From day one I had rooted for Britain's notorious bruiser Katie Hopkins with the expectation that she'd provide a lot of entertainment on the latest installment of Celebrity Big Brother. And The Sun columnist certainly did not disappoint.
The entire series revolved around Hopkins and American gossip blogger Perez Hilton, whose arguments throughout the first ten days and onward sent the house into two camps.
So it was my shock that Katie Price, who entered the Celebrity Big Brother house ten days late, won the competition.
What of all the drama beforehand? All for naught?
Ken Morley, who was so vile and offensive, was pulled from the Celebrity Big Brother house within the first week of the competition never to be heard from again, would have had a field day with Price.
And then there's the unpredictable Jeremy Jackson, who pulled open Chloe Goodman's robe after violently vomiting in the bathroom while nearly every other competitor was several feet away. His tenure in the house was marred by erratic behavior and ultimately led to an early exit out of the house.
I don't know about you but I would have paid Pricey's check (if the real Pricey would have shown up) for Channel 5 myself just to see her deal with the drama that ensued early on. Who cares whether the house calmed down after she arrived? We weren't watching for that.
I spent the next twenty days or so watching Price apply self tanner and talk about her sex life. Forget her latest tell all book -- I'd heard enough about strapping it on for cross-dressing ex-husband Alex Reid, getting revenge after catching ex-boyfriends with other women, and how she wasn't a "squirter" in the bedroom for days on end.
All of it was rather tiresome after a while, and fans on Twitter were left begging Price to find a new angle to engage viewers. But instead of getting her hands dirty in the Hopkins vs. Hilton feud, she sat most of the series out tending to her post-operational breasts and following Keith Chegwin around like a "sheep." Most of the time she couldn't exit down the diary room stairs without her hands wrapped around her bosom.
"I'm sorry if I've been boring," Price told us. "But please vote if you want to keep me in -- even though I will still be the same boring person if I stay!"
Only in the last episodes did we see a bit of the "Pricey" we knew from headlines, but that was when Hopkins called out the mother of five for not having made much of her time in the Celebrity Big Brother house. It seemed only when confronted that Price defended herself.
Whilst chatting with Chegwin about how Hopkins was talking behind her back in the Celebrity Big Brother bedroom, Price quickly clammed up when Hopkins actually did enter the room during the conversation. Talk about awkward -- there was what seemed an ironically long silence between the castmates until Hopkins pressed on about not needing to end whatever conversation was being had on her account.
So it was no surprise that Price was the most disappointing castmate of the series in a public poll on January 31st, second only to Nadia Sawalha, and as of February 4th's Celebrity Big Brother aftershow Bit On The Side, was also the least talked about castmate next to Kavana remaining.
Most popular of the Celebrity Big Brother house this year according to her fellow castmates? Katie Hopkins. Most entertaining according to public polling? Katie Hopkins. The person cheated out of the prize of being named Celebrity Big Brother's latest winner? Most definitely Katie Hopkins.
There's no denying that Hopkins had tremendous growth in the Celebrity Big Brother house, entering to boos and coming out to cheers. And of all the housemates reached her goal of vanquishing the series' villain Hilton once and for all. Hopkins is the show's unthanked hero and regardless of whether you enjoyed her rough around the edges approach to dealing with conflict, she remained true to herself and always the central driving force of the house.
I was anxiously awaiting Hopkin's crowning Friday night, and so I'm still scratching my head...
We were all watching for Hopkins and her sparring partner in Hilton, not the lackadaisical beauty queen without a prom.