FORMER Big Brother UK winner Cameron Cole has revealed everything about the run-up before appearing on the show.
ITV has recently announced that the famous reality TV show will be returning to our screens in 2023, after its last non-celebrity season aired on Channel 5 back in 2018.
Cameron Cole won Big Brother in 2018
Cameron was only 19 when he was on the show
The winner of said series was Cameron Cole, and the popular contestant scooped the grand prize on the show.
However, he’s now back to living an entirely normal life as a student in London.
Now 23-years-old, Cameron was only 19 when he won the series, and describes himself as the “accidental winner” in his Instagram bio.
Speaking exclusively to The Mirror, the reality TV star has detailed exactly what the application and preparation process was like prior to going into the Big Brother house.
Cameron is originally from Norwich, but is studying Psychology at Goldsmiths University in central London.
He called the application process “simple”, explaining: “I just had to send over a two-minute video and I was fortunate to hear back.
“Then I had to do some open auditions and then more closed-off auditions, it was a bit like The X Factor, there was multiple stages.”
After a lot of back and forth with producers, and multiple trips into London, he was asked if he could jump on a Skype call to answer some medical questions.
He explained: “But that was how they got your live reaction on the webcam, I joined and they said ‘Cameron, you’re in Big Brother, would you like to be a housemate?’.”
After that point, Cameron only had a few days to buy an entire new wardrobe before he had to go into hiding.
He explained: “I had around two weeks to sort everything out, I had to buy new clothes, all with no logos or visible brand names, that was all before an eight-day lockdown which was held at an unknown location.”
When it was time for him to head into hiding, a chaperone from the show picked him up at a random train station and took him to a secluded cottage, where he had to stay for a few days before the show kicked off.
His mobile phone was confiscated by the chaperone the second they met, cutting off all contact with family, friends, and the outside world.
He explained that after staying at the cottage: “I was then taken to a hotel in London where we had to do certain media interviews, photoshoots and film sections for Big Brother’s Bit on the Side.”
All of the housemates were kept at different houses across the UK to start with, before they were all taken to the same hotel in London.
Cameron said that security was very strict whilst in the hotel: “No one was allowed to leave their rooms when other housemates were around.”
They were also all given codenames by producers in order to avoid giving away their identities.
“We all had code names and mine was Cider,” explained the star.
Cameron is now a psychology student at Goldsmiths University
