Celebrity Big Brother is back on our screens and while our brand new housemates are getting ready to spend three weeks locked away in the BB house, a former contestant has revealed the secret way he sneaked some intel.
Former Tottenham midfielder Jamie O’Hara appeared as a celebrity housemate back in 2017 and while he admits that it was “quite boring,” he tells heat how an impromptu medical trip left him with the upper hand.
Sorry a what and who now?
“About 10 days into the show, I badly needed a dentist appointment because my tooth was killing me," he revealed, "I actually had to leave the house, because they need to take care of you and make sure you’re not going to die in there."
The drama of it; we're obsessed.
"I remember getting into a car and going to the dentist about half an hour away, and one of the producers came with me. I was trying to get information out of him, but he wasn’t allowed to talk to me.”
While the producers didn’t crack, Jamie certainly got his info elsewhere.
“I ended up going into the dentist through the back door so nobody could see me, and the dentist himself recognised me from the show," he went on, "I asked him if he was watching the show and how I was coming across, and he said I was doing well.”
Not the dentist dishing all the deets on the outside world to Jamie, isn't there an NDA they have to sign or something? We wonder where that dentist is now...
"I then asked him if I could borrow his phone for a bit, and he said yes! I looked through Twitter, so I managed to get loads of information on what people were thinking on the outside."
"I even managed to find out which contestants were going to be coming in. I didn’t tell anyone, just knew for myself," Jamie explained, "I became a lot more chilled out and stopped panicking once I realised people were liking me. That’s the hardest thing in there – you genuinely don’t know anything. To know that people liked me and the press was all good really helped out.”
Footballer Jamie certainly found himself breaking some other rules inside the house too and we can't say we blame him.
“It can be the most boring place in the world during the day,” he says. “Nothing happens until the evening. There’s no clocks in there, so you don’t even know the time. I actually managed to find a clock on the back of a camera one day, so I always knew what time it was. I’d often sneak up with Callum[Best] to have a look and tell the other housemates.”
With the new season of Celebrity Big Brother underway, we’ve already seen our celebrity housemates settle into their new life (cue David Potts' impressive pins riling up Sharon and Louis.)
Giving his tips for our newest housemates, Jamie says, “It can be quite boring a lot of the time. Nothing happens until the evening and there’s no clocks in there, so you don’t even know the time. Find something to prevent your mind from going mad – because the production team want you to lose your head as much as possible. I know it makes great TV when that happens.”
And lose their heads some certainly did. During his time in the house, Jamie found himself running in with some very colourful characters – making what would become some of Celebrity Big Brother’s most iconic moments.
“There were definitely a few low points,” he shares, “like the argument I had with Jedward. It was one of those situations where they were just doing my head in – they were annoying as anything. They were actually good lads, but they were clearly there for airtime. I’m not really like that, so I was just like, ‘Lads, can you just shut up? You’re doing my head in coming out with the same nonsense.’ I didn’t realise that it became a big story on the outside and people were laughing about it.”
“Then you had the Kim Woodburn situation – she was nuts, having a go at all the younger girls. I was just trying to stick up for them really, and then she came for me with a barrage of abuse. I had to take one on the chin there, and I’ve been a meme ever since.”
Aside from his run-in with two Irish twins and facing the wrath of Kim, it seems Jamie had a whale of a time in the CBB house. When asked if he’d be up for doing it all over again, he says, “I’d love to go back on – especially if they pay me £300K again!”
With a pay check like that, you can go ahead and sign us up…
Jamie O’Hara was speaking to Heat on behalf of Grosvenor Sport
Charlotte Roberts is a News and Entertainment Writer for Bauer Media. She specialises in interviews, features, articles and roundups about all things pop culture.