BIG BROTHER: Guards forced to break up brawl
BIg BroTher has become ruder, cruder and increasingly violent. When it first hit screens in 2000, housemates had to perform tame tasks such as learning the highway Code.
In the latest series, in which 22 housemates are competing to win £100,000 (€111,000), viewers have seen hairdresser andrew Cruickshanks being given an intimate wax, and vlogger hannah agboola projectile-vomit after she was forced to eat fermented eggs. on a previous series Irish model Jeremy McConnell, right, and stephanie davis got intimate. In terms of sex, it’s no Love Island – one bedroom scene featured nothing more racy than a couple talking about how much they liked each other. But contestant Chanelle McCleary did appear to have sex with her boyfriend, and viewers saw dreamboys stripper Lotan Carter shove his genitals at singer savannah o’reilly’s face (though she was under a duvet at the time).
Bad language is another matter. Long-suffering presenter emma Willis was forced to apologise four times during the show’s launch, aired before 9pm, for swearing by contestants.
Big Brother bleeps out foul language, and during a fight between two females – which ended with one shouting ‘True f ****** colours now, you stupid c***’ – we counted 21 bleeps in just 46 seconds.
But the violence in this series is the most troubling aspect.
Following a serious physical fight between all the housemates, which required security guards to break it up, a petition to ban the entire show for its ‘unacceptable violence, language, sexual exploitation, and scenes of unacceptable behaviour’ was launched on website change.org.