Great phrase. Perhaps she is a female Chance Gardener (film: Being There)

LMSO As the battle stats at DS towers will testify. In my opinion your dumbdar is usually pretty reliable and as you say calibrated at a lowish benchmark.

Been thinking - and I guess you are right!
One would have to have a basic knowledge of the letters in the alphabet, but not necessarily be able to recite the alphabet in order.

Are you still learning your alphabet or should CDWM mean something to me

(In my top three films.)

I really dont like her but I feel sorry for her. her life seems to be all about the material things. Her life seems a constant round of surgery and the horror and not having enough money to send her children to school....she could try the local primary....maybe her kids would actually like it rather than hanging out with her.

I'm in my 50s and have been involved in education all of my life. Never have I had a person in any state of their lives that could read and write, but did not know their alphabet. I have known huge numbers of illiterate adults who thoroughly knew their alphabet. I would daresay there are very few students (with English as their first language) who don't know their alphabet full stop.

One of the first things that little kiddies do as they start to toddle around is listen to songs and watch telly shows that have the alphabet as the central theme. I honestly do not know how an adult can not know their alphabet by their mid thirties. I'm sure there are, but in my personal and professional experience I've never run into it.

Well sadly she is dead now but my aunt could write fine, read even better but could never recite her alphabet from beginning to end with no mistakes. My nan was the same except her reading and writing was pretty basic as she left school at 9 so didn't have much chance to get educated. Just because it's the done thing to learn alphabet first if people teach themselves to read they don't start with the alphabet, my aunt started with the bible and my nan with a cookery book.

Same here ( It's on par with 'Harvey' )

Sorry as most shows on here seem to abbreviated I thought most would know... Come dine with me.

Alicia is the most clueless HM ever.

First of all...well done to them for persevering and accomplishing what they did. I've not known a soul who has done that...as I stated I am not discounting the possibility, but I think it is most definitely the exception and not the rule. With a woman in Alicia's situation - with an older child who you would think played the normal learning games and reading the normal learning books, as well as attending private school herself - you would expect she would know the alphabet.

I'm sorry, but I'm honestly not buying her story.

I think that she said she didn't know her alphabet is yet another example of why she intrigues me.

Even if she doesn't know her alphabet and I am somewhat doubtful about that. The way she said it without any embarrassment or explanation as if it was the most natural thing in the world adds to the intrigue. Surely she must know that it is really odd for a grown woman not to know her alphabet and to come out and admit it is bound to draw attention. You would expect her to qualify or explain such a statement or to keep it to herself. But she says it quite casually apparently oblivious to the reaction it will bring.

The part of me that has to look for logic and explanation is thinking maybe she just expressed herself badly and she didn't mean what she said in quite the way it came over. But maybe she did. Either way I am fascinated to learn more to solve what for me is a puzzle of a person.

I am perhaps stretching it here, but maybe she is using it as bait for Katie Hopkins. In tonight's HLs she says in the DR that she enjoys playing ping-pong with Katie.
Anything is possible

She is taking the p*ss ,surely. I have known my ABC for as long as i can remember.

Could be. As you say anything is possible. If she is then she is wilier than I gave her credit for. Under that sweet damaged exterior and wide eyed naivety there may be a Machiavelian monster.

Alicia the evil genius (rubs hands with Monty Burns type glee, murmuring ..'interesting'..)
I like it!

It is all part of the love/hate dynamic of her girl crush on katie

All children over the age of three ?get free nursery time (am i wrong?) she does not have to pay for nursery....

Me too. A prototype for the next Bond villain maybe.

sounds like Alicia is the one challenging Hopkins(out of camera shot) in the latest task
http://bigbrother.channel5.com/day-1...brother-debate

I see absolutely nothing interesting in her.

I'd say you must. You seem to have a lot to say about her, elsewhere on this forum.
You don't have to like her to find her interesting.

I talk about all of the HM's, it doesn't mean i find them interesting. The things i have to say about Alicia have nothing to do with her being interesting.

I can't make sense of that.