The Rest Is Entertainment - Inside Big Brother: Nasty Nick (Ep 1)

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

Marina Hyde is joined by TV exec Tim Hincks and reality TV legend Kate Lawler to explore the history of Big Brother. This is a free bonus episode - the rest of the series will be available ONLY to The Rest Is Entertainment members. Thank you to Endemol and The Big Brother team for allowing us to use their archive. The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. Lloyds. 250 years on and still backing the nation's aspirations. Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus content, ad-free listening, early access to Q&A episodes, access to our newsletter archive, discounted book prices with our partners at Coles Books, early ticket access to live events, and access to our chat community. Sign up directly at therestisentertainment.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Caroline Kaye Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Exec Producer: Ami Bennett Social Producer: Emma Jackson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The rest is entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, traditionally, the entertainment gatekeepers had to find you before an audience ever could. It's been the biggest change, really, I would say, in entertainment in the last five years or so. Just that generation, he grew up making their own content on YouTube, on TikTok, and things like that, suddenly finding themselves right at the heart of a culture. And they say no one had to commission it from them. Well, we talked before about Kane Parsons, for backrooms, he just made his incredible sort of YouTube series of shorts. And within a month, they've gone so...

big that people were kind of battering down his door to direct a big movie version of it, and A24 eventually won, and he created the backrooms, which brought a huge audience online for that first weekend that was just a phenomenon. So, by the time the traditional gatekeepers arrive, you may have already proved there's an audience for what you've made. You haven't inherited a route in. You have built one yourself. An octopus came into energy with customers as the starting point.

It saw they weren't being well served and built things differently from there. with each account looked after by the same small team of around 10 Octopus Energy Specialists. Dear One, in the rest is Entertainment Studio, 133 p.m. Marina Hyde is talking to former housemate, Kate Lawler, and television executive Tim Hinks about the history of Big Brother. Hello, members, and welcome to this bonus episode series. of the rest is entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And I'm so pleased to say that to discuss the whole inside story of Big Brother with me today,

I have Tim Hinks, former president of Endemol, and who now runs expectation and knows where all the bodies are buried. Kate Lawler, presenter, podcaster, and winner of Season 3 of Big Brother. I would love to know if there's anyone better to discuss this with, but I can tell you there is not a better line-up and I am totally excited for it. Very happy to be here. Thanks for having us.

Can I do a tiny bit of background on Big Brother? So it started in the Netherlands in 1999. It was like an instant hit. Everyone loved it. Now 700 series of Big Brother have aired around the world. In 70 territories, there have been 36,000 episodes. My God. And since January 2004, not one day around the world

has gone by without a new episode being broadcast somewhere. It totally changed the land of the escape. of pop culture, and I definitely think society, politics, all sorts of things. I think it's like one of the most influential things of all time. The guy who is credited with creating it is a guy called John DeMoll, sometimes also known as the King of Trash TV. You said it, I didn't. Yeah, no, I know.

But he did lots of other shows, right? He did Fear Factor, Deal or No Deal, The Voice. Oh, yeah. I didn't know this. So he, yeah, he had a company called Endemol, which was a combination of his name. Moll, as you say DeMoll, and a guy called Yut van Ender, who was a theatre impresario, and together their names formed this company, which does sound like an ointment you find it boots in the foot care section.

But Endermal was this Dutch company, and they started buying other companies around the world. One of the companies they bought was the company I was, I was about seven years old at this point, and they bought this company called Basel Productions, which is an independent television producer. And I remember the day that it was announced that Endermol, this company we'd never heard of from, I had heard of Holland, but basically we hadn't heard of this company. And they bought us. And we were making really uncooked.

So if you go back to their 90s, there was like loads of cool telly, like the Big Breakfast and the Word and, you know, Chris Evans and all that. And then there was quite a lot of uncool stuff. And we did that at Basel Productions. What did you do? We did ready, steady cook. No, that's not uncool. No, I mean, I can't cook.

It's not insanely cool. But yeah. Can't cook, won't cook. And I don't want you to get too excited. I haven't told you this before I came on. but I was the producer of Ainsley-Hariats' party of a lifetime, which I know is a game-changer. So we made all these cooking and lifestyle shows, and so we weren't very cool. I think I probably hadn't been to Channel 4 at that point.

And suddenly, this company buys us, Endemol, this Dutch company. One of the things we remember was they made a show called Sound Mix show, which is otherwise known as Stars in Their Eyes, which is one of their shows. Then they made a whole load of stuff that wasn't that recognizable, including famously in Endemol terms, a show called Diary of a Sheep Dog, which was a Dutch show. period drama about the 1900s in Southern Holland which we didn't end up pitching as it happens but I'm sure it had its place then they had this thing called the Golden Cage

which is what Big Brother became at that point it was called Golden Cage Oh I never knew that! Yeah in fact even before that Kay it had the worst name the worst secret name for a project for a show you've ever heard it was called Project X Oh great!

So there was this show and we looked at it back back then and a guy who ran the company in the UK called Peter Basiljet looked at it and ultimately brought it over here. But certainly the time, it looked, as you'll remember, ultimately it didn't look like television. That's what was odd about it. So we're looking at it.

And I think we all like to tell ourselves, we said it's a bit too cruel and all, you know, and that's true, and lots of people did, and in Holland it was very controversial. But ultimately, more than that, it didn't look like tele, it looked quite dull. It looks sort of black and white, often in a sort of, you know, rainy house in Holland.

it didn't look like the sort of big breakfast and the sort of the fast-moving kind of cool television that was beginning to surface at that point. So it looked a bit dull. But when it moved to the UK, you did stuff to it. You did stuff to the format, right? Because they didn't have, Ruth Wrigley said that, oh, it was slow and not a lot happened.

They thought, put it late night instead of prime time and then have evictions. So there was no evictions. No, there were. So the thing is, Ruth Wrigley's brilliant, and she was the first executive, and launched it. and what a show to launch, hundreds of people,

no one never made anything quite like it. So she deserves all the credit she gets, a brilliant producer. As you've said on your podcast, like look at traitors or something. British TV producers have an issue. One of the issues we have is that we keep thinking we're the best in the world at TV.

And there are some arguments for that, but I don't know if you've seen American television, it's really quite good. So when a show comes over here, whether it's traitors, which is wonderful or Big Brother, we like to say, and the thing is, it was a bit strange and it was a bit foreign,

and what we did is we turned it. And the truth is, the basics were all there. boats, the house. I mean, it did go on longer in Holland. It went on for like a hundred days, I think, something like that. And it probably wasn't as sort of, let's say, cool Britannia, right? Yeah. It was, so what the British team, brilliant team did is they made it much cooler. They changed the title music. At one point, we were almost going to have to use the Dutch title music, which I can tell you now. I'd love to hear that. I would love to hear it.

I could hum it, if you want. Please do. And the Dutch graphics, things like that. So it became, you know, more British, a bit cooler. One of the things that Ruth and the team Conrad Green did so brilliant is they therefore tapped, they brought in people who had working on the big breakfast on the word and these shows. So they had people who were very good at fast moving kind of cool music montages and so on. That track, the whole title sequence, everything about it is absolutely epic.

It felt cool. And that was very good for things like the best bits, stuff like that. But there was an issue with it, which is in the first cuts of it when we were trying it out with what used to be called guinea pigs. That doesn't age well. It was just people trying to, trying to, trying out the show, you know, as you know before the main show, is that they cut it a bit like a fast-moving magazine show.

That didn't quite work. Because actually what you needed to do was slow down a bit and let the story. So the storytelling, don't forget, no one had done anything like this before. So it was a combination of kind of the word and those sort of MTV with kind of old-fashioned documentary storytelling. And when they fused, that's what made it magical. Because you wanted to sit with discussions, some of which were about completely, I mean, the most ridiculously...

Were you, obviously, a viewer at that point, Kate? Were you watching it? No, no, I hadn't. I didn't watch it. So you didn't watch season one? No, I did. I watched it back on VHS,

the good old days of VHS. But that was, as a recommendation from the psychologist, who was kind of questioning my motives. Yeah, why do you want to go in? I was like, number of reasons, really, but 70 grand tax-free cash is basically my main reason. But then he suggested good old Brett,

God bless you, Brett. He said, it's a good idea to go back and watch the series if you haven't already. I'd watched the back end of series two because it becomes such a national obsession. There was no getting away from it. Everybody was talking about Big Brother. So I'd watch the back end of series two series too.

And then when I watched the first two series on VHs, it's like all the highlights, it just made, I went back from my second meeting with a psychologist. And I just said, well, this is maybe want to do it even more. I think he thought it would put me off. Yeah, yeah. That is a winner's mindset.

Yeah, that's amazing. I said, I've never been to university before, but it looks pretty much like how I imagined uni would be. Yeah. Just having a doss in a house. getting drunk. People voting you out. Yeah.

Possibly a few romances, except you don't come out in debt. You come out 70 grand richer, potentially. So, yeah, but I did love it. But I did love it. Looking at your life-changing format.

But except I tell you what I think that shows you, is it reminds you that it was so, so it was on at 11 o'clock at night. I mean, that first series... Series 1 on 11th? Yeah, yeah. The first series did catch fire. It did really, really well.

And, but I think it started around about 3 million viewers, which Channel 4 would kill for now, but it was different times. And by the end, it was at 9, 10 million, that final, you know, after the nasty nick and all of that. So it certainly caught fire. The magical thing, I remember watching it really early on, and you watch two people having an argument in the bedroom. So you watch them have the argument. Then you watch one of them, walk to the kitchen, talk to someone else and say, I've just had an argument and this is what I think.

And you think, hang on a minute, you only see that in drama. You don't see that in actual real life. And there we were able. And of course, famously, everyone says they watched them brush their teeth and all those things. Yeah, yeah. I remember logging on to the feed. Also, the internet at that stage just literally could not cope with any of this stuff. No.

Because, like, people complain about things now about their broad band. Trust me. If you're trying to do a dial-up just so you can watch Darren Brush's teeth in season one, you go all the way there. But when you got in, you were so excited that you were watching. Because, like, this is happening now. Because it was the fact that it was happening right now. And that they were just somewhere, you know, I lived in London at the time,

but that they were somewhere else in London. and that this was occurring was so nuts. But also just putting like ordinary people on television doing ordinary things. We'd never had anything like that. So it really was fascinating to just see Nick from Leeds or whoever just like making a cup of tea because we'd never had any of that people watching before.

Like people came up to me after Big Brother was, I used to watch you sleep. But they were like, I used to watch you sleep. And when a housemate would get up to go to the toilet, be so excited. because something had happened that I was there to witness at 3am. But I think that's so interesting, Kate, because one of the things, the way you'd watch people before

is usually with a bloke who was a documentary maker telling you this is what these people are doing, this is what you should think about them. And Big Brother sort of laid it out and said, just watch without anyone intervening. Now, I know there are lots of charges, the producers were more or less involved, so I'm sure we'll talk about that.

But ultimately, you're watching people sort of just be themselves, that felt very radical. And there's another thing about it. In Holland and in lots of other places around the world, it nearly always was about romance was the big thing that broke through. And of course that did happen in the UK many times. But that was the big defining moment for them. In Britain, it was much more class and the sort of competition and subterfuge.

So it was slightly different feel that first series. They cast it. In January 2000, there's 45,000 people respond to an advert looking for contestants. You cut them down to 300. And then lots of screen tests, interviews. they want to play games as groups. What was that like just thinking, how do we pick these ones?

Because now there's such a lot of law and in both sense, LORE and L-A-W, about reality TV concessants and duty of care and all that stuff. You obviously just, there wasn't anything like that, right? I think then, you know, Ruth Wrigley and the team were picking these people. There was definitely, and Channel 4 were obviously very, very involved.

There were definitely stereotypes that you look for that you'd still think now, right? I think it's maybe much more conscious now. If you look at any reality show, you know, I'm a celebrity to get made if it as the classic. You're looking for sort of, there's the posh one, there's the quiet one, there's the one. So I think there was an element of that, but it was sort of not as knowing then. You know, so I think Ruth Wrigley, for example, would say that Anna, for example, the X nut. I mean, it was a very sort of big breakfast, you know, get to know someone in a few lines, almost quite tabloid.

So Anna was the skateboarding lesbian nun, right? I don't know. I've seen a couple of shots of a skateboarding. She doesn't seem that amazing. but I don't think she wasn't a nun anymore, you know, and so it helped you. So you understood. So I think there was this feeling of looking for stereotypes. But I think Big Brother is all casting, right?

I mean, that's the most fundamental thing about it. So when you get to Big Brother 4, which was known as the boring one, you know, you look at, exactly Big Brother Ball. You look at casting before you look at anything else. By the way, in parentheses, this show was so good in the early days. The Boring Big Brother, this is four years later, with Cameron or the, Cameron was secretly taken to the Big Brother. brother Africa house swapped with an

Africa contested for Africa. I forgot that. Yeah. And you think that was on a boring one. That was on a boring one. I mean that on any normal show would be like absolutely extraordinary. I forgot about that. So the casting was really, I think, felt very important. You had sort of people that we might say are authentic.

Yeah. This was when Essex was invented in TV terms. Yeah. Because what suddenly happened is like you think, well, we're all new Americans were good. Any Americans could on camera. It turns out people from Essex seem to be really, really good. So there was our American. That's our America. Yeah.

So you started to see people on television that maybe you hadn't seen or certainly people hadn't seen before. And you were looking, so Ruth again will tell you quite late on, I think I'm right about this in the casting. There was a sense that they're quite wild. There's a sort of an energy here. We need to calm it down. So they put Nick in. So nasty Nick was put in as a sort of just someone who maybe calms it down, a little bit more middle of the road. So I suppose what it, well, it also shows you that when you think you're just, you think,

These experts in casting, you just don't know. And I remember when years to come, your audition to, I mean, was like the people always talk about the keepy-uppies you did with the football. And I don't know what that told us, and maybe it's a phrase that doesn't age well, Laddettes, you know, was it something about that? She was sporty.

One of your epithets was like, she's really fit and sporty. Well, also, Phil Edgar Jones, I remember telling me afterwards that the reason, one of the main reasons I got chosen as a housemate was because it was the World Cup that year. And then when they saw me doing keepy-upey-u's, I think their minds went to task, keepy-y-ups, girl playing football. And we were very much in Ladet culture back then.

I mean, it was Zoe Ball, Sarah Cox, you know, and the like. And drinking was quite heavily promoted. No one gave shit, did they? Like, everybody just went out and got drunk. Yeah. Turning up to breakfast shows like Chris Evans era. And so I think in my audition tape, it was back when, because you didn't have to audition as such back then.

It was the requirements for you entering or applying was a really long application form in which you had like psychological questions and just questions about you, followed by a three minute video that you could do whatever you want. And I remember saying to my sisters, what should I do? I remember saying should I put on like a naked fat suit

which is so like on PC now. A run down Bromley High Street. What was I thinking? I think it was slightly on PC then, Kate. I was, like, work a go. Back then, I meant back then, not now. Like, I was like, back then. I didn't think back then.

Like, I was just, I was 21. And I just thought, that would be funny. And like, terrible idea. And then I was like, I can't do that. I just want to be. It was back when everyone had those little handheld camcorders. Do you remember the Sony handy cam with little tapes? And I already had footage from like previous holidays.

So I cobbled that together. And then I thought, I'll just show things, show the producers what I love doing. One was keepy upies. One was me in a pub, downing a pint. Like I genuinely thought, I was like, I was such a life. One of them was me all glammed up in a tartan mini skirt, just about to go to the Blue Orchid and Croydon nightclub. I was like, I'll show them me dancing and cuddling my dog and boxing because I love to box.

And I think, I just put together everything and just sent it off last day of like, closing date and I mean it was a long old process they also invited you to play games in a group and I always remember jade goody being in my audition that was that right when we were playing games you all had to like work as a team and it was like I mean it was brilliant because the games they were getting to play yeah they were getting a lot of us all to play everyone's falling out and then at the end of the audition audition as such we all had to nominate somebody to be evicted and everyone chose jade and so they were like she's going in that's fascinating And as soon as I saw her, I was like, I know exactly why she's here

because she rubbed everyone up the wrong way. So they thought she'd be a brilliant house, which she was. We had to find a host. So you chose DeVina, why? The host of it, you know, in some ways the host is sort of not as present as in a normal show, right? Because most of it is the recap from 24 hours before. But again, I think you'd find that decision making there is a really simple one in the end. And I think you can see this now in television in a way that perhaps wasn't true,

before Big Brother, which is that DeVina, if she wasn't the host of it, she would have applied to be in it. And I think, you know, I think she said that. And if she hasn't, then it's definitely true. Because that is, and she was someone who would inhabit it, watch it.

If you look at those early shows when she was presenting it, I was watching the other night, I would do anyway, even if I wasn't doing the podcast. Just go over old Big Brother episodes. No, I wouldn't. It is that on the first eviction,

which is Sarda and Caroline, you can see the moment she goes live to the Big Brother House. I mean, you're probably getting chills here as you think about it, because you remember what it's like. So Davina, hello, you know, this is Davina.

They do not say it. And they're really, they go like, oh, it's Davina. And Davina goes, oh, it's them. You know, you can feel her excitement that she's talking to the housemaids. So she loved, love, love the show. Most importantly, it seems nothing now.

She had done this show called Street Mate. Yeah, love Street. Now, Street Mate at the time, which is just Davina wandering around provincial shopping centres trying to match people up. And again, it's probably quite, you feel like.

Also, you'd probably feel she'd do that without cameras anyway, like Davina's that, yeah. And so it felt live and quite sort of edgy and young. She'd also done MTV. So in the end, there was this feeling at the time that Ruth and the team had, which is you have to make Big Brother kind of cool. And Channel 4 was a cool channel. It needed to be young. It was a lot.

The casting was younger than in Holland and Spain and all the rest of it. I was trying to remember, I do believe that at times, I think Graham Norton's name was mentioned. I'm sure he didn't know that he was made. I'm sure he wouldn't have done it at some. But there were obviously other names mentioned, but I think Davina was a really key and clear. And you know, you can't think of anyone better. And if you fast forward to when it finished on Channel 4, 10 years later,

she said it's like a sort of grieving when it stopped. And I believe that, you know, it was her world. And you can't imagine it without her. She was incredible. I was remember when she came into the house, because back then she would, she came in after I'd won. I was the last person there. And she walked in and I was like, can't believe it to you.

And she was like, I can't believe it's you. I watched, actually, I came. across the entire finale on YouTube the other day. And she just looks so different. But I always remember her wearing a necklace that said yes, which was, I always said yes for some reason. And so I was like, wow, she's wearing this necklace with a word that I said in the series. Okay, so it airs from July to September, 264 days, 11 housemates and the 70,000 pounds prize.

But it's like a 150 people crew. It was really interesting. And everyone became obsessed very, very quickly. I remember this with how do they do it? You know, you could see that, okay, hang on, these are like two-way mirrors and there are tunnels all the way through the house. But everyone couldn't understand, you know, like how it could be possible to have that many kind of cameras everywhere.

And there were plans put out of the houses so that people could see how it was all built. So they had, the cast was given one week's notice so that the press wouldn't find out about them. Anna Nolan said she just like went into work and said, you know, I'm leaving to do a television show. I might be two weeks, I might be ten weeks. It's like some sort of really weird form of jewellery service.

Yes, yes, yeah. Okay, so there's no launch show, but there's an introduction for Marcus. Let's hear it. For the last four days, 10 people have been living in a specially built house completely cut off from the outside world. No TV, no radio, no newspapers. They've volunteered to share their lives with the nation

over the next nine weeks. A production team of over 100 people work 24 hours a day. They're able to control how the house operates, from turning on the hot water to opening and closing doors. They monitor over 26 remote cameras, 36 microphones and five manned cameras hidden from view behind mirrors. Big Brother is always watching. This episode is brought to you by Lloyds.

Now, show business loves a club. I love all these sort of unofficial groupings of people. There's two brat packs that I'm big fan of. There are two brat packs. Yeah, there's two brat packs because there's the movie brat pack, all of the Judd Nelson and, you know, Rob Lowe and Charlie Sheen and all those guys. Everyone in the Breakfast Club. Yeah, and then there's also the brat pack of those kind of turn of the 90s novelists,

Brett Easton Ellis, Jay McAnney, Donner Tart. And that's the thing creatively. It's actually very, very useful to hang out with other people who are incredibly talented. Because you drive each other on to do things. Because a lot of the British novelists in the 80s, Martin Amos, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwen, they all used to sort of go and have lunch and go and have dinner. And you could just tell, you know, they would talk about stuff and they would make each other's work much better. And that's the benefit of being in a group, being in a club.

It becomes more than the sum of its parts. Clubs really do have benefits like Club Lloyds, an elevated everyday bank account with exclusive benefits plus a lifestyle perk like cinema tickets. And you get no fees on debit card spending and withdrawals abroad. An exclusive mortgage rate discount, interest on your balance. To join a club worth being in, search Club Lloyds. You must be a UK resident, age 18 or over to apply. This account has a £5 monthly fee, refunded each month you pay in £2,000 or more.

That iconic voice. Did you know it when you had it? There's a woman called Liz Warner who was at Channel 4, who was very key to the launch of it. and she says that when he did a couple of tests, basically they went to agents to get voiceover artists and so on, and then they gave him a few lines to say from Big Brother, and one of them was something about the chickens, because, of course, chickens are weirdly important in that first series

in a way they perhaps were less it. And it was the way, I'm not going to try and do the accent, but it was the way he said chicken, or actually that wasn't bad. No, wasn't bad. She said, that's it. You know, and again, it's hard to sort of imagine now, but a voice like that, a regional voice like that, you know, on Channel 4 felt like really kind of different and edgy.

And what I seem to remember, I think this is true. He was very, very factual at the beginning. And I think the first comic relief Big Brother, with Jack D and everyone, where it was a little bit more fun. And so he was more fun. He became a little bit more editorialized. So that first Big Brother, he's very factual. For people who can't remember what he's actually doing,

aside from sort of introducing the housemates and things like that, he's saying it is 9 o'clock on where, and, you know, Darren is in the garden talking to a chicken. Or something like that. He's just narrating really like, dear two, kids in the bathroom after an argument with Ali. That is an astonishing impression. I've known Marcus for many years. I mean, his voice is just, do you know what's really funny watching the new show?

Because I'm doing Big Brother, the group chat now. And we get to watch the show before it goes out. And they don't have Marcus in it. So there's just a guy going, day one. Yes. So and so. You're just like, it would not be Big Brother without Marcus Bentley. I completely agree with you.

And I think that voice, which of course we came to love and associate it as you say Kate one of the really important things about the role of that voice without getting too sort of over romantic about it there was a sort of mission amongst the producers with Big Brother and that kind of mission was to say we want to make telly in a way that no one's quite made it before and what we want to do is we want to be really transparent about what happens

we want to be really open about what happens we don't want to use TV producer tricks and I know that in the years to come there'll be all sorts of accusations and some of them founded but the notion was we want to do something in a way way that sort of almost trust the audience, like takes the audience seriously. That notion of this is exactly what's happening. So one of the big things that Phil Eger Jones will tell you is we never showed shots that were out of time. So if someone's told a joke and you Marina are not laughing, imagine such a thing, we're not going to find you laughing from later. No. We're going to show exactly

what happened at that time. And although that seems a small thing, that was part of the philosophy from that first day of saying, we're just going to show you what's happening. But the other big revolution which we haven't touched on in a funny way, which is worth reminding everyone of, is the notion of you decide the audience, because that was there from the beginning. And so, although you had other shows like there was the Survivor, Expedition Robinson, yeah, these shows, this notion was you as an audience. Who goes, you decide. You decide.

And that's such a funny. So it wasn't really, the voting was important, but there were other shows of voting, but no one had done the thing about you take part. And that was so exciting and allowed people to feel so. involved as well as as you say the internet being able to watch it on different platforms that that felt like that was the revolution and of course in some ways again without sounding to chin strokey about it you had the beginnings of people like like with social media now people feel like I have agency right

whether they do or I'm part of this debate back then in the very in the very analogue days that was the beginning perhaps of people saying I can take part in this I have a view take me seriously as a member of the audience and it really worked and it's also the beginning of people becoming so knowing, I've said this before on the main podcast, but Adam Curtis always says that after the advent of reality TV, he thinks that you just can't really get interesting footage of people because rather than being able to catch people off their guard, just doing, going about themselves, everyone is sort of on reality TV forever after that. They're all the main characters in a,

show that's filming about them. I just say on behalf of Kate and I, when you said the main podcast, we kind of think this is the main podcast. We kind of think this is the main podcast. Yeah, so just checking that that was a slip. This is the elite tier. This is the elite tier. This is the elite tier podcast. But the most iconic character without any question in this series is, as you've mentioned, Kate, is Nasty Nick. And he's, what is he, was he, was he an estate agent or something? No, no, I think he was a solicitor. I think he worked in the city in some way.

Lived in like partner or something. Full of them, I think. Yeah, something like that, okay, right? And all he does, which is so amazing, now, given what we see, not just on this show, but on all reality shows, the most abysmal behaviour you've ever seen. Okay, what nasty Nick does is he smuggles in some pencils and some paper and he wrote secret notes to people to kind of manipulate the voting procedure and he found places where the cameras couldn't quite get. And you must have been a bit stuck to call him in and say, you know,

because then you'd be revealing that you couldn't see everything. Channel 4 people, there were forums, which was like the early. So before social media, there were forums. And people were like he's got a mobile phone. that no he didn't. The sun flew a helicopter over the house to drop leaflets like it's the war or something saying, you know, to drop public annulose to saying

you know he's lying to you. And then it all comes out. I mean it's the most benign form of like what, you've got a pencil and paper and you're trying to play the game. I thought he took the pencils and paper from a task so it wasn't even premeditated. He just saw them and wrote the names down. Dear 35

As soon as everyone is awake, a meeting is called by Craig in the kitchen about Nick's behaviour. Okay, well I've got a very important thing I want to bring up. I think everyone should be aware of it and it's everybody's concern. Basically, I'm sorry I have to say it, Nick, but I'm very disappointed in yourself. I not only feel I'm quite positive and got evidence that you're plotting, a plot. a very dirty plan on everybody in here to vote against each other and stare it diverted from you. I just cannot believe now, looking back at he became the most hated man. It was like he had literally murdered someone on television.

And Craig's reaction was so, like, he was fewer. And all the housemates were like, we cannot believe you've done this. You know why you're in that. You know you're all fighting to win Big Brother and to win 70 grand. And Craig, they had a table music. They had literally sit you down. We need to talk to you. And Nick looked visibly.

He went, he was, he was, and Craig's literally going, you were like names on pieces of paper. Everybody was furious with him. You were like, names on pieces of paper. They were like, how dare you? There was, as you probably know, there was a moment, they decided to do it the next day. So Big Brother, basically I think Craig comes to the diary and says,

this is going on, I'm not going to do the accent, but Kate, you can do it. And Big Brother says, have a think about it, have a think about what you can do. This gives Big Brother and the producers time to prepare the cameras and all the rest of it for the table, you know, So it shot like 12 Angry Men, right? You're fully covered.

It really is. Incredible. You had everyone. You had cutaways to everyone. It was one. Close up. You wouldn't have had it just occurred. But also to be taken, he didn't get like, the producers, I mean, you all know more about this than I.

Well, you had to take him out the back. He didn't get a proper eviction because you were worried about how much hate he was getting. And it was like, no, I don't think anyone could have predicted how out of hand that hatred could become, right? Yeah, I think that's exactly right, Kate. And I think you're right. On one level, it felt like as such a trivial piece of paper, pens. You know, what he was... It was like we were watching Watergate.

Yes, no, no. It was much more fun than Watergate. Yeah, Watergate's so boring. But it was absolutely epic. And it just seemed... It is an early example of how in reality TV communities, because everyone was always being sequestered in a mansion or on an island or wherever, go mad together.

I mean, you do go mad. I think at such an interesting point because one of the things I often think about is if you want to know, because Big Brother Housemates often just look like they're getting on with their lives, they're making cups of tea, it's not. If you play music into the Big Brother House, there's the most extraordinary action. Brilliant. Like they haven't heard it for centuries. And they go absolutely. I did miss my family.

I missed music. Yeah. People like, do you really miss your family? I was like just miss having, I just miss having music. I don't know what I would have had back then. There was definitely not an iPod. I miss a CD player. Yeah.

Miss tunes. So one of the most iconic moments with Alex dance. dancing to, you know, against the door. That was, yeah, that was during a sort of a burst of music coming to the house. And you all just like, so I think if you therefore think about that, how sort of in a sense in a bubble you are, then someone sort of playing with the logic of the rules and how you all conduct. It is a massive thing for you all and for Nick.

You know, one of the joys of the Nick moment, as you say, as partly, it felt like everybody knew it was sort of nothing, but it was really fun to take part and say, come on, let's, it's really fun to take it seriously, which is what everyone did, and obviously the tabloids did and all the rest of it. The great thing about it is the audience knew before the housemates. So you've got that dramatic irony.

They knew what was good. That's so hitchcockian, as he always says, there's no point. I'm going to raise you, I'm going to go Shakespearean. So you had that sense, we know what's going on. So did you start to feel like you were playing God? At what stage do you realize your power? Because even though you obviously realize you're the producers of the show and I'm going to have a lot of, you know,

in that first series, do you suddenly realize how, powerful you are and that it's, that mere music can do this. I think it's the opposite in some ways, which is to say, particularly with that nasty it's such a perfect example. What you're actually doing is watching something happen that you're not in control of. The housemates have decided this is what we're going to do about it. And as you know, all communication has to be through the diary room. That is really unusual for reality shows.

There's all sorts of people noises off, right? You only communicate through the diary room. So therefore Craig is talking to the diary room and Big Brother says, have a think about how you want to handle it. So it's happening in front of you. So I think in a way, it's the opposite. I think still true today, but certainly back then for the producers, it's the sense of, oh my God, look what's happening.

Phil Ego-Jones used to say, if you want to know what goes into Big Brother, you've got to imagine your mum rings you at the end of the day and says what's been happening today, and you say, this is what's been happening. Not this is what we produced or this is the time. It's, this is what happened. And I think it's the sense that you're not actually in control of it. And the Nick thing, I was only going to say, to pick up your point. For the producers for Ruth and Conrad and all those guys,

this sense that it got so serious, so it was funny, but it got so serious. There was then this discussion. I remember talking to Ruth about, do we do an eviction? Because, you know, do we have a crowd? And it was the first time he thought, I think he's potentially could be in danger. Well, from page, did you have crowds even in season one for the evictions? I think certainly at the final. Yeah, at the final there was one, but I don't imagine, I couldn't.

No, there wasn't, well, there wasn't a launch. And it was, there was definitely a crowd because I remember Craig coming out, yeah, but he front page on the tabloids as well. And then like the sun newspaper of flying over a helicopter, like that's insane levels of. It was the front page of it every single day. It's so hard to explain to people now who didn't grow up in that tablo culture that if it's on the front page of the mirror, the sun, the star, and even the male have got to acknowledge it, even they think they're too good for it,

that is all media. It's really, as you say, and you know this so well, Maria. Back then you had this, the thing was on fire, where the tabloids would stoke it. You know, I remember, I mean, there's so many things about the tabloids, but one of the things I remember, and it wasn't Big Brother one, but at a certain point quite early on, the son, I think, did, they'd put a piece with a phone number up and said,

are you offended by whatever it was? And I was talking again to Phil the other day thinking, it was almost the beginning of sort of being anonymously offended, Big Brother, you know. So you'd think, well, I mean, I know it's 11 o'clock and I'm sort of at the office filing, but as it happens, I think I probably am offended. I think I'll ring that number. And so gradually we've had a thousand calls saying we're offended about whatever it happens to be.

So you had that sort of alliance, if you like, not formal, but between the show and the tabloids, which was... All of these are proto-social media things that it's now so easy to do. But the idea of just like having pylons and, you know, and like marshalling people to, like, somebody just getting dragged all day long, it all feels like this existed. but in a really kind of analog way really. No, no, it was very analog, but it was very powerful.

And, you know, for the producers reading the way that the tablet, whatever stories they were covering, obviously it came to, you know, it got pretty grim when Jade, in particular, when they would say such, you know, about the way she looked and so, you know, that I know what you'll cover that. But, you know, that is when you're thinking as a team and as producers. You know, one of the things, again, I know it sounds like, but it's really important to say, I think, looking back,

those producers really cared about the housemates. Like they wanted them to be okay. They felt responsible for them. them and so. But I think, sorry, to interrupt you, just, but you can tell that just so early on series one, you're talking about Nick, do we have an eviction or not? Right. But I think back then it was still very much a social experiment, which is why it wasn't performative, it wasn't palmed to find. The housemates, like you're putting a bunch of strangers together and nothing bonds a group of strangers quite like putting them together 24-7 and nothing breaks that bond quicker either than

doing that. But I think I loved the early days because it was such a social experiment. And you were talking about the Sun newspaper. I remember in series three, they flew a plane like a, I don't know, Sessna over the house with a massive banner on the back, revealing the first result of the England match that we played in the World Cup. Like that's how much they wanted, like, and they would have like, obviously that would have been front page up. We've shown the housemates, the England score,

and we were gutted, we all ran out, we were all in the garden, and we were like, what? England just lost their first game. Straight away, Big Brother was like, can all housemates please come in? We were like, we've seen it, maids. Yeah. The tabloids were so invested in the show.

It's so funny just hearing you say that thing about can the housemates come back and go. There was something in those early days of Big Brothers about how seriously it was all taken that made it funny. And Nick was the sort of zenith of that. You know, when you think, look, I mean, everyone started singing it's only a game show in that first. And of course, it is only a game show. But when you're, but it's so intense and you've been in there, you know. People used to shout over the wall and honestly the feelings. But so much was shouted over the wall, Big Brother.

Big brother housemates, please come inside the house. You'd hear all sorts. It was such a horrible feeling if you heard your name shout. It's won by Craig. He donates the 70 grand to a friend who's got Down syndrome who needed a heart and lung transplant. So everybody loved him. The definition of a good egg.

What are I? I mean, like literally every other winner after that is like, God, yeah. Now, like, what am I supposed? Did he follow in his footsteps? But they all do get, they all get sort of different forms of work. Nick does a lot. When he left, he did a big press conference asking for Max Clifford's number.

He did he do pants to them every year. He did pants up every year. Yes, that's right. He wrote a book called How to Be a Right Bastard. I mean, you know, they all had the spin-offs of this kind of stuff. He actually said, you know, I was just in the, I was the right person, but in the wrong format. And I should have just, if I'd been around doing traitors. I mean, you know, it's expected, right?

But it was. So to conclude this episode one, it was a huge, huge success. We had never seen anything like it. It was like the maddest thing. And we were about to get a whole load of other Big Brother content. There was Big Brother's Little Brother, Big Brother, Big Brother's Big Mother, Big Brother's Big Mouth, Big Brother's Bit on the side. There was an attempt to do Teen Big Brother.

Yep. Wow. Oh, I don't remember that. Yes, that was. So after the first Celebrity Big Brother, Channel 4, I wanted to do a teen Big Brother. That was very much part. It's a bloody risk. I mean, I would say in the category of things that don't age well, that might be in there.

I mean, it was. I really need to get some footage for that, too. I mean, they were, I mean, of course. Well, shipwrecked was a hit, but I guess, you know, that was teenagers. I mean, to be fair, they were adults, right? They were 18. Yeah. But I do think at first, Channel 4 thought, let's do it with literally teens.

Right. That was absolutely fascinating. I could have talked for about six hours just about that. I would love to thank my guests, Kate Lawler, and Tim Hinks. Lovely. I can't wait to see you for episode two, where we're going to discuss series two. And of course, series three, which you won Kate. And many iconic moments.

as the show goes even more stratospheric. Thank you so much, everybody. Thanks so much, members. See you next time.