[kaphc]

I voted for the mix of housemates but I think the tasks and the amount of shopping money were important factors too.

The mix of housemates this year was more like a club 18-30 holiday, with the exception of Alex and Sandy. The housemates were all generally much younger, in their early 20s with a couple of people in their 30s. On BB2 there was more balance with various ages, some early 20s, some mid-late 20s, some early 30s, some later 30s. This gave the BB2 house a more "family" atmosphere, whereas the BB3 house had a "student holiday" feel too it.

The tasks were also a contributing factor. I think it was a good idea to have live tasks, especially when they decided who went on the rich/poor sides. However, that should only have been a mini-task and then they should have gone straight into a 3-day "proper" task (or maybe two separate tasks for each side) to determine access to food budgets / treats etc. I said before the start of BB3 that I would like to have seen some sort of "gambling" element to the tasks, where the % gambled on completion of the task was based on how difficult the task was. So they could have picked an easy task and gambled 10% or a hard task and gambled 60% / 70%. I think the best task was probably the last one with the eggs, where there was a lot of skill and a bit of gambling involved.

Which brings me onto the amount of money they had available. £400 was maybe fair enough when the group was large and before the bars went up. But afterwards, £400 between 4 or 5 people for a week was ridiculous! So too much money got spent on alcohol (prob what the producers wanted, sadly) and the rest, as we know, is history.

I think it's a good thing that BB3 was different from BB2, but apart from the last couple of weeks, it definitely wasn't as good.