It's interesting that you treat Aaron lying as the only other possibility.

Anyway, I have a lot more faith in Aaron's perception of threatened (discussed below) than I do in what some random, unnamed staff member thinks counts as "a huge margin", especially since we don't know how long a chain of Chinese whispers connected the random staff member to the original information.


Viewers should have seen, so we could make up our own minds. Also, remember how seriously Conor threatening Deana has been taken, even though there didn't seem to be any real danger or intent that he would do as he said.


That's too lacking in specifics.


Had Nicola not been watching the show? Unless she hadn't been watching and had been given the quote without any context, I think it's reasonable to see it as a comment that wasn't about just that one remark.

I'll discuss the other things in a separate post.

How can you possibly know what 99.9% of their conversations were about?

In any case, I'm surprised you think all we saw was talk of poo and the pirate story. I can understand why you may have put the message in blood out of your mind, but there were other things too. And what is BB supposed to do? Suppress all of the odd and unpleasant stuff? Dilute the apparent significance by packing the highlights with other things from the romance (assuming enough other things exist)?

For all we knew, there was a lot more of the odd and unpleasant stuff, and worse things that weren't shown. After all, we found out about some unpleasant stuff that wasn't shown; perhaps there was a lot more, but we lacked a Heaven to mention it.


So when I explicitly said "I'm going to take it as given that there are motives that didn't involve trying to help Jay that ... the producers could have had, and as given that you think such motives were more likely to be their actual ones", you still take it back to those issues. You still go back to the producer's reasons and motives.

I think that may be because you realise something which should be obvious, namely that not showing the freezer 'prank, not showing anyone in the house talking about it, not showing the other things Maisy's tweets alluded to, not showing Jay's threats to Aaron, and not showing Aaron speaking to BB about them all made Jay seem better / less bad than he was, regardless of the producers reasons and motives.

(Anyway, at the point where they had to decide not to include the poo in the freezer stuff in the highlights or clips, they didn't know all that much about what repercussions it would or wouldn't have.)

Of course the producers were trying to promote Jay and suppress any negative stories about him.
Jay was their golden winner (tv show , single etc after he won = plenty of publicity) Unfortunately for them he didn't win.

I think you'd have to be quite naive not to realise this.

I'm not naive and I don't realize it in the least. It doesn't matter much to a tv channel if someone wins - if they have a tv plan for them, they go right ahead. Jade never won a BB, Nikki was 12th/ 5th, Chanelle was a walker, Jon was out early, Alison was out 2nd.

Ch 5 have nothing to gain by Jay releasing singles.

They quite obviously had no interest in him at all. They did not offer him any tv work at all, not even a drop in on a wedding show.

I'm bored now with the same stuff about 'negative stories' being suppressed. The poo in the freezer story was briefly suppressed, but only in the sense of not being shown; obviously there was no question of keeping it secret since any evictee was free to discuss it, as they did. I don't think Aaron's fans would have been satisfied unless every sulk of his was shown at full length in real time on specially extended highlights shows.

Tom said that both Aaron and Jay were sulkier than we saw. I suggest that both of them had sulkiness 'suppressed' because it does not make for entertaining tv.

It seems obvious that Ch 5 do not see ordinary BB as a testing ground for tv talent. They have not offered any tv work to any housemate, have not featured them in the spin-off magazines (except the little post-show interviews for the top two or three) and are clearly happy to focus most of the attention on the celebrity show. They had NOTHING to gain by Jay winning; all they want is for people to keep watching, and to keep voting.

It really doesn't seem likely that they sat and talked about poo all day. Certainly in the days when I used to read their tweets (which were never exciting), they were blamelessly ordinary, affectionate and humdrum.


Yes, 'diluting' with some ordinary stuff would surely have given a more realistic picture. We all know how BB likes a one-dimensional character. We never saw, for example, why Aaron was so close to Mark; none of their ordinary conversations were shown, only him doing his Shakespearian fool act. We almost never saw Faye and Jemma having anything that looked like a relaxed conversation. We never saw why the others liked Anton. And so on. Jay and Louise's 'story' was weird-and-mucky-couple. So we never really learned anything about what they were actually like as a couple.


Two finalists have been on here and answered questions at length. Indeed, I found it amusing how little Aaron criticised Jay, and how disappointing it obviously was for some of his fans. It was so typical of the forum that people had assumed a far more black and white, hero and villain stance than the people themselves saw any need to.


They showed Aaron mentioning it in the diary room. And they had nothing to gain by not showing it: as I said, any evictee could have discussed it any time they wanted; if they didn't, it was because they didn't care much, not because BB had somehow sworn them to silence.
That could have gone either way. It obviously depends what the 'threats' were and how Aaron spoke about them. He didn't come over very well re. the very dodgy joke that upset him so much, appearing to take offence at completely the wrong thing.

What people say in tweets can be a poor guide to what they say in conversations; and they wouldn't have to talk about poo all day for it to feature in more than 0.1% of their conversations.


Remember that you said "they surely gave a nasty edit to his romance with Louise." They have to compress a day to less than one hour and they can't be expected to devote large segments of the show to uninteresting stuff just to give a "more realistic picture". More realistically, the house is often boring. Giving dull stuff a disproportionally small amount of coverage does not constitute a nasty edit.

In any case, it isn't actually true that all we saw was talk of poo and the pirate story, and as I said, for all we knew, there was a lot more of the odd and unpleasant stuff, and worse things that weren't shown. They could well have looked worse in the full picture than in the edit.


Aaron said he'd been repeatedly threatened by Jay, which is worse than it had seemed in the edit, yet all you take from his comments is "how little Aaron criticised Jay". In any case, I don't we learn much from what "finalists" don't "see a need" to do, since all sorts of things can affect whether they "see a need". HMs seemed to treat some unpleasant stuff from Jay as just "Jay being Jay". That doesn't mean that hiding them from viewers didn't make Jay look less bad.


When? Unless it was before Heaven mentioned, it doesn't make any real difference to my point.


As I said, I think the reason you keep going back to the producer's reasons and motives may be because you realise that not showing the freezer 'prank, not showing anyone in the house talking about it, not showing the other things Maisy's tweets alluded to, not showing Jay's threats to Aaron, and not showing Aaron speaking to BB about them all made Jay seem better / less bad than he was, regardless of the producers reasons and motives.

The only one of those examples that even seems relevant is Nikki. If C4 had any plans for Jon, for example, they certainly did not "go right ahead". He has a minor role in a show that's not on C4. Alison is also not on C4. Jade's shows were off on living or some such channel. And what has Chanelle supposedly done that even has her in the list?


Jamie East's reaction when Heaven mentioned it suggest that more is involved than merely not showing it. In any case, it's been pretty rare for HMs to reveal unpleasant things we didn't see, and BB's producers may have been counting on that happening again.

Can't remember; just that we saw him talking about it in the diary room.



If it made Jay look better, that was whatever the opposite to collateral damage is, and not the point. Why would they want to make Jay look good? Remember all the bollocks people wrote at the time about him having a close relative on the production team? It was because people had to contrive some imaginary reason why they would be thinking "let's make Jay look much nicer than he is." It seems obvious to me - it is what they DID say, and makes sense - that they wanted to make the programme look more attractive, not Jay, and they cut out something rather yucky.

And whatever Aaron said about Jay threatening him, it obviously wasn't a main feature. When he was asked if he thought the show had been fairly edited, he said yes. When Tom was asked the same, he said that both Jay and Aaron were moodier than we saw.


Chanelle did some tv series, the nature of which eludes me. I think it was auditioning singers for something. I was just pointing out that if someone sees a good role for a BB housemate they will sign them up, and if they don't see one, they won't. In the two cases where I think BB did very noticeably give someone special treatment - the Goodys in CBB5 and Rylan and Speidi in CBB11 - they had obviously already decided to sign them, and were pushing their pre-existing signings. There is no reason to suppose it has ever happened the other way round, and pretty desperate imo for people STILL to try and claim that Ch 5 wanted Jay to win, for some unimaginable reason.




They might have been counting on it not being discussed on BOTS, but actually it isn't that rare for housemates to reveal unpleasant things we didn't see. (Though of course what they 'reveal' may not always be true). We learned, for example, about Scott drinking after shave, which wasn't shown; we learned about his four formal warnings. We learned about Rylan leaving the house to rehearse. We learned that Chanelle went to hospital - not that that was unpleasant, but it wasn't shown.

It was way after Heaven had mentioned it!

And after Maisy confirmed it.

And after the huge furore with people demanding to know the truth. Flooding every Facebook post and tweet with demands to know what happened.

The Aaron comment came in the week where Aaron and Faye beat the Wolfpack in the eviction and all 5 were in theDR for BOTS questioning.

Aaron asked Jay to clarify that he knew the difference between a toilet and a freezer. It was the only mention the entire show till after the final of the incident.

I believe they only allowed it in to stop people complaining of a cover up.

But it was my point, and I have tried to make that clear, for instance by saying "I'm going to take it as given that there are motives that didn't involve trying to help Jay that ... the producers could have had, and as given that you think such motives were more likely to be their actual ones".

We can't read the producers' minds to know their actual reasons; and we know they make some questionable decisions that don't make much sense. Maybe they were trying to favour Jay for some reason. Who knows?


If Aaron thinks the show was fairly edited, I would wonder why, since it pretty obviously wasn't. Perhaps he thought they all suffered equally; I don't know.

I don't think I trust Tom's judgement on such things.


But your logic is faulty. You have some examples of HMs who didn't win yet who still had tv shows, or featured in them. Does that mean that some people who see a good role for a BB housemate will sign them up, even if the HM didn't win? Yes. But for all we know, those cases are atypical. Those examples certainly don't mean that "it doesn't matter much to a tv channel if someone wins." And I think it did help Craig bb1, Kate bb3, and Josie bb11 that they won.


I think it is pretty rare, and your finding some cases out of 14 years of BB does not, imo, show otherwise.

And I hope you're not making any examples turn on whether the information was literally shown rather than revealed by BB to viewers in some other way. The only relevant examples are HMs revealing something negative that BB did not let out. That's what I think is pretty rare.

Of course, it will always be impossible to know how many relevant things happened that we still don't know about, but when we consider some cases when something came out, or didn't quite, it doesn't seem that everything is normally revealed. Vanessa bb6, for example, said there was racist stuff that wasn't shown, but so far as I know, she never said what any of it was. We know some things about BB5's Fight Night only because Victor posted about them fairly recently. Years went by before we knew. (It seems there may initially have been some legal or contractual restriction, but when it had ceased to reply, Marco still posted saying 'It wouldn't be right to completely fill in those "missing hours"' and that he was 'not bound by silence but mutual respect for the programme makers and my former hms.') We know some things about CBB5 only because Ofcom investigated.

We might never have found out about Jay and the freezer if Heaven (who was a bit of a loose canon) hadn't mentioned it. We might never have found out about Jay's threats if Aaron (by then quite disillusioned) hadn't mentioned them. We still don't know the specifics. And we still don't know about the other things (other than the freezer one) that Maisy alluded to.

I DID prefer Jay and Louise. The whole Aaron and Faye story, will they wont they? - Aaron talking to camera in the garden, thinking he was inside everybody's heads, Aaron being nasty to Faye, Faye letting him be nasty as long as it kept the camera on her - oh God, it was awful. And yeah, Jay was a bit of a skank - but he was funny with it and we don't all have to like the same people, nor should we have to be made to feel lesser people because some assume our morals are less than theirs. The whole moral high ground thing can ruin a series, with people pre-judging and throwing around insults to anybody who disagrees with them.

Already today I've seen assumptions made about Katie Hopkins who might be in Celeb BB, nasty insults about her are flooding one thread - and already I predict that there are forum users who totally disagree but unlike me, are afraid to speak up in case they are forum-bullied by the morally righteous!

As for the conspiracy theories - I'm sure the producers do edit ruthlessly in order to create stories, but they don't edit to make one contestant look any more the winner than another. That's paranoia. They don't care one bit who wins, all they care about is the show, are we sucked in, are we hooked, are we watching the adverts?

The means is far more important than the end.

Sorry but that is most definitely not true.

Yes, I absolutely agree with this. It is horrible when people sneer at whole groups of other people just because they support a different housemate. I get so fed up with people mocking 'the tweenies' or 'the housewives' who are assumed to support someone other than the person favoured by the poster.


I'm curious. I would have said that she is a hard person to love. But I always like to see people supporting unpopular housemates, or even prospective housemates, so good for you if you stand up for her.


Why? I mean, I can think of WEAK reasons why they might prefer one winner to another: because they like them better is an obvious one, since the producers are human. But I can't think of any compelling reasons, in these days of perfunctory and minimal press, why they should really care.

Well I don't think the point I was responding to was simply referring to BB "these days" but in general, but regardless, you honestly think the producers didn't want Rylan to win?

Yes I do. I have always said that CBB5 and CBB11 were the exceptions, where the relevant tv series had already decided to use their designated winner (and in the case of Jade, Jackiey and Jack had already filmed a pilot of their proposed rtv show). It really did seem to me that Rylan and Speidi were grotesquely favoured during that series.

But those were the only two. They DID seem to give a bit of extra attention to Carole in the last series, then signed her for BOTS, but there never seemed to be any prospect of her winning. I did think Ch 4 were promoting a future Vanessa Feltz programme when they unexpectedly shoe-horned her into UBB, but she was then signed by Ch 5, so it seems not.

I'm not talking about pre designated winners (although I do agree Rylan was chosen as the winner before that series even began), but winners who were determined as the series progressed once producers got an idea of who viewers were warming to. I'm not saying none of the winners deserved to win, because I think some of them were great housemates. It's clear though that most of the time the eventual winner of each series always got extremely favourable edits and a lot of support from presenters/spin offs to help them secure the win. Rachel beating Mikey, and Aaron beating Jay are the only two times when it didn't seem to work.

Hmmmm. That's an interesting thought. I will trot off and think about it.

I don't think Rylan was particularly pushed more than any other big audience draw; I'm sure they expected him to win and were glad that they did, but there certainly wasn't anything that suggested they were

A lot of the cast were undershown but when it comes to CBB, people tend to only get airtime for meltdowns, flirtation and rivalries. But Paula was out first - and her meltdowns were too uncomfortable to dwell on - and Sam/Lacey had zero chemistry and were out next. It's hard to think of many people post-CBB3 who would have gotten significant amounts of airtime for being as placid and unfun as the likes of Tricia/Toadface/Claire/Razor.

Rylan not particularly pushed??? Then how come he seemingly got a major role in every task??

Rylan was such an obvious winner from the start. Which ended up helping Speidi get as far as they did.

Are you serious? There's never been a housemate pushed so hard to win in BB history as Rylan was.

But it seemed obvious that THEIR impression was that they had had a whale of a time, laughing and joking and playing about; only we have to take their word for it, because it was never shown. Remember that Razor nominated Speidi for never joining in with the house games? And when Frankie was evicted, not only did we see a best bits video consisting entirely of stuff we had never seen before, but he seemed unexpectedly effervescent and high-spirited. People asked why he wasn't like that in the house, and the obvious answer was that he was, but that they had no interest in showing it.

Very good point and both of these two winner had similar poor treatment by the show once winning. (By that I mean on the after show, immediately after winning, I'm not talking about when Aaron almost worked on BOTS) those are the only two instances where the shows seemed a bit sour grapey/sneery.

My personal feeling is that they like to round off the series with a good story (Nadia, Brian, Kate etc) or a feel good end to the series eg a winner who was the middle of the road contestant.

I highly doubt they have a chosen winner from day 1 but I imagine they know a few they think might go the distance and edit accordingly for that storyline.

I think Rachel and Aaron bucked that by capturing the publics attention in a way the show didn't expect. I think in both scenarios they tried to push their expected favourites rather than change tack and edit for a Rachel/Aaron win hence why people feel the show treated these two badly.

Eta: I think pre determined winners are much rarer.

I think probably Rylan, Chantelle, Josie, Pete and Nadia are the only winners the show pushed from day 1

I disagree with Chantelle and Nadia, I don't think they were pushed from day one. They both had interesting back stories, but it was only when they lost Jodie and Marco in their respective series that the public seemed to really warm to them, and as I said that's the point when the producers really focus in on a housemate. That way they get their headline grabbing winner but they also keep the majority of viewers happy. It goes as far back as Brian winning in BB2, as having an openly gay winner back then was much more of a big deal. In BB3, as soon as Kate emerged as a popular housemate with viewers the producers thought "great we could actually have a female winner this year" and that angle was played a lot on BBLB and she seemed to feature a lot more in the main show.

It was really blatant this year as at the first slightest hint that Gina was popular with viewers they turned it into the Gina show. However they pushed it too much, gave her too much info from the outside, and she ended up believing her own hype. No amount of positive editing could rescue her at that point, so they were left with the slimy (supposedly) rich guy, or the deaf kid who wanted to donate his winnings to charity. Not surprisingly Sam started to feature really heavily in the two weeks before the final, whereas he was barely noticeable before.

But that's always the case; it's not some kind of anomaly for CBB11. Everyone thought Gareth was an amazing winner contender in CBB9 because he was easy to talk to and 'fun' is a straightforward way, but those sorts of meandering conversations can't fit in an edited show.

Even back in the days of BB2, Dean and Elizabeth were criticised for being dull when they offered the same sort of 'fun'. And that's back when the show was a novelty.


Josie was barely on camera until about Week 3; her early appearances were mostly as Govan's bitching partner. I'm sure they knew she was a likely contender to win, but I don't think she was ever as guaranteed a winner as the others. Though I'm sure by the halfway point they would have been happier with her in UBB than moody and unpredictable likes of Ben/JohnJames/Pepper.