[Amy]

In her first newspaper interview, Nadia Almada talks about her traumatic childhood, her sex change and how she's finally become the woman she always wanted to be. But was her Big Brother victory a sign of a new spirit of tolerance in Britain - or simply good television?

If you didn't see Nadia Almada coming, you would definitely hear her. That amazing signature laugh (half witch's cackle, half fire alarm) is already cascading down the stairs as I make my way up into a West London bar to meet this year's Big Brother winner. The former bank clerk from Woking and Portuguese transgender woman is having her photograph taken, very much in her element, posing and chatting among the fragile soapy globes thrown out by a child's bubble machine.
Once the photographs are over, Nadia sits with me and smokes just as she did in the Big Brother house - brilliantly and continuously, as if she were a starlet auditioning for a role in an art-house movie. This is her first interview with a newspaper since her win: Nadia surprised everybody by not selling her story to a tabloid ('I wanted to be in control a bit, a little more private'). In person, she turns out to be as lovely, honest, defiant and vulnerable as she was when she was winning over the viewers in the Big Brother house, showering in her high heels, screaming for cigarettes and fretting about her 'secret' in the diary room. She is pretty, too, very radiant and glamorous. Looking at her, you think again of how unfair (not to mention ungallant) it was of housemate, Victor, to describe her as 'Antonio Banderas with boobs on'.

Now into the second week of her new-found celebrity, Nadia reveals that she's still very much on a high. 'I haven't grasped it yet,' she smiles. 'I haven't stopped and said "That's me!" on TV and covers of magazines, or grasped being stopped by people in the street.' Has she ever felt pestered? 'Not at all. If it was negative stuff, you'd think, "Oh no!", but it is all "I voted for you", "I loved you". To hear such comments, who could ask for more? I should enjoy it," Nadia grins sagely. 'Next week, next month, whatever, this is all going to fade away.'

Nadia's emergence from the Big Brother house with four million votes (74 per cent of the total) was one of the unexpected TV highlights of the year. What could have so easily become an exploitative freak show turned into something genuinely moving: her euphoria at being validated and accepted; the crowd's euphoria at her euphoria. For once, there seemed to be a harmonious sense of yin and yang between the public and an instant celebrity. 'I felt so flattered,' says Nadia. 'I still do. I could die tomorrow and be a very happy person. I just feel so comfortable and if you'd seen me six months ago, I wouldn't have been comfortable at all, with pictures of me as I was before, or anything.' Nadia lights a cigarette thoughtfully. ' Big Brother changed me. It really changed me.'

It wouldn't be too wild a claim to say that Nadia has single-handedly 'saved' the Big Brother franchise. She certainly revitalised it, giving it a much broader and deeper emotional appeal. Big Brother 2003, when 'Cameron the Christian' won, was an acknowledged flop. This year, the makers, Endemol, pulled out all the stops, delivering 'evil' Big Brother. They were rewarded with nude lawn-mowing, bitterly polarised cliques, sex under a table, and a fight so bad the show was taken off the air temporarily, not to mention the customary newspaper headlines screaming about exploitation and the moral decline of the nation. Whether you loved it or loathed it, or did both at once, no one could deny that Big Brother was on form again.

For the full article The Observer