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BBC explains how important Big Brother really was.

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On Monday night we waved farewell to the reality TV show Big Brother, which has ended after its 19th series.

Cameron Cole was announced as the winner of the final season after beating housemate Akeem Griffiths.

The first series aired back in 2000 and since then it's come a long way from its original billing as a "social experiment".

But even though it's come to an end, the show's influence on the TV world still lives on.

Eighteen years down the line, here's how Big Brother has changed the face of TV.

It gave us (the audience) more power

Big Brother gave us the gift of voting - we were the ones who decided who stayed and who went.

It was the show that took the power from the producers and gave it back to the people.

But wait, there's more. Through voting we could also decide what the housemates did with their time in the house.

In other words, we could decide who had fun and who suffered.

The idea of allowing the viewers to influence what they're watching has since been used in countless programs, such as I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here and Love Island - and plays a huge part in us enjoying them.

The explosion of 24-hour reality TV

When the first series launched in July 2000, Chicken Run was the big box office movie, The Corrs were number one in the charts, Sara Cox was presenting the Radio 1 Breakfast Show and 1Xtra hadn't even been born.

And it seems that we love to watch random people living together because what followed was an influx of reality TV shows.

Celebrity Big Brother kicked off a year later with some familiar (ish) faces as housemates.

I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here wasn't far behind in 2002 - we watched a glamour model, comedian, actor and other A/B/C listers living together in the jungle.

In 2005, a load of celebrities flew to an island to try to find love. They called it Celebrity Love Island.
Ten years later, Love Island continued without the celebs.
In between that time, we had the likes of Geordie Shore and Ex On The Beach.

There's been lots of crossover between shows, with contestants like Charlotte Crosby, Scotty T and Marnie Simpson channel-hopping from Geordie Shore to Ex On The Beach to Big Brother.

It encouraged streaming and spin-off shows

The internet may have existed in the early 2000s but it was very text heavy and YouTube certainly was not a thing.

But Big Brother helped normalised something that was completely new - the 24-hour live feed.

Watching the housemates potter about for an hour each evening simply wasn't enough for us. The creation of the live feed meant we could switch on our TV and watch the housemates non-stop, 24/7.

Eventually (when internet speeds caught up) the live feed could be streamed online, pretty much like every other TV show out there.

And although most of today's reality TV shows don't have live feeds, viewers can still fill their boots with extra content on "bits on the side" type shows. Love Island After Sun anyone?

The creation of even more "celebrities"

Is it possible to be famous for being famous?

Yes, it is, and you can thank Big Brother for that.

Before Big Brother existed regular people had obviously been on TV.

But Big Brother did something different - it made these people famous for simply being themselves.

Whether it be for Nikki Grahame's temper tantrums or Pete Bennett's loveable personality, most of you will have heard their names before.

It's still the case for today's reality TV stars that do stints on various shows before going on to A: launch a TV career, B: go off the radar, C: go on Celebs Go Dating or D: go on Celebrity Big Brother.

It literally took over the TV world

Us Brits are used to seeing the house in Elstree with either Davina McCall or Emma Willis telling the evicted housemate: "I'm coming to get to you!"

But the format of the show is actually from the Netherlands and the Big Brother franchise is a huge global phenomenon.

From Brazil to Albania, contestants from more than 50 countries and regions have sat in an oversized chair in the diary room.

In 2001, Big Brother 3 in the Netherlands introduced the "rich and poor" concept, splitting the house into a luxurious half and a poor half.

Big Brother Africa was the first ever to have two winners, each getting £150,000 in series six.

There's been quite a few cross-country contestant swaps. One to remember was the UK's Jade Goody from Big Brother 3.

She took part in Celebrity Big Brother 5, where she was infamously involved in the racism controversy against Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty.

Jade later went on to compete in a third Big Brother series - this time in India in 2008.

Jade's involvement in the series ended tragically. Two days into it Jade was diagnosed with cervical cancer and had to fly home.

She died in 2009.

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 every weekday on BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra - if you miss us you can listen back here.

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On Monday night we waved farewell to the reality TV show Big Brother, which has ended after its 19th series. Cameron Cole was announced as the winner of the final season after beating housemate Akeem Griffiths. The first series aired back in 2000 and since then it's come a long way from its original billing as a "social experiment".

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Viewing figures of the first few seasons of Big Brother.

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Over the past decade, Big Brother has been a television phenomenon: the show that defined the reality genre and became Channel 4's most successful programme.

In 2007, Celebrity Big Brother caused an international incident and brought Channel 4 to crisis point, amid accusations that the Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty suffered racist bullying.

The first series in 2000 was acclaimed as a social experiment and generated thoughtful comment pieces in broadsheet newspapers, not least when the Machiavellian activities of "Nasty" Nick Bateman were rumbled.

Big Brother also drew huge numbers of phone votes and drove traffic on the web: 20m calls, with 7.4m for the final, and 200m page impressions on the website, for the first series.

Despite the show's novelty wearing off and an arguably less compelling array of characters in 2001, ratings held up in the second year, by which time viewers could vote by text.

It was third series when the show's success peaked. This featured the late Jade Goody, who came fourth but captured the public imagination like no other contestant before or since and used the show to launch Britain's most successful post-reality show career.

The show's average audience hit 5.3 million in 2002, with a peak of 10 million viewers tuning in to see Kate Lawler win the series. The final attracted a colossal 51% share of the audience.

2004's fifth series - which featured the infamous "Fight Night" - was the next most successful, but ratings tailed off every year from 2006 onwards.

By this year's series Big Brother's average ratings were at a low of just 2 million viewers and the show, long since abandoned by the chattering classes, was largely ignored in the press.

Nevertheless it remained Channel 4's biggest hit, even as the broadcaster decided to axe it beyond next year's series. The show remains particularly popular among the young audience that is so desirable for advertisers.

Big Brother 1

Duration: 18 July - 15 September 2000 (60 days)
Winner: Craig Phillips

Audience average: 4.6m

Launch night: 3.7m

Final night: 7.9m, 9.5m

Highlight: "Nasty" Nick Bateman's double dealing sparked a showdown with contestants and led to him being asked to leave the house.

Big Brother 2

Duration: 25 May - 27 July 2001 (64 days)
Winner: Brian Dowling

Audience average: 4.6m

Launch night: 3.5m

Final night: 5.8m, 8m

Highlight: Big Brother had its first love story as romance blossomed between Paul Clarke and Helen "I love blinking I do" Adams.

Big Brother 3

Duration: 24 May - 26 July 2002 (64 days)
Winner: Kate Lawler

Audience average: 5.3m

Launch night: 5.7m

Final night: 8.2m, 9.2m

Highlights: Jade Goody's malapropisms ("Where is East Angular?"), Alex Sibley's singing, Tim Culley covertly shaving his chest - no wonder this was the top rating series.

Big Brother 4

Duration: 23 May - 25 July 2003 (64 days)
Winner: Cameron Stout

Audience average: 4.2m

Launch night: 6.8m

Final night: 6m, 6.5m

Highlights: Jon Tickle brought a nerdish charm to the house that later secured him a slot presenting Sky1's Brainiac.

Big Brother 5

Duration: 28 May - 6 August 2004 (71 days)
Winner: Nadia Almada

Audience average: 4.7m

Launch night: 6.6m

Final night: 5.9m, 8.2m

Highlights: The house divided into two rival groups - the Jungle Cats and the Harem of Lip Gloss Bitches. It all went wrong on Fight Night, but Big Brother ended up with its first transsexual winner.

Big Brother 6

Duration: 27 May - 12 August 2005 (78 days)
Winner: Anthony Hutton

Audience average: 4.2m

Launch night: 5.8m

Final night: 6.3m, 6.6m

Highlights: Three contestants were kept in a secret garden, unbeknown to all but one of the people in the main house.
Duration: 18 May - 18 August 2006 (93 days)
Winner: Pete Bennett

Audience average: 4.4m

Launch night: 6.9m

Final night: 7.6m, 6.2m

Highlights: Big Brother took its commitment to diversity yet further by including someone with Tourette's syndrome - who went on to win the show.

Big Brother 8

Duration: 30 May - 31 August 2007 (94 days)
Winner: Brian Belo

Audience average: 3.6m

Launch night: 6.2m

Final night: 5.2m, 5.2m

Highlights: A fake housemate from Australia entered the house for a week.

Big Brother 9

Duration: 5 June 2008 - 5 September 2008 (93 days)
Winner: Rachel Rice

Audience average: 3.3m

Launch night: 5.3m

Final night: 4.2m, 4.9m

Highlights: Big Brother introduced its first blind housemate.

Big Brother 10

Duration: 4 June - 4 September 2009 (93 days)
Winner: to be decided

Audience average: 2.2m so far

Launch night: 5.1m

Final night: not yet known

Highlights: Concerns about the effect of reality shows on contestants' mental health were intensified after Sree Dasari slashed his wrists soon after his eviction.

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Over the past decade, Big Brother has been a television phenomenon: the show that defined the reality genre and became Channel 4's most successful programme. In 2007, Celebrity Big Brother caused an international incident and brought Channel 4 to crisis point, amid accusations that the Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty suffered racist bullying.

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Celebrity culture has changed

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AS you may be aware, this great newspaper turns 50 years old later this year so it is time for us to start looking back at the stories that mattered most to our readers.
I'm sure many will be surprised to learn that in the history of The Sun's famous letters page there are two stories that have generated a more overwhelming response from you than any other - the deaths of Princess Diana and Jade Goody.

That's why the tenth anniversary of the death of Big Brother contestant-turned-genuine pop- culture icon - the first actual member of the public to become a millionaire superstar through reality telly - is a significant moment.

The change to our culture that Jade became the face of has been derided by many as the downfall of true talent in favour of putting crude normality on a pedestal.

But I disagree.

Jade helped to democratise the entertainment industry.

It didn't matter where you were from. Even an uneducated dental nurse from Bermondsey, South London, with no unique talent but a unique personality could become a much-loved household name.

Jade ushered in an era of very normal superstars, from Leona Lewis to Susan Boyle to Harry Styles.

As we all discovered - especially during the nasty Celebrity Big Brother Shilpa Shetty race row - Jade was far from the perfect celebrity.

Nor was her husband Jack Tweed, who became a star in his own right, but mainly for the wrong reasons.

This week I sat down with Jack for the first interview he has given in many years.

For the past decade he has been treated as the villain in Jade's story - a cheating scoundrel trying to milk a life of fame on the back of his cancer-stricken wife.

But I've never bought into that narrative and believe Jack deserved to have his say on such a significant anniversary.

After all, this was the man who married Jade in the weeks before her tragic, untimely death in March 2009.

And the man who helped to raise her two beloved sons Bobby and Freddie in their early years.

Jack admits much of his behaviour was appalling back then.

But he also points out he was a normal 21-year-old bloke thrust into the public spotlight as his wife died before his eyes in the most heart-breaking of circumstances.

He went totally off the rails. Ended up in prison. Abused alcohol. Slept with young women for the sake of it.

But all these years on, he has never recovered from losing Jade. He feels guilty the moment a woman becomes interested in him. He's never loved anyone else.

And he mourns the loss of his baby that Jade miscarried because he longs to be a dad but doesn't know if it will happen.

Most importantly, he's eschewed the showbiz lifestyle entirely to get a normal job. He's a builder now. He gets up at 6.30am each morning and does an honest day's work.

And he knows in his soul that it is that normality that makes Jade, wherever she is, proud.

What I've learned...

CELEBRITIES turn up on red carpets to promote themselves - regardless of what they're actually attending. Case in point this week was Kelly Brook at the Cirque du Soleil Totem premiere, attended by Prince Harry and Meghan, at the Royal Albert Hall.

She posed for a copious number of pictures, went to her seat, watched the show for ten minutes, then promptly left to get dinner at Wagamama!

Gemma Collins is a diva many people can't understand. But here's a fact to the haters - not only has the controversial and outrageous figure known as The GC added a million ratings for ITV's Dancing on Ice this year, she's dominated online traffic, too. If you have any sense of fun you should join my campaign for her to win the show.

Hiring one of the Beckhams may seem like a no-brainer for a fashion brand, but it doesn't necessarily lead to instant success. Hot on the heels of Victoria's fashion company making a £10.2million loss, the parent company to David's menswear line Kent & Curwen has lost £10.7million. Perhaps the public have decided they both look ridiculous.

It's been a terrible year for music, especially if the Brit Awards nominations are anything to go by. I am on the voting panel, but think it's inexcusable Kylie Minogue was snubbed in the International Female category after her epic country comeback album. At least the ridiculous omission of Sam Smith in the British Male category last year has been reversed.

Wootton's week

Listen at talkradio.co.uk.
GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL exclusive@the-sun.co.uk

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How Jade Goody revolutionised celebrity culture - she was never perfect but she was always real

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AS you may be aware, this great newspaper turns 50 years old later this year so it is time for us to start looking back at the stories that mattered most to our readers. I'm sure many will be surpr...

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Nikki Grahame discusses how the reality series changed her life

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Nikki Grahame has reflected on eighteen years on Big Brother and how the show changed her life.

Nikki made her debut on Big Brother in series 7 in 2006. She later returned for the Ultimate Big Brother series on Channel 4 and then again as a 'Time Warp' housemate in 2015's sixteenth series on Channel 5.

After then competing on the Canadian series, Nikki made a final Big Brother comeback here in the UK last week as part of a final twist to the current series.

Big Brother is now set to wrap up on UK TV, with Channel 5 announcing that it will be dropping the show beyond 2018.

In an interview with the Metro about her time with the series, Nikki said: "I've so proud to have been a part of it, and it's always a dream to have been on the show and to have been given that opportunity is a dream come true.

"I don't regret a single thing. It was most definitely the best thing I ever did in life. From that, I was able to experience some of the most unimaginable things. The past 12 years have been a whirlwind."

Nikki credited the show with allowing her to buy her own house and says taking part "really grounded" her.

She added of Big Brother's end: "I am devastated, and this last series has been absolutely outstanding. I'm going to be so lost when this ends, I am obsessed with this series."

Also lamenting the end of Big Brother has been host Emma Willis.

Speaking ahead of Friday evening's last eviction, Emma said: "It's quite possibly the last ever eviction that I will host which is f**king horrible... This series goes up there, this is my favourite series on Channel 5, 100%. That's not saying the others aren't great but this cast has really delivered."

Emma concluded: "I've really enjoyed it and I don't want it to end."

Big Brother is back Sunday at 9PM on Channel 5 before the final on Monday, November 5 at 10PM.

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Nikki Grahame reveals how Big Brother changed her life

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Nikki Grahame has reflected on eighteen years on Big Brother and how the show changed her life. Nikki made her debut on Big Brother in series 7 in 2006. She later returned for the Ultimate Big Brother series on Channel 4 and then again as a 'Time Warp' housemate in 2015's sixteenth series on Channel 5 .

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1,225 complaints regarding racial abuse towards certain individuals within the house.

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Big Brother: Ofcom receives 1,225 complaints about abuse

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The Channel 5 show is to be investigated by watchdog after viewers complained about racist comments. By Mark Sweney

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House divided over shopping budget fiasco

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The housemates have had a massive row about the way the luxury shopping budget was allocated.

Luke, Mario, Jennifer and Michael are especially unhappy with the food which was ordered because they think Rex - who was in charge of compiling the list - mismanaged the budget.

Luke said it was "chaos, absolute chaos" and added it was joke that the group had ordered 80 beers and 10 ciders.

He said: "We are going to be under by about £80."

Lisa said she thought Rex would be better at ordering food because he is a chef, and added she was especially worried about Mario because he has lost a lot of weight since entering the house.

Jennifer called the ordering process "ridiculous" and placed the blame fully with Rex, saying: "He doesn't listen."

She added: "It's just something that we can't afford to mess up."

After claiming the housemates had failed to spend £200 of their £490 budget, Mikey also criticised the decision to buy lots of fruit juice saying: "It will be away within two days."

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Big Brother housemates row over shopping budget

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The housemates have had a massive row about the way the luxury shopping budget was allocated. Luke, Mario, Jennifer and Michael are especially unhappy with the food which was ordered because they think Rex - who was in charge of compiling the list - mismanaged the budget.

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A poll created for Big Brother fans to vote in, whether or not they believe if a black woman can win the reality show.

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Can a black woman ever win BBUK? - Big Brother 18 [Summer 2017] - ThisisBigBrother.com - UK TV Forums

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Can a black woman ever win BBUK? Big Brother 18 [Summer 2017]

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The Independent discusses how Jade Goody was unfairly treated

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So it was Adele, after all. As the self-styled lesbian virgin emerged from the Big Brother house to a disturbing chorus of boos, Jade, the early favourite for eviction, settled down to another week inside.

This was an extraordinary turn of events. At the beginning of the week, Jade Goody, a 21-year-old dental nurse from south London, was described in the tabloids as "the most hated woman in Britain". She was at the head of the list of those facing eviction, having accrued six votes from her housemates - Adele Roberts received only two - and she was a dead cert as far as the bookies were concerned.

But then, as the vilification mounted, Jade seems to have benefited from a wave of sympathy. In the biggest - and most profitable - vote in the history of Big Brother, Adele received 2.1 million votes for eviction, 62 per cent of the total.

For Jade, meanwhile, this may be a brief reprieve. Her unpopularity is real, but puzzling. She has simply been loud, drunk, coarse and ignorant, none of which would raise many eyebrows in the Old Kent Road on a Saturday night. Jade's crime, or her misfortune, has been to behave like that while other contestants were prettier and better groomed: and that was just the men.

Old-fashioned manners prevent most of us from making personal remarks about people. But there is nothing personal about television. Those are not feeling human beings, but patterns of light dancing on a screen. Now that many newspaper columnists have to scrape a living from the crumbs beneath television's table, they've not felt any restraint. Jade is thick, we're told: she's a bitch, and she "looks like a pig".

Of course, if you write for The Sun, say, there are obvious dangers in ridiculing someone just because she thinks that East Anglia is abroad, that Rio de Janiero is a person and that you can get a disease called "insomnina". Safer to savage her looks.

In The Sun, Jade has become The Pig. There was a whole page poster, one day, saying VOTE OUT THE PIG, bylined Dominic Mohan, who has the misfortune to look like a weasel.

The Daily Star, meanwhile, claims to be the official Big Brother paper, but that hasn't stopped its Save Miss Piggy's Bacon campaign, illustrated with an amateurish montage with a pig's face over Jade's. Even Graham Norton, a supposed wit, has provided his own variations on the porcine theme.

The media are not setting the pace, however. They did not hand out Slaughter the Pig placards to the people outside the Big Brother house in Elstreewhere, in another Britain, The Railway Children was made. They have not forced people to ring chat lines and log on to fan sites to join in the abuse. They didn't order schoolchildren to bully their friends on the grounds of an imagined resemblance to Jade.

Jade knows nothing of this, yet. But her family are reading it all. The Daily Mirror, which dubs itself "The Official Anti-Big Brother Paper", interviewed an aunt last week, who said Jade was in danger of hanging herself because people were being so nasty.

"Jade survived a childhood that could have easily left her damaged - now she is being damaged even more," said Michelle Caddock. (Channel 4, however, produced Jade's mother on the Friday night eviction show to demonstrate how happy she is with the situation.)

But when you look at it, Jade's story is a bit too real for reality TV: her father left home when she was small, and was in and out of prison. Her mother lost the use of an arm, so that Jade had to feed and dress her. Jade has done well. She has a good job and lots of friends locally.

In Bermondsey, they look after their own. "They're not just having a go at her," said one local, busily organising an army to meet Jade if she's evicted. "They're having a go at everyone in Bermondsey."

The same supporter, quoted in The Sun, mentioned something else about Jade that has gone scrupulously unmentioned but that might, on some level, explain the extraordinary hostility to her looks: he said she is of mixed racial parentage.

Actually, neither papers nor public were responsible for raising the emotional temperature of Big Brother this time around. It was a decision by makers Endemol and by Channel 4. There was a problem with the British Big Brother: the British. The Scandinavians cavorted naked, the Spaniards rowed passionately and the Germans worked hard. All the British did was drink tea, chat and try to ignore one another.

This time the producers have removed distractions and activities, so that inmates would have nothing to do but "interact". Either they'd have sex (Jade and PJ duly obliged, after a fashion) or they'd bicker. Dividing the house into the pampered "rich" zone and the spartan "poor" zone provoked endless grievances.

At first, they seemed the most boring group yet. Vain, ignorant and cynical, they were openly competing. Boredom made them snipe, and competition made them cynical. Big Brother 3 has been a ratings success, but its viewers are older and poorer than advertisers like.

Never mind: C4 has found huge new income streams: its E4 subscription channel, its internet stream (previously free, now £9.99 a month) and a whole range of paid-for phone lines and text messaging update services.

But what about the golden geese? What happens to the contestants after Davina has forced them to look at artfully edited clips of their embarrassing faux pas? The channel promises they are well looked-after. There's an open-ended debriefing with a psychologist. Then they can go home or to a hotel, where another Endemol employee helps them sort their media offers.

And that's what they're looking for. According to Cynthia McVey, a psychologist at Glasgow Caledonian University who worked on Castaway 2000 for the BBC, most reality TV participants want to be television presenters, and won't be told otherwise. "They hear, but they don't believe it," she says.

But how many previous Big Brother contestants are on our screens now? Rumour has it that if you have enough time and enough channels, you can sometimes see handyman Craig wielding a router on a DIY show. Sadly, there is not enough presenting work for the untrained output of the reality TV industry: it's all gone to people from the docusoaps.

Jade, inevitably, has always wanted to be on television. That's probably what drove her to the house. When she comes out, says McVey, she will be facing a "baptism of fire: she has no idea in her head about what's been said about her." It will, she says, be "a horrible experience".

In 1986, Leo Braudy, an American professor of literature, wrote The Frenzy of Renown, a history of fame. He says that most of those drawn to fame (as opposed to having it happen to them as a by-product of a lifetime's work) tend to have psychological damage and unhappy family histories. They hope the attention of the many will compensate for a lack of attention from the crucial few.

But it doesn't help. We think fame is a proper reward for our qualities: Jade, for instance, told the Big Brother recruiters that she'd be "good to watch". Well clearly she is, but not in the way she had imagined.

According to Braudy: "The famous soon realise that fame has them, rather than the other way round." And fame can drop us as quickly as it picks us up.

As McVey says, pondering Jade's future: "People will forget her: but she won't forget."

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Jade: As seen on TV, as crucified by tabloids

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So it was Adele, after all. As the self-styled lesbian virgin emerged from the Big Brother house to a disturbing chorus of boos, Jade, the early favourite for eviction, settled down to another week inside. This was an extraordinary turn of events.