[JakeyBoy]

We all know the press - well Daily Star - feed on posting absolute rubbish about Big Brother, and we also know that despite it all being lies, Endemol and C4 won't turn round and sue their arses off for defamation, libel, slander etc.


But Phillip Edgar Jones, creative director of Big Brother and one of the big bosses since day 1, will write about it in Media Guardian.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcas...852970,00.html (free registration required)

The five great BB myths
Phil Edgar-Jones
Friday August 18, 2006
MediaGuardian.co.uk


Let's take a look back at the controversies of series seven:

1. They're all nut ball freaks

As usual, this year's Big Brother attracted the perennial criticism about exploiting vulnerable people.

I genuinely don't think this is the case. Remember: people apply to be on the show - we don't go looking for them. They really, really, really, really want to be on TV.

Housemates give informed consent before appearing - after endless warnings about why it might be a bad idea to lay yourself bare on a TV show that attracts such unforgiving scrutiny.

They are interviewed four times, there are role playing games, police checks, medical checks, family visits and sessions with psychologists.

We do our very best to weed out individuals that might have difficulty handling the experience or the exposure it brings. We look after them before, during and after the show with appropriate aftercare support.

But the real reason I don't think housemates are nut ball freaks is that both myself and creative director Sharon Powers have pretty much the exact same psychometric profile of your average Big Brother applicant.

Maybe the lunatics have always run the asylum?


2. It's a fix

Or, to be factually accurate, it's not a fix at all ... not even slightly.

I'm talking about "golden ticket-gate". Has the world gone mad? My own personal number one highlight in the nutty conspiracy theories chart was that Aisleyne had special magnets on her hands that would attract the ball numbered 14, thereby ensuring Susie's place in the house.

After the media furore, we were investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority. We are eagerly awaiting their final findings, but we are happy we have demonstrated that the golden ticket draw was conducted in accordance with the laws of chance.

I even found myself in the bizarre position of doing a press conference where we slowed down tapes of all the balls going round the tombola machine, freeze framing so I could point out individual balls. These balls had numbers like 11, 27, 8. A whole range of numbers in fact. Not just the number 14.

It's also worth noting that we can put housemates in any time we want anyway - in fact, a couple of weeks later we put 5 new people in - so why would we have gone to all this trouble just to fix it? It makes no sense.

By the way, people really did land on the moon. The flag had metal bits in it or something to make it look like it was flying. One of the housemates told me and they're an alien from space so they should know.


3. Big brother producers in crisis talks

This is our favourite line in any tabloid report of our activities behind-the-scenes.

We are told we are "desperate", we are told we are "panicking", we are told we are "locked in talks desperately panicking about how to get out of the desperate mess we've created that's all gone horribly, disastrously wrong".

Usually we have plenty of biscuits at our crisis talks. And most of all, we have a laugh - it's an entertainment show after all.

We have meetings to chat through ideas for tasks and twists. We know some will work the way we thought and we know some will work in a rather different way.

The second house this year was something people said had us all in "crisis talks". It's absolutely true it wasn't soundproofed, but we knew that. Honest.

For us that's not the point. The best tasks and twists are about creating situations that will be unpredictable. It's not about being in control of everything - Big Brother is at its best when us producers are out of control and housemates are creating their own stories.

Still, it's fun to talk about.


4. The big rip-off

So, viewers voted some housemates back in. Some people didn't like this: 2,700 complaints to Ofcom. Some people did: more than 800,000 votes cast.

We walk a fine line on Big Brother and it's fair to say that some people on the team liked the idea and some didn't. Whichever camp you're in, it's worth pointing out that it wasn't a money making exercise - all the £250,000 profit raised went to charity.

It was a purely editorial decision about creating an event in the house in the final two weeks - an event that would be totally unexpected for the housemates and therefore unpredictable and ultimately show familiar people in a different light.

It also created what you might call "lively debate". Twists and turns are part of the Big Brother tradition, which viewers have come to expect.

And if people still care enough about the show to talk about it, then somewhere something has succeeded.


5. It's all about ratings

Weirdly, commentators often talk about us, and entertainment producers in general, doing everything in a "bid for ratings".

Well, yes. We like it when lots of people watch our show. Bums on seats. It's how we are judged.

During this run of Big Brother we have been regularly seating 4.8 million, 4.9 million, 5.6 million bums. The owners of these bums must have been enjoying something. It's probably partly to do with the various controversies.

But it might also have something to do with a house full of interesting people giving us moments of comedy (Nikki in the diary room); drama (Grace's precision bitching); emotion (reading the letters from home in the prison task); and a fascinating race to the finish. Will Aisleyne nick it ahead of Pete? Will Glyn make a last-minute spurt? Will Richard come up from behind? Who knows?

The viewers will decide tonight. In the meantime, crisis talks have already begun for series eight. Hopefully, you'll read all about them.

·Phil Edgar-Jones is creative director of Brighter Pictures, an Endemol company