Three More Housemates: There are two rules of thumb in Big Brother.

Peter Briffa:

One, Josie will always be seen sucking hers. And two, the more housemates there are, the worse the series. Tonight, we are about to get three more "brand new" housemates. Enough said?

That'll be twenty housemates already and we're only six weeks in. There were only eleven housemates for the entire run of BB1.

It's because of the cancelled eviction that BB felt it had to do something, and because Keeley almost certainly won't be returning after Anklegate, we are now left with an empty house with only a meagre nine contestants.

The procedure is that there are going to be six housemates ready to go in, bags packed and make-up on, and then the current housemates get to choose three to join them. Assuming they see them on the TV screen this might actually be quite amusing, given that they have met quite a few during the auditions.
Do they pick people they like, or people they don't think can win?

It's amusing to think that, back on launch night, there were what seemed to be a whopping 80 potential housemates. By tonight a quarter of them will have gone in.

Who's to say that before the next four weeks are over, the other 60 won't somehow have been smuggled in?

It all started to go wrong in BB6. The first two series both had 11 contestants. BB3 added another, and have two more latecomers who were only there because Sunita and Sandy walked. BB actually had one fewer, if you discount the temporary exchange HM Gaetano. BB5 also had 13, one of whom was a replacement.

BB6 had sixteen of the wretches, and was the first series to bring people in purely as contestants, rather than replacements. Three of them, no less: Orlaith, Eugene, and Kinga. Thus, having opened the floodgates, we had a jaw-dropping 22 contestants in BB7. 23 in BB8, 21 the year later, and 22 last year.

It really is a case of more is less. In BB1, I spent a lot of time watching them, trying to figure out who I liked, who was acting, who was behaving badly, who I wanted to win. Now, with the revolving door, somebody has barely appeared and gone before I have time to form an impression.


I felt I really knew Sada, Andrew and Caggy, the first ever evictees. But Shanessa? Beinazir? Spiral? These people are names, not people.

Even Govan is a distant memory. Was he the whispering, bitchy one?

Not all of this is in BB's control. Once it became established that walking could actually be a good career move - and Nasty Nick got kicked out of BB1, remember - it was always going to happen with greater frequency. Orlaith walked less than two weeks before the end of the show, on a Saturday morning the night after surviving eviction. Winning wasn't the issue with her. She wanted her Sunday newspaper deal.

BB7 had three people leave within the first fortnight. Once the precedent is set, others will follow.

Anyway, three more desperadoes come in tonight. I hope they shake it up, but doubt they will. Becki in BB5 probably ruffled more feathers on her own in a fortnight than Orlaith and co did for their entire stay, because, on the whole, one person is always going to be more interesting than three. Three just force the others into ganging up on them, whereas one person can actually get under their skin.

BB of course, doesn't see it like that.