Big Brother returned to our screens last year for the first time in five years and we were glued to our screens every night for six weeks until the iconic Jordan Sangha was crowned Big Brother 2023 winner.
But as much as we enjoyed the ITV reboot, we have to admit it just couldn’t hold a candle to BB’s Channel 4 heyday. It was simply a different time.
One of our personal favourite series was Big Brother 7, which was won by Pete Bennett and gave us legendary housemates like the late Nikki Grahame, Glyn Wise and Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace.
We recently caught up with Aisleyne, who gave us her take on the Big Brother reboot.
“I thought they got really, really right. I thought the casting was brilliant. I thought it was like the old show meaning pre-Channel 5. It was good,” Aisleyne exclusively told heat.
“I mean it's never going to be as good as my year but…”
However, Aisleyne did point out that producers did make a bit of a mistake when it comes to Big Brother’s sister show Late & Live.
“One thing that they've f**ked up with massively, was not having like old Big Brother people on the side show, they just had random people but they haven't got clue what was going on.
“The side shows were just an absolute bore to watch. Hello! Legends do exist, we made the show possible. Our input would be much more entertaining.”
She does have a point. Just imagine how good it would be to see Aisleyne and other BB legends like Nadia Almada and Chantelle Houghton back on our screens.
Aisleyne also spilled the beans on how she got on the show back in 2006 and it turns out she almost didn’t even go to the audition.
“I was hungover. My friend rang me up begging to go she's like, ‘it's the last day of auditions. I know this is meant for me’. Blah, blah, blah. I refused her and then she called back again. I said, ‘if you get your flatmate to take us in the car I'll come’ and she did. I just kept getting through and she didn’t,” she told us.
“It was on a whim, but I always used to watch the show and like instinctively know, there was no ego in it, that I was gonna be on that show one day. I used to think, ‘Look at these pussies, crying on a game show, they haven't had a hard life, they haven’t suffered’ and then I was on the show crying every two minutes.”
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Nathan Katnoria is heat and Closer online’s senior digital writer. He’s been obsessed with Big Brother ever since the days of Chantelle Houghton and Preston and was hooked on the ITV2 reboot. He even attended the final and saw the housemates up close and personal.