I’ve always been a Big Brother fan; I was hooked from the very first series way back in the year 2000, which featured Nasty Nick, Anna the lesbian nun and the winner, charming Scouse builder Craig Phillips who took the prize of £70,000 and promptly gave it all to his friend Joanne Harris for a heart and lung transplant. That first season – shown on Channel 4, as were the next ten – seems so wholesome now; the weekly shopping challenges included making mugs using a potter’s wheel, and learning semaphore, as though the housemates were overgrown guides and scouts excitedly vying for badges. When these mostly attractive, generally sexually experienced young people in their twenties were allowed to watch a film as a reward for passing a task, they chose the 1996 comedy Happy Gilmore, concerning the various misadventures of a young golfer who seeks to rescue his grandmother from penury.
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