‘George Galloway being a cat on Celebrity Big Brother was simply terrible’

Will Best is all too conscious you don’t know who he’s. Or no less than you didn’t, earlier than he grew to become one half of the presenting duo on the helm of a brand new period of Big Brother. “Look, it’s not like I was going into it as the most high-profile presenter around,” he fortunately admits. “It wasn’t like I was at the peak of my career and would be throwing it all away if it didn’t work. I wasn’t carrying the baggage of wild success.” 

But should you occurred to be watching any mid-2010s music programmes, you may recognise Best’s sharp jawline and affable power. Best – born in London however raised in Leeds – was anticipated to comply with in his father’s footsteps and work within the charity sector, simply as his sisters did. Instead, impressed by the likes of Miquita Oliver, Steve Jones and Rick Edwards, he gave himself a yr to get out of his “miserable” promoting job and get on TV. 

Best ended up on Viva – a now defunct MTV offshoot – reverse Girls Aloud’s Kimberley Walsh, counting down the nation’s greatest music movies on Suck My Pop. “My first ever day filming, I got my entire body waxed and spray tanned by Katie Price,” he remembers. Then I needed to chase her automobile down Camden High Street carrying only a pair of paper pants. I bought within the paper.”  

From there he moved on to 4Music, co-hosting with Jimmy Hill (now a radio presenter on Capital FM), Maya Jama, and the opposite half of his Big Brother double act, AJ Odudu. “Those programmes – those training grounds for young presenters – don’t exist any more,” says Best.

Does TV simply discover its new stars from TikTookay? “I guess so. But talking to your phone by yourself is very different. We used to do two hours of live TV every day.” Best, then, is a extra conventional presenter, studying strains as if he wrote them himself, ad-libbing his manner by dwell segments and someway making a loud, brash present really feel intimate. He’s bought the suited and booted look down pat, however with simply sufficient edge (little doubt from the T4 days) to match the chew of Big Brother. 

They weren’t to realize it on the time, however that dwell tv baptism of fireside ready Best and Odudu for the most important job of their lives. The first sequence of Big Brother on ITV – and the primary on tv since Channel 5 laid it to relaxation in 2018 – was a triumph.

Two-and-a-half million viewers tuned into the launch present final October – greater than the quantity of people that watched the launch of probably the most recent sequence of Love Island, as soon as the shiniest jewel in ITV’s actuality tv crown. It’s additionally the most important viewers the sequence has obtained since 2012, its second yr on Channel 5 after transferring from its unique broadcaster, Channel 4.  

When it was introduced, nonetheless, the return wasn’t met with complete pleasure. Who is it for? A brand new, younger viewers? Or was it merely an train in nostalgia for millennials? The stress to get it proper was astronomical, and Best felt it acutely. “I was terrified,” he says, calling from the workplace of his “side hustle” firm Bloody Drinks (an organization that sells Bloody Marys in a can). “Because of the scale of it but also because I’m a massive fan of Big Brother. I felt double the pressure; I wanted to do a good job, but I also wanted the series to do justice to its history.”

In the occasion, the sequence trod the road between pleasing old followers and thrilling new ones completely and whereas it didn’t fairly have an effect on the tradition with the identical pressure as Big Brother’s golden years (Nasty Nick’s secret messages, Nikki Grahame’s Diary Room meltdowns; Alison Hammond breaking a desk; “David’s dead!”), it was successful.  

That’s all the way down to the casting of housemates consultant of a broad cross-section of British society, says Best. “It was the first question I had, and I later found out it was the first question AJ had too,” he says. “It was the most common question online and in comments too – is it going to be real people? Or is it just going to be sexy people or influencers?”.  

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Instead, they had been a “good bunch”, who you “could tell didn’t just go in there to get famous” says Best. ( job, since their quarter-hour are effectively and really over). There was Yinrun, a Chinese pupil residing in Yorkshire, 18-year-old transgender girl Hallie, NHS employee Kerry who has a number of sclerosis, proud Tory meals critic Henry, and former Miss Universe Great Britain Noky, to call a couple of. In the tip, it was Jordan Sangha, a 26-year-old lawyer from Scunthorpe, who was voted winner by the general public and took home the £100,000 money prize. 

Duty of care protocols are customary observe when making actuality tv these days, so Best and Odudu are extra than simply hosts. As the primary individuals the housemates communicate to after being evicted, they’re therapists and confidantes (even when their chats are broadcast to tens of millions). Housemates haven’t had any connection to the surface world for weeks once they go away – they don’t know how well-known they’ve turn into, whether or not they’ve been embraced, or are public enemy primary. It have to be a shock. “They’re stepping out to what feels like thousands of people in the crowd. Really, it’s only a few hundred, but the volume is honestly like nothing I’ve ever experienced,” says Best.  

“If they love you, it must be the best feeling in the world. To come out to boos would be hard to take for anyone. I’m always painfully aware that I have to tread this line between asking the questions that we know that audience wants answers to, but not ask them in a way that makes them feel like they’re a national hate figure. They don’t need some jumped-up TV presenter putting the boot in – it’s just not necessary.”

He and Odudu are “still feeling their way” with the interviews, he says. “I’m slightly mindful that there’s two of us and one of them. I’m looking forward to continuing to find that sweet spot of being kind but also getting the answers we want.” 

On Monday, they’re gearing as much as do all of it once more – however this time, with celebrities. There are not any line-up spoilers forthcoming from Best: after we communicate per week earlier than the premiere of the primary sequence of Celebrity Big Brother in six years, he insists he has no clue who will enter the home. 

“One of the reasons apparently is because the powers that be know that me and AJ are going to the Brits on Saturday night and we’ll probably have a shandy,” he laughs. “It’s super cloak and dagger.” That’s not stopped The Sun reporting the alleged line-up in full, which incorporates Kate Middleton’s uncle Gary Goldsmith, Strictly professional Nikita Kuzmin, former This Morning presenter Fern Britton and an X Factor reunion for ex-judges Louis Walsh and Sharon Osbourne.  

When it involves actuality tv, movie star variations are often derided – the concept of a sequence of The Traitors populated by D-listers makes me shudder. But not on Big Brother. While we wish the civilian solid to be regular and consultant, the extra bananas the celebs, the higher. “Once they’re in there, you don’t know which one of them is going to lose it,” says Best. “I think Big Brother will push their buttons a bit more than we would for a civilian.” 

He factors to George Galloway’s 2006 stint on CBB, wherein he infamously pretended to be Rula Lenska’s pet cat, full with meows, paw licks and pretending to eat kibble from her palms. It was excruciating, weird, unforgettable tv.

“When you look at politicians on other reality shows – Ed Balls on Strictly, Farage and Hancock on I’m A Celeb… – nothing they did came even close to how bonkers Galloway was,” says Best. “If you don’t watch it for a while and then go back to it, you realise how much we’ve downplayed how awful it really is. Only Big Brother can give you moments like that.” Coincidentally, Galloway has simply turn into an MP once more after profitable the Rochdale by-election.

But in our age of enforced movie star authenticity, wherein well-known persons are anticipated to share the nice, dangerous and the ugly little bit of their life with us on social media, will Celebrity Big Brother even work? “That’s what I’m most interested to see!” says Best. “We think we know our celebrities better than we ever have, but Big Brother will expose that we’re not seeing their true authentic selves online. Now they’re relinquishing control; I’m not sure any of them really know what they’re getting themselves into.”  

He makes use of his personal meticulously deliberate Instagram for instance. “Everything that I put up is very carefully designed to make it look like I just threw it up without a thought,” he says. “No. Every story has taken me like an hour to decide.” 

For the document, you’d by no means discover Best on Big Brother. “I’ve been quite anxious all day because last night I had an incredibly vivid, detailed, long-winded dream that I was in the house,” he says. “I was with Jamie Theakston, and he was really mean to me.” Best could be an terrible housemate (his phrases). “I’d be so desperate to be liked that it would come across as inauthentic and pathetic. I’m terrible with confrontation. I’d cry a lot. I’m a pathetic, overly eager crybaby.” 

‘Celebrity Big Brother: Live Launch’ is on Monday 4 March, 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX.