It’s been 24 years (yes 24!) since he was betrayed by Nasty Nick in the Big Brother house, but Craig Phillips says he eventually made it up to him by giving him a key to his home. The Liverpool-born builder became the first ever winner of the iconic reality TV show back in 2000 but his win was overshadowed by the behaviour of his housemate Nick Bateman, who was kicked off the show for cheating after lying to his housemates while trying to influence their nominations. And while Craig says he was very hurt during the time, he says Nick is the only contestant he is really in still touch with.
Speaking to BoyleSportsGames, Craig said, 'It was very different to how we all felt in the house, we all lived in this house and we didn’t know how the public felt. I felt let down by Nick because we’d made friends and we made plans to do things after.
'I wear my heart on my sleeve and when he started to make plans and make friends with us all but then undermined us and tried to outsmart us and lie to us, it was disappointing. To find out he was playing us all off, it wasn’t nice. He didn’t have to do that, he would’ve stayed till the end, but he chose to cheat and lie.
'That was a really low blow, and we were all very upset and disappointed - we felt let down. I said, if he doesn’t get kicked out I’m leaving myself. If he was cheating, we might as well have all cheated. He had to go, we just felt let down, and I think it would have easily been worse.
'When I first came out of Big Brother, I had a key to Nick’s house for the first 12 months where I stored a lot of my clothes and bags when I was travelling around London. I would stay with him, and that was a bit ironic as we did fall out on the programme, but I had a bedroom in his house for about a year. Every time Nick’s been to Liverpool, he’s come to stay at my house.'
When it was revealed that Nick had been writing housemates' names down on bits of paper (it was against the rules to have a pen and paper) and stirring up trouble, they all confronted him, with an angry Craig, now 53, leading the charge.
Although he has now forgiven him, Craig - who now splits his time between Spain and the UK with his wife Laura and their two children - says Nick still has the ability to spin a story, which became apparent when he went to visit him in Australia.
He said, 'He’d been living out in Sydney, and my wife and I, Laura - she wasn’t my wife back then, just my girlfriend - we were travelling around the world, around Asia, went to Singapore and then crossed over to Australia.
'I was set to propose to Laura on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I messaged Nick to say I was coming to Australia and I’d never been before. I didn’t tell him about my surprise but I knew he lived in Sydney. I said, we’ve got to catch up, and he agreed.
'I thought, "Of course he’s going to ask me to stay", he claimed he had 10 bedrooms, but I didn’t get the invite to come and stay and I didn’t even get to see his house! We caught up and straight away I was thinking to myself, he’s been bigging up his life to me, that he was living in this £15-20 million mansion!'
_Craig was speaking to [BoyleSportsGames]{href='https://games.boylesports.com/' target='blank' rel='noreferrer noopener nofollow'} while the new series of Big Brother is on.