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Big Brother was an 'awful time' but I have no regrets says Gloucestershire WI member who was the oldest housemate

Gloucestershire’s only Big Brother contestant says she does not recognise herself now when she sees pictures of herself in the BB house and despite it being an “awful time” has no regrets about taking part.

Lesley Brain was the oldest contestant to every enter the house when the 60 year-old retired headhunter joined the reality TV series in season 8.

But the WI member, who is often seen lecturing the younger member of the house while wagging a banana, quit in less than a fortnight telling Big Brother that life inside was far too boring for her.

The former contestant from Tetbury says she is managing better with the Covid lockdown than she ever did in the BB house where the younger housemates ran amok and sometimes portrayed her as haughty.

“ On the rare occasions I see pictures of me in BB I do not recognise myself,” said widowed Lesley.

“Largely, perhaps, because I look so miserable and I am in real life a very positive and jolly person whose greatest pleasure is in good company.”

The exception is politics, which makes her “a trifle furious”, she says.

The 73-year-old is not watching the current revival which is featuring the best bits from the programme, considered must-see viewing in 2007

She added: “Lockdown then, lockdown now! I didn't manage very well in Big Brother and I am glad to say I have managed this very real one much better.

“No, I'm not watching the best bits shows though see they are on and what they have chosen from social media.

“ It seems an awfully long time ago and, if I do look back at it, it is with some amazement. I had an awful time actually in the house but a lot of fun around the whole business.

“I shall always be the oldest person to have been in Big Brother and, for no real reason, that gives me some satisfaction.”



During the series she was portrayed as an intelligent, eccentric and much was made of Lesley living close to Highgrove House and being a neighbour to Prince Charles and Camilla.

Although the younger housemates treated her like a mother, she often rubbed them up the wrong way by telling them she was bored and complained of long and pointless conversations about hair straighteners.

Editors were keen to pick up on comments such as “as soon as you have a silver car you know you have given up on life” and in one episode she threatened to walk because she felt she was coming over as a “snotty middle-class cow and I’m not having that because that’s not who I am”.

In the end she left after just over a week saying "I am more bored than is acceptable to me in the sense that I have better things to do."

In 2008 she wrote a book. A Minority of One Lesley Brain's story of her time in the Big Brother house. and says there were lots of good things about the experience too.

Asked about the best bits she said: “The audition process took months and months and involved all sorts of mad tests,

“I thoroughly enjoyed it all, even standing outside a cafe in London waiting to meet a total stranger with all my personal documents in a bag...bank statements, driving licence, birth certificate, passport.

“Who, in their right mind would do that? Only someone very curious to see how it all worked.

"I loved the parties afterwards. I went to some really rough clubs and met all the big names of reality at the time.

“Davina McCall was truly lovely to me, we had fun. I've never regret it, even when ridiculous lies were printed about me.”

Since leaving the BB house Lesley has lost her second husband David, an architect who was 23 years older than her.

“Mr Brain died five years ago,” she said. “ He was 90. He loved me going on Big Brother, though neither of us had seen it....but he told me he didn't intend watching it.

“In the event he said he watched a bit and, as I was so alone in there - everyone else spent the day in bed and got up at night, and I kept 'normal' hours, so he had plenty of viewing of me just sitting on my own - he watched more than he thought.

“There was a bath in the sitting room and I filled it with shampoo to make a bath full of bubbles and had a bath. Those were the days when viewing figures would be envied now.”



Since leaving she has also successfully studied for an MA in psychology with a thesis in colour in the built environment and paints anything from the walls of her house to small paintings

“The programme was hardly life-changing for me so since then I did take my clothes off, as is traditional for female contestants, for a charity photo shoot but it has been business as usual.,” she said.

“I write and travel a lot.

“Over the years I have created gardens, both for myself and sometimes for others. I am just completing a beautiful walled garden.

“I designed it in January and never realised the events that would follow. Most of the major work was done throughout lock-down all socially distanced so that presented a challenge.”

Not as big a challenge as getting into the Big Brother House at the age of 60 and surviving to tell the tale.

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she seems happy with her garden making, I’m glad queen of youth