Big Brother Celebrity Hijack

Celebrity Big Brother was always much like other "Celebrity" filled shows of the past, filled with c-list personalities or less who's work had dried up or were "in between roles" While last years series got the closest to what I would call stars, in the form of people such as Jermaine Jackson and Dirk Benedict (ok not up to much now but huge in their day) it also saw the race fuelled rows between actress Shilpa & former Big Brother ...
...CBB was axed replaced by Big Brothers Celebrity Hijack.


Big Brothers Celebrity Hijack-
Shown on E4 the series was designed to put a new spin on the worlds of Big Brother & Celebrity Big Brother by bringing the two worlds together. Filling the house with regular people and allowing celebrities to "hijack" the show taking on the role of Big Brother, issuing commands, tasks and in general taking over BBs role. ... more

Celebrity Big Brother was always much like other "Celebrity" filled shows of the past, filled with c-list personalities or less who's work had dried up or were "in between roles" While last years series got the closest to what I would call stars, in the form of people such as Jermaine Jackson and Dirk Benedict (ok not up to much now but huge in their day) it also saw the race fuelled rows between actress Shilpa & former Big Brother housemate Jade, these rows not only made viewing awkward but signed the death warrant on the series and this years CBB was axed replaced by Big Brothers Celebrity Hijack.

Big Brothers Celebrity Hijack-
Shown on E4 the series was designed to put a new spin on the worlds of Big Brother & Celebrity Big Brother by bringing the two worlds together. Filling the house with regular people and allowing celebrities to "hijack" the show taking on the role of Big Brother, issuing commands, tasks and in general taking over BBs role.

The housemates chosen were not done so as in regular BB series where odd personalities and beautiful people reign supreme, with hopes of a little romance, a few fights and a summer full of strange and varied behaviours, no Hijacks contestants were chosen from all the "gifted youngsters" who auditioned in the hopes of proving that not all of today's youth were hoody wearing, swearing louts who hung around street corners but rather were dedicated individuals with purpose and dreams.

Each of these "housemates" were aged between 18 and 21 and were there to compete in regular BB style for a £50,000 prize, facing regular nominations at the hands of their housemates and facing the public vote with the loser being evicted. They would naturally come up against Big Brother who this year was taken over by a range of different celebrities doing one "shift" each.

Contestants-
Amy Jackson- Born in 1986, Amy originally from Leeds is a conceptual artist and talented musician.

Anthony Ogogo- Born in 1988 and originating from Suffolk, Anthony is a boxer who hopes to represent us in the next Olympic games.

Calista Robertson- Also born in 1988 Calista comes from London and is a classical musician studying at Kings College London.

Emelia & Victor Arata- A brother a sister team of circus performers who have performed on other television contests as well as for Prince Charles & Princess Anne.

Latoya Satnarine- Is a professional dancer who has performed in music videos and high profile tours such as Mariah Carey.

Jade Eden- Mensa member, dancer and gymnast Jade is best known for her beauty pageant entries which include running up in Miss England.

Jay Wilson-Born 1988 Jay is an accomplished fashion designer.

Jeremy Metcalf- A gifted racing driver currently competing in the British Formula Renault Championship.

John Loughton- Is a politician currently chair of the Scottish Youth parliament.

Liam Young- An actor and director of a website services company.

Nathan Fagan-Gayle- Nathan from London is a R&B artist who's claims to fame include being nominated for a MOBO and winning an Urban Music award.

All of the contestant received eviction nominations during their stay except John who having won the task on the first day received immunity from eviction until final night. Jeremy received the highest total votes with 12, Victor was second with 9, closely followed by Emilias 8 and Calistas 7. As always those up for eviction are voted for by the public and there were the usual twists including the double eviction that saw the evictions of Victor and Liam, Latoya perhaps saw the most of the publics wrath when she received a whopping 56% of the phone votes.

The overall winner was Scottish Politician, 20 year old John Loughton, who beat Emilia in a close run competition claiming 53.9% of the votes and scooping the £50,000 prize.

The Hijackers-
There were a total of 24 different hijackings over the course of the series which included Little Britain's Matt Lucas, Russell Brand, Joan Rivers, Janet Street Porter, Peaches Geldof, Denise Van Outen, Makenzie Crook (The office, Pirates of the Caribbean) Roseanne Barr, Malcom Mclaren (ex Sex Pistols manager) and my favourite Ex SAS Sergeant Andy Mcnab, as well as a range of other "stars"

The tasks set by the hijackers ranged from the dull to the bizarre and included the housemates having to show off their "talents" bake BB a cake, score penalties, form an EMO band, take a pub quiz, attend a "cross dressing" dinner and take part in many dancing, singing, acting and dressing up related tasks.

Stand out tasks included Andy Mcnab taking Anthony & Amy from the house SAS style and interrogating them as well as having to take part in Channels 4's live cook a long programme with Gordan Ramsey where they had to produce a luxury 3 course meal which included a scallop dish, a steak dinner and a chocolate mousse desert.

Another Hijack of sorts had taken place in regards to the shows overall presenter as Davina Mcall bowed out of the role making way for Dermot O'Leary, former presenter of Big Brothers Little Brother.

My Opinion-
Celebrity Hijack was billed as the brand new and exciting twist on the BB theme which was meant to increase interest in the franchise and breathe a bit of life back into it. With the promise of gifted individuals most of us imagined we'd see scientists, medical students, academic geniuses and real achievers enter the house. While I'm in no place to say the eventual contestants aren't talented in their own way I cannot see how R&B singers, artists and circus performers are any different to the regular BB contestants of the past and certainly no different to those that auditon for every television reality show going, after all Carol from the previous series has many political views, so no different to overall winner John then, Shell from several series ago was an extremely talented artist who received her degree results on live television, Science AKA Kieran and Victor from previous singers were wanna be rap stars…………….it was just regular BB but with a seemingly lazy twist which the producers hoped would get the public interest.

That Scotsman John won was no surprise, having won immunity he was a cert to make the final and would not only have his country behind him (as all Scottish, Welsh & Irish contestants on reality TV do) but also felt free to be himself and not worry about performing for the cameras and trying to impress other housemates in order to escape nomination, which is usually where some great housemates end up falling flat, it reminded much of the year Cameron won the main BB summer series, the otherwise quiet Scot spent a little time on foreign exchange, caught the publics hearts for being a regular normal guy and walked away with that years prize.

After being let down on the contestant front a lot of viewers were then pinning their hopes on the celebrity hijackers, which to me seemed a little like channel 4 giving their staff a holiday and drafting in a random bunch of television and radio personalities and C4 favourites. While some of the hijackers were works of genius, like Mcnab for example and Matt Lucas who is funny no matter what he does, others simply seemed like fillers John McCririck and the All Saints to name just two. There were an interesting mix of hijackers I suppose and it was good to see the inclusion of people like art historian Brian Sewell and Janet Street Porter who inevitably gave the show a little more depth and appealed to the older viewers out there who probably don't have much time for the likes of Russell Brand, Kelly Osborne and Chris Moyles. I also love Joan Rivers who I always find a delight to watch even when she's on shopping TV channels, she's such an outgoing and outspoken woman just what the show needed to keep the contestants on their toes.

Unfortunately I found a lot of the day time streaming on E4 quite dull, the characters did nothing great or of note considering their "talents" and it was only during the round up shows and tasks that we really saw anything of interest from them. It was much like being a fly on the wall of a sixth form common room or a university dorm………a fly desperate to see a swatter or an open window sometime soon. Poor Dermot seemed to know the show was doomed before it began and tried to present with enthusiasm yet you could see the look in his eyes, he knew the show wasn't turning out to be all it was hyped up to be.

That the producers of the show kept it to E4 tells me that they had little faith in the show, while they can claim that it was to give E4 a big, audience grabbing programme I just don't see how they would take ratings away from their main channel, that being Channel 4 which usually shows the BB and CBB programmes, to give them over to the far less watched sister channel E4. I'm sure there was an element of fear surrounding them that the show could fail, not grabbing the attention of viewers like BB & CBB would normally, and they were right to feel that way. Hijack pulled only a small percentage of the viewers that the last CBB series did with attention dropping as the series went on, I think they're just lucky it didn't run for the same amount of time that BB does otherwise it may have been pulled from the air before reaching the final as viewing numbers gradually dropped to 0.

The show has done little to increase interest or anticipation for the summers upcoming BB series and I feel that C4 would have been better off doing the manly thing and staging a regular CBB series full of genuine stars instead of taking the cowards way out and going for this softened down, mismatch of a series, either that or simply canning the idea altogether, that perhaps would have given enough time in between the summer series to let people become interested again instead of suffering BB overkill.

Undoubtedly the makers will deem the show a massive success but whether we will see it's return next year is questionable, hopefully they will secretly accept it as a failed experiment and focus on giving us a better summer series instead of wasting their time trying to come with new and interesting twists to what began as a fun and fascinating social experiment. Overall I wasn't exactly impressed by the series, an interesting idea in theory but didn't quite hold up to it's promise, I couldn't connect to the contestants and found my interest dropping as the show went on, if they do bring it back next year I'll be unlikely to watch. 

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