Read the blow-by-blow finale on the Big Brother Blog

It was so close it was a photo finish but the question wasn’t so much who would win Big Brother 9, and the £100,000 prize, but who would stay upright. The pouring rain made the catwalk a precarious slide. This series of Big Brother hasn’t been the most scandalous and the glory years of six million (and more) viewers are long gone; this year’s average audience of 3.2 million is 300,000 down on last year. But it has been one of the most intriguingly cast, and in the end came down to a contest between a Pollyanna from Wales, who no-one could believe was so nice, and a blind Scot with a fetish for stockings.

It wasn’t a final where you dialled your vote with relish. Neither character was charismatic or electrifying — and after 93 days you might have been too exhausted to care.

The final also saw the eviction of three other housemates. Darnell Swallow, 26, the Albino rapper once jailed for drug dealing, whose gloom was signalled by his chorus of “Sucks dude”, was first out. Host Davina McCall — wearing a bizarre tent made of spangles — didn’t ask the questions we wanted to know. Why had he been such a sexist pig to fellow housemate Sara? But he won the crowd over by thanking Britain for making him feel at home.

Rex Newmark, the posh 23-year-old chef who came fourth, laughed off accusations he was a bully. "If you take BB too seriously then you're on the wrong show.” His sour and possessive relationship with girlfriend Nicole Cammack led to her becoming the show’s most unpopular housemate ever. However, with tabloid rumours around his adultery, and hints of future TV interest, Newmark — who insists his dark orange hair is not ginger but “strawberry blond” — may well emerge as the one housemate with a post-BB media career.

Sara Folino, the 27-year-old Australian who came third faced accusations she had led Swallow on. But, shouting into the microphone in her broad Australian (“noooiiiice”), the crowd loudly cheered her zinging sweetness.

The winner was a surprise: Pollyanna (Rachel Rice, 24), beat the blind Scot (Mikey Hughes, 33). This was the right result, even if the audience half-booed: Rice had been consistently kind (which had bored viewers and her fellow housemates) and resilient. In her victory interview she dismissed accusations of her being fake — “I know who I am”. She’d buy “a car that actually starts” with the money.

It is nine seasons old, and two seasons remain until its anticipated extinction; but, despite the fights, villains, drunken misdemeanours and all the sordid hullaballo the tabloids feast on, Rice’s victory proved the enduring Big Brother maxim: the nice guy, or gal, always finishes first.

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