By GREGG WYCHERLEY
Australian voyeur television show Big Brother finished last night, the winner walking away with $A250,000 ($313,000).
Legions of screaming teenage girls and fireworks greeted 21-year-old Ben Williams, from Sydney, as he made his triumphant entry on to the stage, only minutes after his mate Blair McDonough, 20, was evicted.
Over
the past 14 weeks, audiences here and in Australia have watched as the 12 housemates went about their daily activities. They were scrutinised 24 hours a day, even down to showering and brushing teeth.
Interviewed just hours before they discovered which of them would be voted off, Blair and Ben said they had spent the day doing "nothing," strangely fitting considering the lack of any interesting activity in the house over the past 14 weeks.
Reviled by the cognoscenti as the television equivalent of watching paint dry, the show still managed to command huge ratings for Channel 10 in Australia although it did not rate so well for TV2 here.
Each week, the housemates nominated two fellows for eviction and they were thrown on the mercy of the Australian TV audience.
The cuddly strip club manager Sara-Marie Fedele, 22, with her bunny ears and penchant for stripping, seemed a shoo-in to take the prize. But even she could not overthrow the hunky Ben and Blair.
