O Brother, where art thou?

Published on Wednesday 3 June 2009 20:18

WHEN Andy Warhol said that in the future everyone would be famous for 15 minutes, he was probably unaware of just how scarily accurate his prediction would turn out to be. On 14 July 2000, ten members of the public experienced instant fame when they entered a camera-filled house to be watched by Channel Four viewers, 24/7, for nine weeks, and the British public has been hooked on the phenomenon that is Big Brother ever since.

Tonight, 16 more contestants will enter the Big Brother House for the programme's tenth series. While the identity of the housemates is kept under wraps, rumours abound that the line-up will include a 21-year-old beauty queen from Fife – as well as one of her arch rivals from the beauty-pageant circuit.

Over ten series of the show, 146 people have entered the Big Brother house, including 12 Scots. From Sandy Cumming, the personal shopper who entered in a kilt and tried to exit via the roof, to Cameron Stout, the merry fish trader from Orkney who won the 70,000 prize in 2005, the Scottish presence on what has been one of the most controversial television programmes of the last decade has proved entertaining if nothing else.

So what became of them all? If they're lucky, the average Big Brother contestant will enjoy six months of fame after their exit from the show, followed by a lifetime of obscurity, beyond the occasional "don't I know you from somewhere?" at dinner parties. The not-so-fortunate contestant may spend years trying to sink into anonymity as they're forever defined by a single, seemingly insignificant incident (often involving chickpeas, a staple food in the house.)

Stout, the most famous and most successful Scot to have appeared on the show, was repeatedly warned about the potential consequences of appearing on the programme beforehand. "I didn't feel I was taking a risk, but at every stage of the process, the producers gave you a 'talk of doom' where they told you about the potential downside of appearing on the show," he says. "They and the psychiatrists couldn't understand why I wanted to do it. They kept telling me that that I'd be recognised wherever I went and that everyone would know my business, but I would tell them that that's just like Orkney!"

Mikey Hughes from Clydebank, 34, was last year's runner-up and has managed to extend his 15 minutes of fame. The programme's first blind contestant, he now presents Mikey On The Buzz on Insight Radio and plans to stand as an independent candidate in the upcoming Springburn by-election. "When I was in Primary Three, my teacher told me I should be a clown in the circus, so I suppose I thought I was suited to the show," he says. "There's certainly nothing more 'real' than being in that house. It's not scripted, it's not EastEnders, and you do feel the cameras on you. I was aware that going on the programme was a bit of a risk: you've got to have a thick skin and you've got to prepare yourself for the fact that the public may not like you. I've been lucky not to have experienced that and, even a year on, I'm still recognised everywhere I go."

Does he worry about always being associated with the show? "No, I'm happy to be remembered for my time on Big Brother," he says. "I know some of the previous contestants are seen as a bit of a joke, but I love being associated with it and I don't think that my time on the show would hamper a career in politics. It's about time that I got down to the House of Commons for a bit of straight talking – that's exactly what I did on Big Brother, after all."

Certainly Mikey has enjoyed a more positive response from the press and the public than the average housemate. The programme seems to make a baying mob of Britain's viewing public, with most housemates now exiting to a chorus of boos. After nine series, however, contestants know exactly what they're letting themselves in for, which is why the beauty queens looking for a fast-track to the lads' mag photoshoot circuit, or the couples looking to secure an interview with OK! magazine tend to take it all in their stride.

However, like the producers of Britain's Got Talent, who have been accused this week of failing to protect Susan Boyle from the pressures of appearing on the show, the producers of Big Brother have been criticised for placing vulnerable people in the house for the viewers' entertainment. One of the contestants on series seven was Shahbaz Chaudry, 39, from Glasgow, who was removed from the house just a few days into the show after making comments that suggested he was suicidal. In 2008, Dennis McHugh, 23, a dance student and teacher from Edinburgh, was ejected from the house for spitting in the face of a fellow contestant after a heated argument.

It has not always been volatile people elected to appear on the show, however. In the first series – when passing notes was perceived as the most abhorrent thing a contestant could do – the programme was billed as a "social experiment" and featured relatively normal people. By series three, the producers seemed to want to rock the boat: it was at that point they introduced Jade Goody to the viewing public, with memorable results that no-one could have predicted.

Federico Martone, 29, from Glasgow, appeared in the fourth series of the show, a year after Goody, and believes that producers were looking for a contrast to the 'wackiness' of the previous series. "The producers told me they wanted to move away from those more 'extreme' contestants and use normal people that everyone could relate to," he says. "There was a sense of guilt on their part, I think, but I don't think their experiment really worked, and ever since they've used sex and violence to pull in the viewers."

Martone, who now owns two restaurants in Glasgow, knew very little about the show before he appeared on it. "I was working in the US for the first few years that Big Brother was on television, so I didn't know much about it and I applied as a bet. Now, the viewers want a freakshow. Most of the contestants are narcissistic, vacuous desperados. I think when it comes to programmes like Big Brother, the word 'reality' is the biggest misnomer. As soon as you introduce cameras, it's not reality." In the nine years since it first appeared on our screens, Big Brother has become a pop-culture phenomenon, loved and loathed in equal measure, and (with the exception of a few more low-key offerings) Big Brother was the programme that launched the reality TV genre in the UK as we know it today.

Perhaps, were it not for the pioneering efforts of Channel 4, we wouldn't today find ourselves watching otherwise dignified political correspondents tango-ing across the small screen in sequins, or eating live grubs for our delectation. Yet Big Brother remains the simplest and most successful reality TV format.

After ten series, rivers of tears and countless tantrums, a pregnancy scare, a race row that reached the House of Commons, and the death from cancer of its most famous former housemate, Big Brother has managed to retain its popularity. As for the 146 contestants who've participated in what is perhaps the ultimate popularity contest, almost all have faded into obscurity, with another group of wannabes waiting in the wings to take their place and grasp at 15 minutes of their own.