Drip drip. The details are leaking through.

And don’t pretend you’re not interested. Is Big Brother lowest-common-denominator trash TV, wired and immersed in base-level voyeurism and mindless pseudo-celebrity? Damn right it is.

Are you still going to watch it anyway? Course you are.

The Sunday Mirror knows this all too well. Which is why the tawdry tabloid leapt at the chance to publish sneaky new murmurings about Channel Four’s upcoming summer of guilty pleasure…

Producers are clearly sticking with the tried-and-tested ‘evil Big Brother’ formula, so well developed over the course of last year’s fight-fest. The antics of Michelle, Stuart, Dan and the unforgettable ‘slick man’ Victor erased all memories of the tedious failure of the fourth year. BB5 viewers sat bolt upright, transfixed, the promise of the show was finally being realised. These housebound idiots were actually going to kill each other! Pass the popcorn!

Unsurprisingly, the nice people at production company Endemol would like to repeat this success. And their first move? Putting in some ‘fake’ contestants.

That’s right. No sooner will twelve fame-hungry wannabes have marched through those hallowed doors than they’ll be thrown straight back out into grubby old reality again. 24 people have been selected to take part in the show. Only 13 of them, however, will be given the chance to see out the entire series.

The assorted weirdos (let’s not dignify them with the term ‘contestants’) will be initially split into two separate groups of 12, each unaware of the others existence. Eleven of the poor souls are to be discarded like crumpled tissue paper, the time-honoured public phone vote ensuring that one of their number is transported into the main house to meet their plebby new pals.

Silly, gimmicky and utterly without educational merit, right? Absolutely. And it all kicks off 9pm, Friday May 27th.

Don’t try to fight it.

[story by C J Davies]