Previous Big Brother winners Craig Phillips and Nadia Almada have reflected on the impact the show had on pop culture, saying: "It changed the way we watched TV."
The reality series will return to ITV and Virgin Media on Sunday and air every night following its revival by the broadcaster five years after it was axed by Channel 5 amid a ratings slump.
The revival will see TV stars AJ Odudu and Will Best follow in the footsteps of former Big Brother presenters Davina McCall, Emma Willis and Brian Dowling, who all presented the popular programme during its 18-year TV reign.
Phillips, the winner of the show in 2000, told ITV's Good Morning Britain: "It changed the way we watch TV. It was the first one that brought in the interaction of voters and online and this, that and the other and it just took off.
"I bump into people and they can tell me exactly where they were on September 15, the day I won. They can remember clearly, people were having parties and celebrating it."
Reflecting on the 24-hour nature of the show, he said: "I think that’s what grabbed the audience, it was new in so many different ways.
"It was risky at the time you know, it was risky for everyone, for us going in we didn’t know what to expect from it."
Almada was the first transgender winner of the show when she won in 2005 and she said her victory was "so significant".
She added: "It was a kickstart of a conversation. We didn’t have references then.
"I, to this day, get people through my TikTok platform come to me and say to me 'I remember you were that reference that we never had and we’re so grateful’.
"And then the beauty of it all transcended everything beyond gender, race, colour. I became this human, Nadia, that everyone loved."
Phillips said the contestants entering the house will likely be very different from the people who took part two decades ago.
He said: "They’re going to become very popular no doubt, whether it’s for good or bad reasons for what they do in there.
"I think they may be going in with a bit of agenda. They will probably already have agents and things lined up. When we went in we were very naive. We had nothing lined up and we didn’t expect anything from it.
"I promise you I sat in that house every day talking to the group thinking to myself ‘how on earth could you possibly make an entertainment show out of this nonsense? We are sitting there talking rubbish, we are bored, we are doing these tasks’. I had no idea how you could make a show out of it."
Big Brother: The Launch will see a new cast of "carefully selected housemates from all walks of life" arrive at the brand-new house in front of a live studio audience.
ITV said the famous house featuring a "contemporary new look" will see the return of tasks, nominations and live evictions with the voting public playing a "crucial role" through the series – before voting for the winner of the show.
The popular voice-over actor and broadcaster Marcus Bentley will be returning following an 18-year-stint narrating the show before it ceased production in 2018.
The social experiment programme, which sees housemates live together in a custom-built home for weeks without access to the outside world in a bid to win a cash prize, started in 2000 on Channel 4 before Channel 5 took over in 2011.
Big Brother: The Launch will air on Virgin Media One, Virgin Media Two and the Virgin Media Player on Sunday at 9pm.
Source: Press Association
