The Bitches of Beastwick 1/24/12

Dear Lord, please save us from Karissa and Kristina Shannon, the ex-Playboy mansion twins currently contaminating our TV screens in the UK.

The pair – well, both pairs, courtesy of Hugh Hefner’s compulsory plastic surgery for his girlfriends – are appearing in Channel 5’s Celebrity Big Brother, an entertainment show that brings “celebrities” (D-Listers – no one in the UK has ever heard of the twins) under one roof for three weeks and subjects them to all sorts of humiliations.

The twins are no strangers to reality TV and know what to do to get camera time. They have flaunted their bodies since day one, wandering around in skimpy outfits and bikinis, extolling their own beauty, and believing that every blonde and, indeed, every woman in the world, is jealous of them.

The reality is that they have revealed themselves to be spiteful, bitchy, stupid and, yes, gullible, when they were fooled into thinking they had become big stars in Japan. Their interview with the fake Oriental TV host will (one hopes) be on YouTube for decades to come.

This week, Karissa blew a gasket when Denise Welch, a terrific actor and one of the wilder women in the entertainment industry, pulled at her trousers during a “Girls Night Out” session in the house.

Initially, there was no reaction, but then you could see the “Ker-ching!” on Karissa’s face, and off she stormed to the diary room, where housemates receive not only instructions but vent their grievances, to declare that she wanted to leave.

She claimed that she was the classiest woman in the house and felt disrespected. Really? The social network was immediately awash with pictures of the twins, happily bearing their backsides for the world, and, presumably, getting paid handsomely for it.

There is a bit of a debate going on about the incident, the pro-Karissa lobby (albeit a very small lobby that you could fit in an eye bath and still have room for a multi-storey car-park) having one line of argument: just because you take your clothes off for a living, that doesn’t give anyone the right to show your private bits on national TV, is the general gist of it.

I get the point.

But anyone with any savvy (and, let’s face it, the twins’ management presumably has it by the bucket-load – or so the girls never tire of telling us, anyway) will have checked out the show and seen that nudity, drunkenness and lack of respect for anyone’s personal space are at the heart of the format.

The twins have used Denise’s behaviour to “up” what is, to me, bullying of the older woman. Denise is 53 and should, said the twins, act her age. I suspect they never said the same to their octogenarian boyfriend who funded their lavish lifestyle and made them the ghastly stars they have become.

No, taking your clothes off for a living does not make you fair game for every grope and lewd comment, any more than being a prostitute makes you fair game to be raped. But the twins have put up with far worse on the other side of the Atlantic; the only difference in the UK is that they are in an uncontrolled environment that, quite frankly, their management should have checked out more thoroughly beforehand.

Ex-Page 3 girl Nicola McLean has joined the twins in their bullying of Denise, and it is playground behaviour of the worst sort. Nicola’s attempts to manipulate the voting by getting the twins onside - and they have done the same with her – has turned this threesome into The Bitches of Beastwick. Yes, Denise drinks and, under the heat of TV lights, the effects of alcohol are heightened – as is the pressure.

The twins’ ageism also extends to Frankie Cocozza, a young singer who was recently thrown off The X Factor after going off the rails. The twins attack him for what they call sexual harassment but, just days ago, thought he was just like any 18 year-old kid.

Again, they changed tack and decided to go down the “We’re going to sue” route. Now, they attack him even for opening his mouth but, well done to him, he ignored their bullying on Monday and went off to comfort Denise.

In that one action, he revealed himself to have more maturity than those two airheads could ever conjure up on their deathbeds.

Here’s news, girls: you are not, as you think, going to win this. You are the very worst Los Angeles has to offer and, in the three years I lived there, trust me, I am placing you right down there with the worst of them.

You are not beautiful; you are not clever, funny, talented or interesting. You have ridden on the back (literally or metaphorically, who knows) of an old man who has financed your very dubious stardom.

You may be able to fool LA but it doesn’t wash in the UK, where the concept of fun (which is clearly anathema to you – get your management to look that word up) rules, in what is essentially a game show.

Come Wednesday, I hope that the British public, who are voting for the winner (what a waste of time your nomination scheming has been – Duh!), get your tight-arsed personalities out of the house.

And while we’re on the subject, Karissa . . . My arse is SOOOOO much better than yours.

And I’m 53.