar. Hmm. Cathy Macdonald or Tony Kearney? Sorry, a hoaney, but that shoddy Barra Gaelic hardly compares with that heady lilt produced by a fine pair of lungs refreshed from birth with the flung spume of West Loch Roag. The former Miss Earshader, Crulivig and Lundale of 1976 will be first in so she can choose her quarters. Only right, I think.

What about a has-been? Sadly, there was no one on The A Team who spoke Gaelic. Singers? Well, a month ago, I might have agreed to give the old tooth-yanker Alasdair Gillies just another five minutes of fame.

But he is a star again. He was so tear-jerkingly good on the programme through the Bells that he had my own wife welling up, just as he did back in the 1970s. That lad will go far.

It is always a good idea to keep everyone sane in the Big Brathair house by having the voice of the common man in there – someone a bit off-the-wall but dispensing pearls of wisdom, when they are not wearing them.

Which is why, after also helping lever us into 2009 with that televisual treat, we should call upon that most photogenic if somewhat earnest of Uist housewives. Step forward Mrs Jessie Lexy MacIsaac.