Saving my Big Brother?

Let’s start at the beginning. In November last year my elder sibling Cameron phoned me to inform me of his impending downfall. "Buey, am thinkan aboot applyin fur Big Bruther." After a hearty guffaw and a few seconds of silence from my end of the telephone I realised he was serious. Well, if he was serious, I’d have to be. By Christmas he had all the relevant paperwork, but his application video still needed to be shot. Up to the plate stepped I, and we spent a couple of wintry days scouring Orkney for good light and location, settling on sunset at the cliffs of Yesnaby for the opener, with the rest to be shot in his converted cottage in the Orkney countryside. My camera operator skills notwithstanding, we made a pretty good piece - two minutes showcasing the beauty of our native Isle, and a reasonably humorous script from Cam. It was at this point I had an epiphany, and realised he was going to make it. Don’t ask me why, I just thought he’d be too enigmatic for the producers to resist. I knew they wouldn’t be able to get a handle on a 32-year-old tri-lingual graduate now settled in the middle of nowhere (their words, not mine) having lived and worked in France then Spain, CEO of the European arm of a New Jersey-based seafood import/exporter, a Christian who found God in his twenties, and of his own volition. Not to mention his good teeth.

In March he got the call. Interview, Glasgow, next week. A nice opportunity for us to spend some time together, which doesn’t happen often. The producers told him he was to choose one person whom he would talk to about the process as it unfolded, and that person was me. Another phone call, another interview. London this time. Not to belittle my aforementioned epiphany, but after his second trip to London I realised he really was going to be on the show. Okay, "they" were telling him he had made the cut to 50. I knew a guy like Cameron would either be a definite yes, or no. There was no middle ground with him. He was in, and I knew it.

After convincing him of such, it was the only time he wavered. I appreciated his concern that it might affect my career. As a 14-ounce trout in the B&Q sized pond that is Scottish media, I thought it unlikely. Nave of me, but more on that later. He also expressed concern about the affect on our parents, but epiphany number three placated that concern. They had nothing to fear, he was an honest, decent lad. He was in it for what he would get out of it whilst he was in it, and not, as 95 per cent of contestants are, in it for what he could get out of it when he got out. So, mum and dad would be safe from salacious gossip and tabloid demands.

The final part of the contestant evaluation process involved Cameron spending a day with BB’s psychologist. Upon returning to Glasgow, he recounted the line of questioning with a huge smirk: what kind of relationship do your parents have? How many sexual partners has your brother had? Have you ever had anal sex? The list of questions would have brought colour to Freud’s cheeks. The whole evaluation seemed to be about sex.

So, he made it. That Friday the housemates entered the house was a strange one. I was in London anyway for work, but as soon as the news hit the street my telephone went nuts. One national tabloid offered me 5,000 to write an exclusive for their Sunday edition, and 1,000 per week thereafter for a diary column. My protests of "this isn’t about me, I don’t want to make money from him being in there" were laughed at, but I found not using the pen at all to be much mightier than the sword. ( The Scotsman only offered me a luncheon voucher for this piece, so I’m still morally uncompromised.)

Early Friday evening saw family and friends congregated at Endemol HQ, and I was quick to judge which housemates I wouldn’t like based on their families. Anouska’s mum quite openly admitted to already having a celebrity booker in place to get her daughter modelling and TV work when she was evicted. Turns out she needed the number sooner than she thought.

We all need a reality check now and again, and boy, did my mum and I get one upon returning to the hotel after seeing our loved one enter the cocoon. Everything was as normal as it could be in that situation until the point in the bar when the television boomed Oakenfold and Gray’s signature tune, followed by Cameron’s chirpy face on the box, and me falling across the bar in a Del Boy Trotter manner. It was then that it hit me: my big brother was on Big Brother. Until the age of 20 I was referred to mostly as "Cameron’s brother", so imagine my chagrin when I realised in that moment that the moniker I eradicated ten years ago was back, and this time it was for good.

The question I’ve been most asked, "Is he being himself in there?" is difficult to answer with any conviction. The first couple of weeks were an editor’s smorgasbord of snippets from 12 relatively mouthy individuals. Cameron was being himself as far as I could work out, effervescent without being in your face, holding true to his morals without being judgmental. Pretty harmless all round, really, but I was imagining the headlines as the tabloid frenzy gathered pace to find dirt on the clean-living man. My parents, their neighbours, anyone who’d ever seen Cameron cross the street were asked to be judge and jury of Cameron’s character and activities over the past 32 years. Some townsfolk said things they shouldn’t have, but no-one died.

Having got rid of some of the chaff after a couple of weeks it was easier to get a handle on the remaining housemates; Federico’s sexist attitude was steering him toward a quick petard hoisting; Tania’s nails would remain intact as she never lifted a cooking or cleaning finger; Ray was less the unwilling stud and more the slightly shifty game player. Everyone else was pretty much as you’d expect, including Cameron.

The most frustrating thing in the initial stages of the show was not seeing him come quite as far out of his shell as I’d expected and hoped. This wasn’t down to gameplay, just a maturity that most of his fellow prisoners didn’t share. He went in it for the stimulation, what he got was Spin the Bottle. It’s easy to confuse a biblical or overly moral stance with one of acceptance without involvement, which is what the housemates now seem to be doing.

This means he isn’t getting to be the fun-loving practical joker I know him as, and as such is being depicted as a diluted version of my brother. They are making a TV show after all, and it’s all about editing. I am beginning to consolidate my opinion that Big Brother sums up my problem with "reality" TV - that there’s very little real about it. The fact that we’ve already seen this "experiment" three times renders the term real useless. Regardless of how the editors make them look, these contestants have a grasp of what goes on outside the house while they’re inside, therefore cannot act or react with any great reality.

Housemates know they’re being watched, and most know exactly how to behave in the house to meet their ends when they come out. No-one wants to be Jade . However, the fact that Cameron doesn’t always join in or find the joke funny is because you don’t always want to join in and sometimes the joke really isn’t funny. Much has been made of Cameron not fitting in as well as other housemates. That may be partly true, but exaggerated by the show and the media frenzy. Will Cam get it together with Steph? Has he ever been drunk? Is he really as boring as some TV pundits have led us to believe? Who knows, yes, and no respectively.

What has become clear to me in the last two weeks of Big Brother is that the most intelligent things Cameron says are directed to the faceless voice in the diary room. The snippet of "I don’t like people who brag about getting blootered - it’s not big and it’s not clever" is a classic example of Cameron. I just think he’s finding it difficult to espouse his views amongst the gaggle, so the odd look or sigh is being deliberately misinterpreted by the more Machiavellian gameplayers in the house. After all, everyone is looking for a reason to nominate someone else in a way which portrays the nominator in a good light to the voting public. These lab rats ain’t daft.

I don’t think anyone could imagine the tedium or difficulty of being in that goldfish bowl unless they’d been in there themselves. I’ve been watching for little quirks from Cameron the last week to try and gauge how he really feels , and more so - since Tuesday - how he feels about being up for eviction. What I’ve noticed is that he’s tuning in to the politics surrounding him, the house is no longer about happily skipping around the garden and smoking lots of fags. People are leaving, the game is well afoot. I just don’t think Cameron is that bothered . I could see the disappointment when he heard his name called on Tuesday, but he knew it was coming. They all know it has to come at some point, but the first time must be the worst. The good thing about these nominations from Cameron’s point of view is that since no-one has beaten Jon yet, the pressure is off. I can see in his eyes that he thinks he’ll probably go, and as such is starting to loosen up a bit and enjoy himself. Public opinion leads me to believe the vote will be closer than he thinks, and if he does evade eviction tonight we’ll start to see a lot more of the big man. As I bite my nails only slightly less than my brother will be doing in anticipation of tonight’s result, I am happy that the people I meet have a reasonable handle on what he’s like; gentle, mannerly, up for a laugh.

They wouldn’t like him so much if he’d thrown their Tonka toys into the sea. Childhood gripes aside, I entitled this piece: "Let’s save Cameron?" The question is, do we save him by voting him out, or keeping him in?

• Julyan Sinclair is a BAFTA-award winning TV presenter, currently working between Glasgow and London. Tonight’s Big Brother eviction shows are on Channel 4 at 8:30, 10 and 11:10pm.