Travis out of the house

(updated) On sick leave?

Update: BB has finally spoken up on the matter. Scroll to the bottom for more.

A minor injury story has come out of tonight’s FNL, as it appears Travis has been taken out of the house.

After being eliminated early on in tonight’s Games, Travis could be seen in the background of the horse race round with his head resting in his hands – a lot less animated than his usual self.

During the following ‘Stable Hands’ game (aka the one with the fake horse sh*t), he continued to remain hunched over in his seat, with a bucket between his legs. He remained like this throughout the round, only occasionally glancing up. His distinct voice was certainly not heard at all. At one point Rory rested a hand on his back, clearly suggesting Travis was feeling ill.

During the final round, Travis was not present at all on the ‘Losers’ Bench’. And once the HMs had returned to the house, Travis was not present on the lounge with the others.

The last time we saw Travis up and about was during the soccer round, in which the HMs were wearing binoculars backwards. Travis was not as active as some of the other HMs, which even Fitzy commented on – “What is Travis doing?! Look at Travis! What is Travis doing down here, he’s doing nothing!!”

We’ve had a couple of suggestions from the forum as to what happened:

redscooby: “From what I seen on live stream. Ben shot him in the eye with shampoo. when they were in the holding area bb ask Travis if he was ok. He said yes but my eye hurts worst.”

SinnerNotASaint: “Trav got squirted in the eye with body wash earlier.. Ben, Nobb and Rory were picking on him as per usual.. and he copped a fair amount of body wash to his eye, Rory and Nob tried to flush it with water however it made no difference and during FNL he was complaining about having blurred vision… Trav’s been sick with the shingles and loosing weight pretty rapidly.. so i don’t know which one’s the cause… but here’s hoping he’s better soon..”

Ted: “in the holding area before one of the rounds everyone except Travis was told to put helmets on, I thought that was strange but if he’s sick it would explain that too.”

wynter: “maybe it’s a disorientation thing from the binoculars. These vision disturbance things really upset some people equilibrium and can make them vomit. Maybe that’s what happened.”

Update: In a release timestamped at 1.16pm, a message was finally posted on the Big Brother website explaining Travis’ absence.

They report he has was taken from the house to receive treatment for an infected eye stemming from an incident where Ben accidentally squirted him in the eye with shower gel. They report that as a precautionary measure, Travis was kept in hospital overnight and is currently waiting for medical clearance to return to the house.

Of course, a look at live stream video of the ‘incident’ shows it wasn’t quite that innocent. In the bathroom, Nobbi, Rory and Ben ambush Travis while he is on the toilet, spraying him with the shower gel. The boys find it hilarious, but we’ll leave it up to you to judge if there’s really any humour in that.

As everyone has a good laugh, we see Ben take him a towel. After a cut to elsewhere in the house, we return to the bathroom where Travis is complaning that it’s still all in his eye and he can’t get it out. Ben and Rory are trying to help flush it out with a bottle of water, but are having little success. Possimistic Travis is trying to laugh about it but he’s obviously still in pain.

The forum discussion is here