This years Celebrity Big Brother will be the fourth after it was originally conceived as a fund raiser for Comic Relief in 2002. The show was won by a rather grumpy and embarrassed Jack Dee who actually staged a successful escape during the show. He still refuses to be interviewed on the subject but it didn't do his career any harm! Anyway the real drama came from the larger than life presenter, Vanessa Feltz. Celebrity Big Brother proved very good at spotting fading celebs who are on the verge of imploding and to the eye-balls-glued-to-the-TV horror and delight of the millions watching, Vanessa let nobody down and imploded with some style.
This sort of on-screen celebrity unravelling was to set the standard for the second and third Celebrity Big Brother series and boy they haven't disappointed.
Series two saw former Take That singer and all-round nice guy, Mark Owen, win it but the real interest was provided by the marital angst of not-so-funny-man, Les Dennis. Poor ol' Les was Celebrity Big Brother Two's imploding unravelling celebrity. It seemed like he was the only one in the country who didn't know Amanda was about to walk. Cringe!
Last year we were spoiled for spectacle. Celebrity Big Brother excelled themselves when they managed to get the freak show that was John McCririck, Brigitte Nielsen and Jackie Stallone, in the same house. Will we ever forget the horror of McCririck (in full frame) pulling a juicy bogey from his nostril and then greedily lapping it up or his massive moody and being denied diet coke (of all things!) by Big Brother! Or the horror on Brigitte's face, when ex-mother in-law Jackie Stallone was introduced into the Celebrity Big Brother pit. Fantastic. Baz from the Happy Mondays walked off with the prize, upsetting the bookies favourite child rapper, Blazin' Squads', Kenzie.
So on to this year and Celebrity Big Brother Four and if Celebrity Big Brother were looking for a washed up fragile celebrity who could spectacularly unravel, right down to his DNA, before a hungry public, they can only have had one man at the top of their list. Step forward Mr Michael Barrymore.
Yes folks the former multiple winner of the UK's Entertainer Of The Year is rumoured to be going in to the Celebrity Big Brother House (for a fee of £150k). Already, the father of the boy who drowned in mysterious circumstances in Mr. Barrymore's pool, is asking for him to be grilled on the subject by his housemates. Ouch.
So who are the other housemates likely to be? The list is endless but the best supported rumours for Celebrity Big Brother Four are, girly Boy George, saggy girl Lisa Nicole Smith, Dead or Alive front girl-man, Pete Burns, boy who looks like a girl Macaulay Culkin, funny girl Liza Tarbuck, toothy girl Esther Rantzen, lovely girl Fern Cotton and ... well I'm out of girlie prefixes so I'll leave it there. So that's it. Thursday January the 5th on C4 will kick-off the madness. Can't wait.
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