Yes, I think that's probably true. My memory is not good enough to remember who they had as guests in the BBLB's in the early series, but I'm sure they would have had more choice.



Govan or Nathan would be ok I think. I am not sure that Rachael has an awful lot to say, though she seems a nice person. I see that Aaron AM has been hinting that he might do it now that Brian and/ or Jamie are out of it. It would probably please a lot of people more than it would please me. He would be bound to have interesting things to say, but imo he always seems rather up himself. Same applies to Benedict. I can't remember if BB11 Andrew has ever done it, but he used to make me laugh.

First evictees from recent years don't seem like a brilliant selection. But no reason why they shouldn't have a go.

Wonder who else from BB13 will do it? Lauren maybe? Sara? I know someone put on facebook that Becky hates BB being mentioned, which I can understand.

There's something I neglected to mention: new HMs have an unfair advantage, especially if they skip a difficult event or time that had a big effect on how HMs were perceived -- such as Denis spitting at Mo in bb9 or the Shahbaz part of bb7. We don't know how the HMs who came in later would have reacted. We naturally tend to believe the latecomers we like would have behaved well, but we don't know, and it was surprising that (for example) Mario acted so admirably at that point in bb9 and Richard so deplorably in bb7. (Richard isn't popular these days, but remember that he considered walking out when he thought he'd been a bully towards Imogen.)

Latecomers can also get a big boost from being, or seeming to be, on the 'right' side when viewers have strong opinions formed earlier, when the new HM hadn't faced the trickier problem of ending up there as the situation developed. (Aisleyne, for example, benefited hugely from the existing strong dislike for the 'Plastics'.)

(BB9's Sara is a more ambiguous case. She was never accepted as 'B-Block' by HMs or viewers, which meant that many never trusted her and that cry could go up, "the whispering has started again", if she dared to have a conversation when no one from B-Block was present. However, being an outsider (oh yes she was) helped put her together with Lisa, and their friendship helped her with viewers, as well as leading to a rather nice prize.)

Also, the length of a BB series is a difficulty in itself, especially the extra long ones on C4. Latecomers have a shorter one.

Of course, it can be argued that latecomers can be at a disadvantage instead. But that does not mean new HMs don't ever get an unfair advantage.

BBLB at least seemed a very good show at the time. Even some people who weren't watching BB enjoyed it. I don't think it had an especially wide range of guests, but there was a good atmosphere, and opinions probably hadn't yet settled into the lines that now so tediously recur.

And of course it was a daytime show, which automatically prevented many things that have made Big Mouth and similar shows such rubbish.


How about Steph from bb9? I can't believe I forgot to consider her.

(I moved the "First evictees" paragraph up in the quotes because it goes more with the above.)


Hmm. I disliked Andrew and the other guys-nesters greatly during bb11, and though he's seemed ok since, his claim the aftercare was fine makes me wonder. (He seemed to partly misunderstand what was being asked about the talk of doom too, iirc.)

I'd actually like to know what Marco bb5 thinks these days, though I think he (like Liam) would be better later on, rather than on opening night (if he still watches).


Lauren might be good. Lydia. Dare I say Caroline? Sara's seemed rather inarticulate, but she might be ok.

I wonder if Deana will agree to appear on BBBOTS, I don't think she was happy about the Conor situation was handled last year. I can see Scott appearing on BBBOTS too, as he seemed to have a lot to say about the previous CBB series on twitter.

I don't like it when new HMs are introduced halfway through, I prefer it when the HMs have minimum contact with the outside world. I didn't even like it when Brian announced who had topped the each week during the eviction .The last series wouldn't have been as satisfying if Luke, Deana and Adam had known how popular they were.

1. I think it's a "fear of another bb4" problem. Instead of trying to keep outside knowledge out, BB welcomes it as a way to stir things up in the house. And viewers have partly themselves to blame. A lot of people liked HMs hearing the crowd, and often when people didn't like it, the reason they didn't is often that they thought it was hurting a HM they liked or helped one they didn't, not because they're completely opposed.

But what newcomer babbling do you think affected Nikki? Nikki was affected later by what she learned herself while she was outside, but I don't think there was any change in her behaviour that could be put down to newcomer babbling in the early weeks.

(I'm going to keep the numbering, btw, despite separating the points in quotes.)


2. When a new HM goes in alone, they're too easily eliminated. It's only when BB started using larger groups in bb6 that new HMs started to have enough impact. Even if it's only two instead of one (bb6, initially; Ash and Sam in bb7) that can make a big difference.

Also, in the long series on C4, so many new HMs were needed that they pretty much had to come in a group. (The alternative of dribbling in new HMs as in bb8 did not work very well, though I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea.) One of the problems with BB11 is that BB was trying to keep the HMs from knowing it was being cut short. Hence enough new HMs to make it seem it was longer and the 4-way eviction to cut the numbers down. Too many new HMs for that series, and too many poor ones, was the problem rather than their being in a group.


3. I think that Maysoon's heart not being in it was largely because of the people she was in with and the way the house was at the time; and I'd rather have had her in BB for a while than not at all. I think this (below, quoted from an old post) is enough, even without anything else, to make Maysoon worth having as a HM:

Darnell was taliking about the wedding task with May and Mo, saying Mario had it hardest, and Steph easiest, that Steph had nothing to lose where Mario did, and so on. Maysoon explained how it would have seemed from Steph's point of view, Darnell said he hadn't though of it like that, and they ended up agreeing that the task had been hard for all of them. ... Maysoon showed she could imagine how something was from another's point of view and get others to see it as well.

BTW, do you remember Darnell's peculiar theory that Belinda, Maysoon and Sara had been added to the house to help him?


4. I think that's another "fear of bb4" problem and, again, that viewers partly have themselves to blame. The decision to make Nicole a HM sees to have been a rather late one, and I suspect that the viewer's reaction to seeing her in the task, and comparing her to Rex's comments and to the lovely Number 6, may have been what made the producers decide to put her in.

But was putting Isaac in a bad idea? It seemed to finish Noirin when the series was too much about her, a change I at least didn't mind. It 'heightened contradictions'.

And Nicole being a HM is one of the things that brought out B-Block's less admirable side -- for instance trying to line up nominations to protect her -- and, of course, Kat and Darnell's late night negotiations over who to have in the final was often about whether it should be Nicole, as Kat wanted.


5. Wasn't Ahmed a practising Muslim? Perhaps Alexandra and Mo as well?

Anyway, I agree that some HMs should have been there from the start, perhaps even in a different series. Jennie's potential was almost completely wasted in bb7, for example.

My "unfair advantage" point above also applies here.


6. I think bb13 desperately needed a shake-up. I thought (and said) in late July that bb13 would not be able to breathe until Deana, Conor and Becky were out. Changing the dynamic completely sounds like a good thing to me, in that series. Do you think it's good that "almost to the end Conor, Luke S and Ashleigh seemed to have the status of alphas in the house"?

I think it could have been very interesting to see how the HMs -- especially Deana, Luke A, and Adam -- handled the news. Oh yes! Just having Conor away in the White Room made a noticeable difference in Deana. Suppose she thought her group had "all the power"? What if they realised their main competition was each other?

I do have mental blanks about BB7, but it surely didn't help Nikki that she had all that time of Jayne telling her that she was loved and that no one liked Aisleyne.


Yes, two maybe. I can't think of any other occasion that has happened. Did Orlaith and Eugene go in as a pair? But when you get four or five at once it seems to throw the series right back to that rather alienating first week when the house if full of shrieking strangers; also there is a jarring lack of harmony between the over-excited newbies and the laid-back existing housemates. And in BB8 I can barely remember a single conversation from the half way house; it did seem that the editors were not interested in them for their own sake, but only for any effect they had on the main house (which was not much).


Yes, fair enough, she was a nice girl, and had a good attitude to the house goings on, but in the end there was something quite half hearted on both sides: "I want to go." "All right." Compare it with the way BB almost offered John James the world if he would deign to stay.

Ha ha. No. I'm afraid that Sara didn't help him much.


Ahmed prayed I think, and Mo asked for halal food (which he wasn't allowed to have). But I think Marcus's point was about her being muslim and female, so she could never appear immodestly dressed.


I did like the organic way it very gradually dawned on the outsiders that they were doing all right, and I'm afraid, to be a bit hard-hearted, there was something satisfying about watching Becky so thoroughly jump ship to the one that was actually sinking and have no way of climbing back in time.

I don't think the BB13 finalists were at all competitive, in the sense of seeing each other as 'competition'. Sara appeared to have no competitiveness at all: I can't remember her even blinking when it was revealed that she had given up the chance of winning half the prize money. And Deana was in a bit of a different position from the top two finalists because she had very realistic hopes of forging a proper media career outside BB, and BB was not going to make much difference to that. It was only Luke and Adam who were seriously in competition, and they both had the loyalty and grace to be pleased for the other, if called upon, though obviously both would have liked to have won.

I doubt that Deana will appear. Her comments about how she wasn't informed about what Conor had said and how she felt unsupported, won't have endeared her to them.

Hmm. Jayne did have some unfortunate effects on Nikki, but I don't think the effects were to make her act like she knew she was loved or that no one liked Ash. Nikki did have a problem with Aisleyne (consider the night Nikki became upset during Scouse Talk), but it seemed to be because of what had happened before Ash went to the HND (and perhaps also because of the somewhat odd way Ash was being extra nice to her at times). Indeed, in Nikki's eviction interview, she seemed resigned to Pete preferring Ash.


I think Orlaith and Eugene did go in the same day (with only Kinga left out), but I don't recall whether they were actually together. And of course, Sam and Aisleyne. But what's wrong with three (such as Belinda*3, Sara, Maysoon)?

The groups of 4 or 5 are because the series is so long (or, bb11, is pretending to be). While 4 or 5 new HMs at once is far from ideal, it's not clear that any other way of adding that many HMs would be better.

(Ideally, imo, a BB series would be short enough, and the initial set of HMs a good enough mix, that no new HMs would be needed.)


It is interesting to see BB care so much more in some cases than in others. But much of that may be down to how decided BB thinks the HM is. Maybe any HM who made it convincingly clear that they had decided to go would get out without too much fuss. It's hard to know.


I still don't think it works. They had Alexandra in from the start of bb9, and I don't think she was any more likely to appear immodestly dressed.

Besides, they've picked quite a few female HMs that few would be keen to see immodestly dressed.


As if media work must be so important to HMs that if they have that in prospect, they won't care about anything else. I find it very frustrating that media work is so often given such significance when people think about BB; I think it distorts perceptions. £100,000 pounds was at stake! And Deana looked rather miffed that half of it was gone.

I didn't really mean, I meant that BB had an importance outside winning to Deana, who had already done some film work and had good contacts already in film and tv. BB was valuable to her because it enhanced an existing profile. BB housemates often don't seem that bothered by the prize money: in BB10 they seemed amused as much as anything when they were told that it had been reduced to zero. Maybe they were just a scatterbrained lot (which they were).

It hadn't occurred to me that Deana was annoyed at the prize money being reduced, but that may be true. She had reason to see herself as a potential winner, having won several eviction battles by then; and it was implied that people saw Luke and Adam as rather dull and marginal in the house, so she may understandably have seen herself as the sparkiest of the three. Which might explain her hard-hearted teasing of Luke S: she wasn't just a bit drunk, but also resentful at what had happened, and in no mood to be nice to one of the people involved. (I can't remember Luke S being unkind to her, but she obviously felt that ashleigh had been, so she may have just associated them together in her mind).

I hate it when they mess about with the prize money.

Me too! Sadly it seems to be the norm nowadays, rather than the exception!

I thought it was absolutely hideous on BB13. On BB12 it would have worked a bit better if everyone (Alex) had stuck to their promises; I don't think anyone would have objected to coming out with ten grand each, and I have always liked the idea of a second prize at least. As it was, it caused no entertainment during the series and endless ill feeling afterwards, which is surely to no one's benefit.

Me too! Sadly it seems to be the norm nowadays, rather than the exception!

Whoops, double post!

Is he still with Becky? I read on his twitter today in response to someone who was ragging him out -- that he is not married?!? I thought he was married to that woman Becky.. or were they just dating and claiming to be married? Or did they break up? I am so confused.

I wasn't thinking her 'teasing' Luke S was what showed she was miffed, but perhaps it was a factor there too. "Just a bit drunk" really won't do as an explanation, because the teasing wasn't only when she was drunk. It took place (in various forms) over several days. There's been a noticeable tendency to talk about this as if only one bit of it occurred (though it's not always the same bit). This is a phenomenon that's also been seen in some other cases, and wonder whether people are aware that they're minimising or whether what they mention is all they remember.

Re "BB housemates often don't seem that bothered by the prize money" -- I don't remember the bb10 one in any detail, but there was a substantial prize in the end (70k, iirc). Much the same goes for bb8 when it looked like the prize had been given to Liam. So HMs who weren't bothered turned out to be right not to be.

In bb6, Ant was angry at the times when he thought Eugene had known that if he hadn't taken half the prize, it would have been doubled. BB5 HMs couldn't get Kitten out fast enough once the prize started decreasing. And weren't some bb9 HMs annoyed that Sara (and Lisa) won 25k each even though it wasn't taken from the prize?

Anyway, there's something I think brings out an important aspect of the psychology. I can't remember whether Rex tried exactly this during bb9, but he did similar things. A HM says they don't care about the money, or aren't there for the money. Then they're asked (by Rex or someone like him) well, then, will you give it to charity? Or will you split it? And that puts the HM in a very awkward place. There's a big difference between not having the money as a motive and caring so little about it that you'd give it away, but if you say you wouldn't give it away, the Rex character will say so you do care after all.

BTW, do you remember a C4 show called The Search? The finalists agreed, outside the show, that they'd split the money, and they did split it. However, they took some precautions (which I can't remember) rather than just trusting.

Yes, BB has messed with the prize in every regular series since the move to C5 (though there have been only two of them).


I've of two minds about such things. I don't like the particular ways BB messed with the money in BB 12 and 13, and I can't think of any different way of messing that I would like; but I nonetheless think the prize is much too large, and if it's uncertain that the winner will get the full prize, that makes BB less attractive to people who are in it for the money (and I'd like it to be less attractive to them).

However, I think it's strange that no one involved in making bb 13 considered how bad it would look if Conor got 50k and said they should either cancel or modify the twist so it didn't happen. (Or maybe someone did say that but was ignored.)

I think they should make them work to earn the prize money, either as a group or on an individual basis. So a boring winner of a dull series ends up with a pittance. There's too much radar-dodging in the knowledge that provided they come good at the right time at the end, they'll be handed a fortune.

Luke and Becki split at the end of January. It caught everyone by surprise. I believe he has a new girlfriend now but I'm a bit out of touch.

It's all I remember. By next morning I thought she was slightly contrite.


I don't remember that, but if so it was a bit evil for a wealthy housemate to ask a much poorer one if they would like to give any prize money away.


I don't remember that and I can't actually remember any attempt to do a deal on the BB prize money until the disastrous BB12 one and the BB13 ones.

There was one BB series where the housemates tried to over-ride the nominations system in series 1; I think it was BB Spain. Before the first nominations, when they had grasped the system, the housemates promised to stick to a system whereby every housemate would be up every week.


I don't mind some system whereby there are prizes along the way for doing something sparkling, but I don't like the concept of 'radar dodging'. I really don't think there is any safe way at all of trying to win BB by staying out of trouble, especially not with vote to save. If someone seems dull, they won't get the votes. If they get the votes, it is because enough people haven't found them dull. I am not sure if Rachel Rice is your target here, but I think she more than earned her prize money by staying kind and cheerful under every kind of pressure. True that her house was not as stressful as last year's, but it was stressful enough.

Happy Birthday to Luke - 32 today xx

And happy birthday wishes from me too

Happy birthday Luke! I've made some extremely firm friends in this AT and I'll always be grateful to him for bringing us together.

Please don't make presumptions about what I meant. I'd be happy to expand on it though. For me, Brian Belo was the last winner who didn't float to the prize on a wave of good luck at the end. Rachel won because she was Rex's main target so she must have picked up a lot of anti-Rex votes. Sophie - ugh goodness knows, I can barely remember the girl. She didn't have a lot of competition though. Josie lucked out by bagging the house totty so she didn't need to do much else. Aaron, again the best of a very bad lot. As for Luke, BB13 was such a polarised nice versus nasty atmosphere the winner was always going to be whichever of the Outsiders stayed the nicest right to the end.

I'm not saying any of those are bad tactics - they did what they had to do to win. Plus obviously Luke resonated with me as a person or I wouldn't be a regular on this thread! It would be a refreshing change though to see someone come in with an attitude to making a positive impact on the show rather than just relying on everyone else being more obnoxious than they are.

Happy birthday, Luke!


How strange. Anyway, regardless of how she was the next morning, it didn't make her stop.


As I said, I don't remember whether Rex did exactly that, but he at least did similar things; and the HM had to provide an opening by saying they didn't care about the money, or something like that. It's an obnoxious tactic, but in a way a fair one.


What do you mean by a "safe way"? There isn't any strategy that's absolutely guaranteed to work, but that doesn't mean there aren't any that tend to work pretty well and give you a better chance. And since when does staying out of trouble mean you'll be seen as dull or won't get votes? Sure, you might not get the votes of people who like HMs to create "drama" and conflict, but so what?


How was the bb9 house not as stressful as last year's?

I'd say it was more stressful, if anything.

That's what actually happened in bb10 (the one Sophie won). The prize was cut to zero, and the housemates had to do things to try to get it back up.

And in many cases, one person's radar-dodger is another's fun, down to earth HM, or someone who's fascinating to watch, or whatever. (And vice versa.)


That's a good point, though I don't quite agree about your specific examples. I don't think Sophie can be considered radar-dodging, for example, since she never minded facing the vote and even did things she knew would put herself up. And she had strong competition even though most of them didn't reach the end. (I think most of the BB winners had a lot of help from luck. It's almost inevitable when a series is months long.)

I also don't think anti-Rex feeling was that sort of force in bb9. (Besides, if that sort of thing makes you win, Aisleyne would have won bb7 and Deana bb13.)

Just dropping in to say Happy Birthday to Luke

In BB9 people perceived as 'big players' (ie Luke and Bex) were out relatively early on; certainly in the case of Bex, they almost all seemed to assume that Mo would go. From that time on it was obvious that there was no hostile power block that could prevail against the general friendship group that B-block quickly became. Apart from in the aftermath of the cake task (when the hostility towards Rachel was short-lived, and really only acute for half a day) Rachel really never seemed to have anything to worry about. She got on badly with no one after Luke had gone; she was very close to Kat and quite close to Mikey; Rachel was only up for eviction once, against someone she was neutral about, and in fact never lost a friend from the house from beginning to end. The tasks were generally unemotional stuff - eat sprouts, lick crisps, paint yourself blue, make a table tennis video.

In BB13 Luke lost two of the people he was closest to early on; he was up against one of his closest friends a bit later in a head to head; the house was very badly split, with him on the minority side almost throughout; he was up for eviction three times; two of the people he had thought were close and friendly defected completely to the other side; the turf war task seemed designed to be as stressful as possible. It was not until the final week that the stress seemed to be off, and both Luke and Rachel faced notably difficult final line-ups, with strong rival contenders.