Big Brother 2007 is over - and boy did they drag out the finale!

Even a diehard fan like me couldn’t bear to watch Zach and Alisha sitting in the Rewards Room for more than an hour, looking puzzled and asking over and over again: “What’s happening?” “I’m ready to leave now?” and again, “Big Brother … what’s happening?”

And then silence, with the two of them starring at each other vacantly.

The show was meant to finish at 9.15pm but dragged on until 10pm. It was exhausting to watch – I was even forced to jump between 1 vs 100, CSI, Criminal Minds and Four Corners just to stay awake.

Even the evicted housemates were getting in bored on stage. It was so tragic you could almost describe the moment when Bodie threw a rubber chicken at Gretel, hitting her in the head, as a highlight (but that may have something to do with the fact that it brought back memories of a certain turkey-slap incident from the previous series).

Forums and chatrooms on the website www.behindbigbrother.com were flooded with comments from viewers who were annoyed by the constant delays during the finale.

“To fill in the time BB hosts went back and re-interviewed ex-housemates, relatives, played backup footage packages and, towards the end, resorted to breaking to commercials extremely frequently,” the site said. “They even had to let off the finale fireworks early to try and keep the audience entertained.”

According to host Gretel Killeen, there were fewer than 500 votes between the two finalists, meaning a half-hour manual audit had to be conducted. (If you really want a blow-by-blow account of the finale, click here).

Finally, 45 minutes after the Big Brother finale was scheduled to finish, Aleisha was announced the winner of the $450,000 prize. She is only the second female winner in Australia since the series began, the other being naïve Tasmanian fish and chip shop owner Reggie Bird, whose winnings brought her little long-term joy (she ended up divorcing her hubby, moving interstate and getting conned out of her prize money).

Will BB be back again in 2008 or is it time for the show to go? I’m guessing there will be another series – after all, why would you can a show that makes millions of dollars?

— STAR DELANEY