I got the feeling that Aaron just wanted to get on with life and having nothing more to do with BB especially after the BOTS fiasco. He and Faye are very happy running their pub.

I think in the weeks and months afterwards Aaron was happy to take whatever media opportunities came his way and was, of course, due to appear on this year's Bit on the Side until some kind of fall-out with the production team led him to wash his hands of them. However, he is smart enough to have taken a different route and the bar seems to be doing well.

My beef is that none of the housemates seem to have been given any kind of a leg-up with their career aspirations as a result of appearing in BB. Aaron would always want to choose for himself and go his own way but I do think the agent doesn't look too good when all the housemates seem to have disappeared off the radar and they had such great personalities to work with. Harry is another one who could have had a media career although maybe in his case he wasn't interested.

yes, I agree with all of that. Even taking on board that BB is nothing like the magnet it used to be, towie nobodies seem to be all over the media like vermin and they are surely just randoms with an accent.

Good interview I thought this morning, with a feeling of genuine rapport between Luke and the presenter. (Becki sounded shy).

It was, and I liked the fact that the interviewer didn't reshash so many questions already asked and answered a thousand times

I suspect that the agent has a deal with Channel 5, it's a shame that the agent concentrates on nightclub appearances, however that does seem to be what the TOWIE lot do as well

Yes exactly right regarding the towie bunch - you can't escape from them even if you WANT to and none of them seem to have the personality or intelligence of the likes of Aaron, Harry, Deana or, of course, Luke. I would not have thought that Towie had any more viewers than BB - at least for the sanity of the British viewing public I would hope not.

I also thought the interview was really well done and interesting but would have liked to have heard more from Becki. The one question I had regarding Luke and mainstream media has also been answered - can you trust him not to swear before the watershed? Chester Radio obviously did and he didn't let them down. Well done, mate! That was another thing about Aaron. He got a lot of stick for his so-called fake 'crikey' comments but he is a father and you sure as heck learn to curb your language when you've got young children. I could not understand why, for example, he didn't make it onto This Morning or Loose Women. Back to the agent again, I think. You'd almost think they got paid for keeping the BB contestants OUT of the mainstream media.

Ok, rant over and breathe ...

The visit from Nina Myskow was very disingenuous, I thought. She (on behalf of Endemol/C5) was telling everyone how many openings there were for them all to become media personalities and even planting such thoughts in their heads when maybe they'd never had them. Adam, in particular, was badly advised. He shouldn't be fannying around in the hope of being famous. He'll only ever end up in Luke's shadow. His real skills are out on the street, connecting with disaffected youths. There are plenty of other "Lukes" out there who desperately need someone like him to show some faith in them. They don't spend their time sitting indoors watching telly so they're not going to see someone as a role model just because they've been on BB.

Luke's in a different position because he's the sort of normal, everyday, well adjusted, likeable bloke the trans community want to boost their profile. It'd be a massive shame if it was just a lazy agent stopping him achieving his potential because ultimately a successful Luke would open the door for others like him to follow.

You're right. I never saw the irony in the Nina Myskow task at the time. Why bother when C5 don't even seem to do their bit to help the housemates develop a media profile? C4 used to have programmes like 8 out of 10 Cats, BBLB etc to get the housemates names out there. This time, they couldn't even be bothered to put out a Winners' Story. In some respects, Luke as a BB winner or as a chef would be an even better example as the few transgender names that are known in the media are known purely for being transgender, the point about Luke is that it doesn't matter. It's not obvious, it's not his whole life or point of being, it's almost incidental which is just what it should be and the transgender community needs him as a role model to show that.

Two very good posts, Val and Oyster. I had forgotten the 'media training' and what a rosy glow she shed over their futures. I literally can't add anything to what you both say, which if you know me is quite unusual.

6 inches and 30 minutes or 30 seconds depending

7 inches (I know, I know) and hardly any time at all (and I look the type).

6 inches and 20 minutes (never 30 seconds though minkski).

6 inches and about 10 or 15 minutes

I'm obviously a freak.

Been spying on twitter (I know, I'm very bad). Never fails to amaze me the number of people who have nothing better to do in their lives than tweet abuse at someone who has never done them any harm.

I often wonder if people like Luke's parents ever worry that they did something wrong as a parent to cause their children to have the difficulties that they have faced. My own view, for what it's worth, is that something like gender dysphoria (if that's the correct word) is something they're born with like blue eyes or curly hair. One thing I do know is that watching Luke in the house especially the way he treated Deana and Adam and the way he reacted after Lauren was evicted (not to mention the way he has been with his fans since he left the show) is that his parents did a cracking good job of teaching him the right way to behave and to show consideration for other people. I would be much prouder to have Luke as my child than some of the nasty little trolls mentioned above or the likes of Ashleigh, Luke S or Conor and any decent person would say the same.

Your not so bad really.

BIB - Well I did wonder if it was something I'd done that made my son trans - had I done something whilst I was pregnant, or did I not make enough effort to make him feel "girly" when he was small. I had lots of thoughts of that ilk initially but came to realise that it was what it was, and I was not to blame. I'm sure that the vast majority of mums in my position (including Luke's mum) will have had similar thoughts, but most will learn that they could not have prevented it - that is not in our gift.

The trolls are pitiful really - it's sad to be so small minded and bigoted, but I suppose it's their very limited intellect that prevents them from being even slightly civilised.

It's funny you should mention that, I think that's why I felt such a connection with the snippet of the suggestion for the first chapter that Luke showed us. Although I have never felt anything other than female and straight, I did connect with the idea that he did not feel inside the same as the way his parents wanted him to be. My mum was tiny, petite (about 5 foot tall and 7 stone wet through) and I never felt as cute, slim, girly and feminine as she wanted me to be and as a child I always felt like I was something of a disappointment to her. When I look back, I was a size 14 as a teenager which many of today's teens would kill to be but she always talked about anything over a 12 as being 'bigger sizes' (and by implication less feminine). I wasn't really bothered about playing with dolls (I preferred cuddly soft toys and farm animals), hated sewing (the death of a thousand cuts for a ham-fisted child like me) and wasn't interested in shopping for clothes either - they were just things that covered you up and kept you warm and never looked as good on me as they did on other people anyway.

I suppose the point I'm making is that you can show your child what is generally expected of being male or female but you cannot ever change how they feel inside.

The most important thing is to value them for what they are and bring them up to show consideration for other people too. That's something you can do something about.

Luke has the most amazing, accepting family. If only everyone could be as lucky as him, whether they have such major issues or not. Even with Becki, I'm sure she could have had her pick of blokes so all credit to her for sticking with Luke and loving him just as an amazing human being, disregarding all the complications that come with him.

Nature made Luke trans but nurture made him the person we've come to know and love. All those great qualities didn't just appear when he reassigned so I hope he'll learn to give Laura the credit for having those same good points.

I'm another one who's never been in any way, shape or form girly. There was never that confusion over whether I really wanted to be male though. I'd rather be a woman than a man, just a woman who relates better to blokey things than girly things.

These are the sorts of issues I'd love to learn more about in terms of how they relate to Luke, so if he's asking for feedback for his book I'd be suggesting he pushes these further.

Yes, true, though his brother did say in his interview that their father had found it 'difficult', which hinted that things had not always been easy. He seems totally supportive now though.

I think females have a wider spectrum of acceptable behaviour before they look odd or unacceptable. In fact I never quite bought it when Lauren cried and said that girls never liked her because she was a tomboy: she seemed well within the conventional feminine range to me. She wore girly clothes and shoes and spent ages doing her hair and putting on her makeup. But someone like Anna from BB1 who never wore makeup and wore jeans, a tee shirt and a jacket all the time was also well within an ordinary feminine range. Someone might JUST conceivably have looked at her and thought that she looked like a lesbian, but no one, surely, would have looked at her and thought she looked like a man.

In fact it is quite hard for a woman to present in a distinctively masculine way, eg for a cross-dressing party. There is literally no equivalent to a man putting on a dress.

That's interesting. I thought the same thing about Lauren. I didn't really buy the 'girls don't like me because I'm not girly' thing either. She seemed more than capable of dressing up and applying make-up. If girls had a problem with her it was probably because of the way she cavorted about in front of their boyfriends. Having said that, I still liked her, she is only young and seems to be great friends with Adam and Luke outside the house too, which is nice, so good luck to her.

I would also guess that the Andersons have been through some tough times. It must be hard trying to deal with something like this if only because other people tend to be so harsh and judgemental (back to those Twitter trolls again - I've seen some awful stuff on there and they're just the ones who have twitter and are prepared to visibly crawl out of the woodwork). The great thing about someone like Luke is that he shows that there is a way forward and that must make it easier for anyone going through the same thing - or parents who are having to deal with it. I really hope he manages to appear more in the media to showcase the issue and prove that you can find a way whilst remaining true to yourself and being a decent person.

I should have added that things have moved on an awful lot in terms of what is expected of boys and girls since I was a child, thank goodness.

yes true. I should think she is fine in general but in a very enclosed environment there are tacit rules of behaviour to stop the most confident girls driving the shy ones to despair. It was very lucky, in the context of this BB, that Luke S was the only man who was 'taken', and that Lauren had less than no interest in him. If she had flirted with him, there would have been blood on the carpet. As it is, the worst that happened was that Adam, who had the slightly old-fashioned courtesy towards women of someone who grew up in the US, was very confused.

Happy Birthday WonkeyDonkey!!

Show-off! (Ok, I'm only jealous 'cos I'm not clever enough to do that!)

Yes happy birthday Wonkey.