Celebrity Big Brother

From the successful Big Brother, a spin-off containing celebrities was launched in March 2001 originally in aid of Comic Relief. The first series lasted a full week and raised over £500,000 for the charity. The eventual winner was comedian Jack Dee, followed closely by Brookside's Claire Sweeney. In Season 2, Mark Owen walked triumphant as the winner. Les Dennis came second and Melinda Messenger came third. The charities that benefitted were Centrepoint, The Samaritans, Rethink and the National Missing Persons Helpine. In 2005 a third series was made and this time Bez was was the winning celebrity. The house itself is pratically the same as in Big Brother 5, with a few minor changes like a sauna. All of Channel 4's and Endemol's profit from this series's phone vote was be donated to the Tsunami Emergency Disaster Appeal. In addition housemates each chose their own charities who recieved a share of the money raised. The show lasted 18 days making it the longest Celebrity Big Brother by a long way. Celebrity Big Brother 4 was shown in January, 2006 and was won by the one non celebrity in the house, Chantelle Houghton. In 2011, the series moved networks to Channel 5 and Brian Dowling took over as presenter.