Original Big Brother champion Craig Phillips: ‘My advice for anyone going on the show? Don't'

Telegraph

16-07-2025

'Over the years, people would stop me in the street and say, 'I've applied for Big Brother; what advice would you give me?'. And I would look at them and go, 'Don't do it!''
Twenty-five years ago, 28-year-old Liverpudlian builder Craig Phillips was the most famous man in Britain, becoming an overnight sensation after winning the first series of Big Brother. It changed his life, and he has no regrets, but, he says, 'I wouldn't do it again.'
No one could have foreseen how that show would shape the future of reality television, with every wannabe in the land hoping for an instant springboard into show business. In those more innocent times, Phillips, now 53, was running a successful building company in Shropshire and blissfully unaware of the eventual benefits – and pitfalls – being on the show would offer.
'I was content with the direction I was going in,' he says down the line from his home in Majorca, where he lives with his wife Laura and children Nelly, six, and Lennon, four. 'At the time, I was helping raise money for little Joanne Harris, a Down's syndrome girl who needed £250k to take her to America for a heart-lung transplant. I'd seen a documentary about a programme in Holland called Big Brother and they were contemplating doing it in England.'
Phillips rightly deduced it could be an effective way of raising both money and publicity for Harris's cause, and wrote to the production company, Endemol, asking them to bear him in mind should they ever bring the series to the UK. Then he promptly forgot all about it.
Months later, they got in touch, and, after a tortuous interview process, he found himself down to the last 50 out of 45,000 who had applied. But 12 days before the show was due to start, he still wasn't sure if he was in or out. With his business on his mind, he issued the producers with an ultimatum – let him know within 24 hours or he would pull out. An hour later, he got the call.
'There was relief and excitement and panic,' he recalls. 'I don't think I slept that night. I was thinking, 'Am I doing the right thing?'. I'm neglecting my business. I'd signed quite a strict confidentiality agreement and couldn't tell anybody. So, I had to break the rules and let some of my customers know, because one day I'm doing a big extension and the next I'm appearing on TV.'
On July 14, 2000, Phillips and nine other contestants – including ex-nun Anna Nolan, city broker Nick Bateman, assertive Melanie Hill and chicken-phobic Darren Ramsay, none of whom had met before – entered the house in Bow, east London, watched by host Davina McCall, a small audience of friends and family and a few thousand via a choppy livestream online. Ladbrokes tipped Nolan to win, and gave the longest odds to Bateman, Ramsay and Phillips.
Four days later, Channel 4's TV coverage began, as the housemates became acquainted – for better or worse – doing nothing much but boredly parading about in swimwear and getting on each other's nerves. 'When you're in that environment, it's surprising how much things bother you,' says Phillips. 'Caroline [O'Shea], for instance; she'd be drinking a cup of tea, then put it on the very edge of a table. And I'd be looking at it, thinking, 'You're going to knock that off…' That used to grate on me.' But viewers couldn't get enough, and the programme became the talking point of that summer, while, inside, they remained blissfully unaware.
On day 35, Phillips famously confronted Bateman – immortalised as ' Nasty Nick ' in the tabloids – for passing covert notes to housemates encouraging them to nominate certain people for eviction, and the country came to a standstill.
'It didn't feel that big because we had confrontations pretty much every day,' remembers Phillips now. 'I personally just felt very let down by Nick. We were developing good friendships that were hopefully going to last forever, because we're all in this unique experiment. We felt betrayed.'
Although Bateman was removed from the show, the two remained friends, with Phillips even having a key to his London flat.
On day 64, Phillips emerged from the Big Brother house as the series' champion, winning £70,000. 'It was like coming up for air,' he says. 'I came out to fireworks, and it was all very overwhelming. Joanne was there and I told her I was giving her the money, and everyone was calling my name – it was bonkers.'
But being at the vanguard of a cultural phenomenon is not necessarily a pleasant experience. 'As soon as the live finale finished, I was driven away to a hotel with a police escort, as the press were chasing me. But no one was telling me what was going on. I felt like I was being kidnapped.' In his suite, around 25 people were waiting for him – including Brett Carr, the show's psychiatrist, who told him he was now the most talked-about person in Britain. He had yet to see his own family.
'It was terrifying,' he says. 'My knees were shaking. I felt vulnerable and panicky. It was not what I was expecting. All the things he was telling me were not sinking in. Then my cousin Steven arrived, and we sat up drinking until 8am. From there, it was straight to a press conference. Every time I moved, 50 flashbulbs went off.'
Unknown to the contestants, they had all been signed to agent Keith Woodhams. 'On the night I won, we were all up on stage, and one of the other housemates, Tom [McDermott], put his hand over my mic and said in my ear, 'F--k Keith Woodhams off'. I didn't know who he was talking about.' He soon found out. Woodhams wanted this new star to commit to a long-term contract, but Phillips was sensibly reticent. 'He kept pressuring me almost to the point of threatening me,' he says. 'I'd only been out of the house a week and was really enjoying the life – every famous person wanted to be my friend – but he was telling me it would all end tomorrow if I didn't sign.
'Davina had said to call her if I ever needed anything, so she put me in touch with her agent, John Noel. In the meantime, I had Max Clifford telling he'd make me a millionaire, but John understood what I needed.' Everyone wanted a piece of him, and after his exit from the Big Brother house, Phillips didn't go home for 97 days.
For half a decade, he forged a career in DIY TV shows. Now, over 2000 television appearances later, that's taken a back seat. 'My fame, obviously, has declined,' he says candidly. 'I always expected it, and I'm not upset about it. Most stuff I've been offered over the past seven or eight years, I've turned down. The money didn't justify me doing that work. As Barbara Windsor once said to me, 'Television is a fantastic industry to be in – when you don't need it. Don't get to a point where you do.'
Always with a strong work ethic – he started working in a butcher's shop at 13 after the death of his father – he makes his money today as he always did, in property. He's also a brand ambassador, an after-dinner speaker and has a lucrative YouTube channel (Mr & Mrs DIY).
While many of the cast of series one turned their backs on the limelight, Big Brother quickly returned to TV, opening the floodgates for fame-seekers and show-offs with little to offer.
Meanwhile, the original BB villain, Bateman, moved to Australia when he proved unable to shake off the Nasty Nick tag at home.
'We were very naïve,' muses Phillips, who's only occasionally in touch with a handful of the housemates today. Although he says he didn't follow subsequent series, he is aware of some of those who had an adverse experience on the show, including Jade Goody who, in the 2007 series, was part of a confrontation with Shilpa Shetty that saw her being branded a 'racist bully' by the Daily Mirror. 'She wasn't a racist,' asserts Phillips, 'she was just poorly educated. When she got angry, she'd go over the top'.
As for the original cast from series one, Phillips says, 'We'd gone in not really expecting much, but we all got a lot from it. There was no social media then. But today, you need to be strong enough to accept you could come out very badly from it. It's a dangerous position to be in.'
'Fame and fortune do not go hand in hand.'