Big Brother: A Decade in the Headlines (E4/Channel 4)

31 May 2009

Grace Dent, notable TV critic and BB fanatic, presented "Big Brother: A Decade in the Headlines", in which she assessed the impact that ten years of Big Brother has had on celebrity, diversity and television.

She recalled incidents, issues and controversies such as Nasty Nick, Fight Night, riots in India over Jade vs Shilpa, and the growth of gossip magazines such as Heat and so on.

In one section she examined whether Big Brother had had any positive psychological effects, and visited Oxford don Peter Collett who recounted a number of experiments studying "capsule habitats", and how people often spoke about how they had found them to be "turning points" and valuable, if not always pleasurable, experiences.

This led Grace to speak of the housemate who most laid claim to being positively affected by being on BB, her "favourite housemate of all time", a certain Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace. We were shown some familiar clips of Aisleyne's time in the house as Grace described something of her emotional "journey" during her time on BB7, adding that Aisleyne "had more to learn than most". And then we saw Aisleyne as she is now, speaking about how being on Big Brother has changed her and her life for the better. This is what she said.

"Being in Big Brother was a process for me to get to know myself a lot better. I recognised my bad points and accepted them. I'm not saying it was the best therapy of my life but it definitely started a process that I needed to go through. I would have carried on my life in a blinkered manner, and never checked myself like that. BB really opened the doors for me and I've become a better person for it."

POSTSCRIPT: This is what Aisleyne posted on her forum about being Grace's "favourite" - "WHAT a compliment coming from such an amazing, articulate, informed woman! I was over the moon with her comment, I couldn't believe it!"

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