Cameron Stout still remembers telling his parents he was planning to enter the fourth series of the reality TV programme Big Brother in 2003.
And their response to him was that he’d be better going to jail than entering the controversial Channel 4 house with its weekly evictions and stormy relationships.
Cameron, who ended up winning the show by a massive margin – the then 32-year-old fish trader from Stromness in Orkney remains the only Scot to have triumphed in the public vote – was sufficiently down to earth and level-headed that he coped with the pressure of the cameras being shone on him every hour of every day.
And he has responded positively to the news that ITV is resurrecting the programme which was last broadcast in 2018 at some stage next year.
Indeed, he has kept in touch with his housemates from their time together and has invited them to Orkney next summer to commemorate the 20th anniversary.
‘I never thought I’d hear anything’
Cameron was in no way dissuaded by the deflating experience of Aberdeen art student, Lynne Moncrieff, who was the first person to be evicted from the Big Brother house in the third series of the show which also featured Jade Goody, one of the most notorious and tragic figures in Big Brother history, who died of cancer aged just 27 in 2009.
As he recalled, he only entered it as a distraction and never remotely imagined he would end up winning the £70,000 prize and become well-known in the public eye.
He told me: “I did it as a joke, safe in the knowledge I would never hear from anybody again after I filled in the application form and posted it back to Channel 4.
“It was a lot different in these days. You didn’t have social media, so there wasn’t Twitter and all the angry comments that seem to fly around there. And, once you entered the house, you had no idea what was happening in the outside world – which, when I look back on it, was a blessing for us all.”
‘I was lucky that we all got on’
Cameron’s life changed forever when he walked into the Big Brother fold on May 23 2003 as the starting point of him being crowned the winner 64 days later.
He said it had been a full-on experience with cameras positioned all over the house, while three film crews worked shifts to maintain a permanent focus on what was happening between the housemates. In later series, arguments and acrimony were never far from the surface, but Stout has only positive memories of the programme.
He said: “In the previous series, the producers had put bars down the middle of the house and divided it into a ‘rich’ side and a ‘poor’ side, with the latter housemates denied anything but the barest basics. However, that format was criticised by many viewers and I think the British public have a well-developed sense of fairness.
“So, when we were selected in 2003, we got on pretty amicably and it was more about silliness than anything spiteful or nasty. So, of course, the public didn’t like that either!
“After I had won, they tinkered with the format again and it led to the police being called after what was called ‘Fight Night’ and the expulsion of two housemates.
“It’s always a delicate balancing act when you put so many strangers together.”
This was a trailblazing programme
Nowadays, reality shows form a large part of the TV schedules, ranging from Strictly to Love Island and The Great British Bake Off to Rupaul’s Drag Race.
But they were still relatively new in 2003 and Cameron was even asked by a researcher, after submitting a 90-second video of his home life, why he wanted to give up his idyllic existence in Orkney for the potential mayhem of the Big Brother madhouse.
He said: “It was more of a sociological experiment in the early days and I was quite happy to talk to other people and find out their stories and they were the same.
“I was working in the seafood industry before I went into Big Brother. Afterwards, I had a lot of freelance media opportunities [including in pantomime, as a radio DJ and a columnist for the Press and Journal] and I enjoyed that for some years.
“But part of me was always thinking: “How long can this nonsense go on?”
What about the new Big Brother?
The channel ITV2, which has enjoyed massive ratings and exposure in recent years with reality show Love Island, has confirmed that Big Brother will return with a “contemporary new look” following a five-year hiatus.
Yet Cameron hopes they revert to the original format which brought him into the limelight rather than going down the circus route of looking for wild and wacky people.
He said: “The programme gradually became a victim of its own success [as the Noughties progressed] and there was the need to make it more edgy, more risky, not maybe more nasty, but a different environment from how it began.
“I hope ITV goes back to inviting applications rather than holding auditions, where you have to sell yourself for 60 seconds or whatever. I would never have applied for Big Brother if there had been an audition involved [as happens with Britain’s Got Talent].
‘It’s time to welcome it back’
“But I’m excited about the fact it’s coming back. Every year after our household had been there, I used to look forward to seeing how they had changed the house, the layout of the place, who they chose to go in and it was always really exciting.
“It takes me back and I can’t wait. When I heard the theme music a few nights ago in a little promo, the shivers honestly just went down my spine.
“And those of us who were housemates still have a bond. We’re there for one another and we have kept in touch with one another. That will never change because we were in that house together for a while and we became friends.”
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