LUKE MARSDEN: Celebrity Big Brother's return feels rushed and ill-cast

​Welcome back Celebrity Big Brother!

It’s like 2005 all over again with Louis Walsh and Sharon Osbourne reunited to judge people as only they can.

But unlike 2005, they’ve both got new faces and ITV can only afford Osbourne as a houseguest not a fully-fledged housemate. The rumour has it that she is picking up £500k for a week in there. Not bad work if you can get it.

2024, of course, is a very different time. ITV is flag-waving harder than ever, overly casting and hyping up “the most real of celebrities.”

But I think we’ve now reached the middle of Lidl aisle of celebs. In fact without Osbourne, Walsh and Fern Britton in there, I doubt this could even pass as a Madame Tussaud’s exhibition.

Like everything these days, it is expectation vs reality and the reality is that the return we’ve all waited for since 2018 feels rushed and ill-cast so far, which is a crying shame as ITV nailed the civilian series’s return last autumn.

I have more famous people in my Instagram direct messages than half of this current cast in the nation’s most infamous bungalow.

As is standard for me, the abuse has already begun to pour in on Instagram – “the be kind platform” – as I had the audacity to say I simply didn’t know who ZeZe Millz is. I’d bet my mortgage that anyone reading this hasn’t a clue either.

Sharon Osbourne is a firebrand who got herself cancelled from a US primetime TV show for defending (rightly so) her friend Piers Morgan.

She clearly didn’t have a clue what was going on during launch night so it’s probably for the best she’s only a guest for a week as I’ve a feeling this latest version of the reality TV juggernaut will be a race to see who will cancel themselves first.

My money is on Louis!