Luke Marsden: ​The Big Brother house will be a different place to 15 years ago

This week I’ve taken a trip down memory lane and watched some old clips of my time in BB on YouTube. The conclusion I’ve come to is, that if I said half of the stuff I did say in 2008, I’d be cancelled now, I wouldn’t even be writing this column.

My time in the nation’s most famous bungalow has been well-documented over the last decade and a half, and as a fan of the show I’m genuinely excited for its upcoming autumn return on ITV2 this year but I fear for the future of reality TV.

Gone are the days of people just wanting to watch other people talk about the weather, now the audience demands total and utter recklessness, backstabbing and deceit, they should just tune into BBC Parliament instead. I was fortunate to appear on the glory days version of Big Brother on C4 just before C5 took over and euthanised the show. I was also lucky to appear on national TV in a pre-Twitter and TikTok era, the best I could read about myself was on Myspace.

Now Love Islanders and the rest are subjected to instant and relentless social media abuse from the same people who used the hashtag ‘be kind’ after Caroline Flack’s death.

Don’t misunderstand me, Big Brother was a once-in-a-lifetime experience which opened more doors than it closed but it was a more innocent time for reality TV contestants.

Mental health issues caused by stints in Big Brother and other reality TV shows weren’t an issue to be discussed in 2008, in fact, I only had two psychologist checks, one before and one after. Now ITV and other broadcasters have to (rightly) invest a lot more in mental health aftercare.

If you’re reading this and thinking of applying, my advice is to go and look in the mirror and have a long hard think about who the person is that looks back at you. Then decide if it’s time to make a life-altering change…