Celebrity Big Brother 2025 launch – LIVE: Mickey Rourke and Patsy Palmer lead this 12 months’s rumoured forged
Celebrity Big Brother is back on our screens, and a new crowd of famous faces is getting ready to spend the next few weeks living under constant scrutiny, with their every move, meltdown and ill-advised remark broadcast to the nation.
The official line-up of stars will be confirmed when the launch episode kicks off at 9pm tonight on ITV but, as ever, there are plenty of rumours swirling round as to who will be taking part in the star-studded social experiment.
Reports suggest that the likes of EastEnders star Patsy Palmer, former talk show host Trisha Goddard, retired Olympic athlete Daley Thompson and former Tory MP Sir Michael Fabricant will be entering the CBB house.
Also rumoured to be joining the line-up are Coronation Street star Jack P Shepherd, American pop star Jojo Siwa and singer Chesney Hawkes.
And perhaps the biggest name to sign up is actor and Oscar nominee Mickey Rourke, the 72-year-old star of The Wrestler and 9 ½ Weeks, who is reportedly the highest-paid of this year’s contestants, securing a rumoured £500,000 fee.
Will this eclectic line-up of celebs make for television gold? And which star will end up winning over viewers?
Is there a Celebrity Big Brother live stream?
Ah, the Big Brother live stream. If you’re a TV viewer of a certain age (ie. a millennial like me) then those words probably summon up glorious memories of tuning into E4 when you should have been revising for exams, watching grainy, minute by minute dispatches from the BB house, hastily censored with the sound of artificial bird song whenever the contestants starting swearing (most of the time, then).
Things have, of course, moved on since then. Now, you can keep tabs on this year’s celebs by tuning in to the live stream on ITVX (or STV Player if you’re in Scotland) or heading to YouTube. Ah, modernity.
What time is Celebrity Big Brother on TV?
Over the next few weeks, Celebrity Big Brother will be taking over the primetime slot on weeknights, airing at 9pm on ITV.
After a break on Saturday nights, it’ll then return at the slightly later time of 10pm on Sunday, to make space for police drama Grace (because nothing, and I mean nothing, stops ITV from airing a dad-friendly detective show on a Sunday evening – I wouldn’t have it any other way…)
Co-host AJ Odudu is already making herself at home
Yesterday, AJ Odudu shared some behind the scenes photos on Instagram, showing her and co-host Will Best enjoying a ‘housewarming’ ahead of launch night.
Watch the Celebrity Big Brother house getting built
Pretty impressive, right? It’s also somehow mind-boggling that the whole thing gets built from scratch on a random sound stage…
The most controversial moments from Celebrity Big Brother
Like so many reality TV shows, Celebrity Big Brother has faced its fair share of scandals.
From the racism row that engulfed the CBB house back in 2005 to the handful of stars who’ve been removed from the show due to bad behaviour or offensive remarks, these are some of the biggest controversies to date.
Who has won Celebrity Big Brother previously?
Need a refresher on which stars have already been crowned the winners of CBB? Here’s your guide to the celebrities who’ve emerged victorious from recent series.
The Hollywood star who ‘turned down £1 million’ to appear on Celebrity Big Brother
If the rumours are true, Celebrity Big Brother bosses apparently had their eye on another major Hollywood name for this year’s series – but the star ended up turning down their offer.
Who was it? Here’s a clue: she’s an Oscar nominee, just like Mickey Rourke… and her daughter’s pretty famous too.
Go behind the scenes at the Celebrity Big Brother house
And if you fancy a closer look at some of the, ahem, bold interiors choices inside the CBB house, allow The Independent’s Jacob Stolworthy to take you on a quick tour
This isn’t Mickey Rourke’s first brush with reality TV…
You might have missed it when it aired back in 2020 because, let’s be honest, there was quite a lot going on. But Mickey Rourke appeared in the fourth season of The Masked Singer, dressed up in a fuzzy costume to perform as his alter ego “Gremlin”.
In a move that slightly defeated the object of the show, Rourke ripped off his mask ahead of time. In fairness, it probably gets very claustrophobic under there.
You can watch the strange moment below…
Mickey Rourke has made a number of horrific career decisions – Celebrity Big Brother is the worst yet
The strangest thing about Mickey Rourke’s much-rumoured appearance onCelebrity Big Brother is that it hasn’t happened already, writes Adam White.
Few legitimately famous people feel more appropriate for a series that has spent 24 years rounding up the odd ducks of pop culture and throwing them into a house together.
The show has long platformed a particular strain of US celebrity, of which Rourke is a card-carrying member.
It’s best embodied by figures such as Tara Reid, Gary Busey, Kirstie Alley and Stephen Baldwin – individuals whose early recognition as actors had long migrated by the time they entered the house, their celebrity ultimately defined by tabloid scandal and odd prurience.
Read Adam’s take on Rourke’s strange career move below
