Celebrity Big Brother 2025 launch – LIVE: Mickey Rourke is final housemate to enter show
A new cohort of stars entered the famous house
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.
Singer Chesney Hawkes, best known for his track “The One and Only” was the first star to enter the CBB house, followed by US reality star and singer JoJo Siwa and talk show host Trisha Goddard.
They were joined by former Love Island star Chris Hughes, ex EastEnders actor Patsy Palmer and former Tory MP Sir Michael Fabricant, who was tasked with greeting new housemates with a high five as part of the “super secret hush hush game show” challenge.
Retired Olympic athlete Daley Thompson, TOWIE star Ella Rae Wise and TV presenter Angellica Bell were later arrivals, along with RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Danny Beard and Coronation Street’s Jack P Shepherd.
And perhaps the biggest name to sign up was 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.
Who's on the line-up of Celebrity Big Brother 2025?
First things first, who is rumoured to be taking part this time around? As ever, we won’t know for certain until the launch show kicks off tonight, but the rumour mill is already in overdrive. Here are some of the names who are thought to have signed up...
Celebrity Big Brother 2025: Full list of names set to enter the house
The best Celebrity Big Brother moments of all time
Which Celebrity Big Brother moments live on in your head rent free?
For me, there can only be one winner, and that’s “David’s dead”, the chaotic, extremely quotable farce that played out in the CBB house in 2016. When Angie Bowie was informed by producers that her husband, iconic musician David, had just died, she was understandably distraught, and shared the news with housemate Tiffany Pollard.
Pollard, however, got the wrong end of the stick entirely, and assumed that Angie was in fact mourning the death of fellow contestant David Gest. Pandemonium ensued.
Arguably, CBB has been trying to live up to those dizzy heights ever since, but there are plenty of other nuggets of TV gold in the show’s back catalogue.
From ‘Kandy Floss with a K’ to Gemma Collins’ meme-worthy time in the house, here are some of the best moments from series past...
The best Celebrity Big Brother moments: from ‘David’s dead’ to Kandy Floss
Inside the Celebrity Big Brother house
Before this year’s cohort of celebrities make their CBB debut this evening, here’s a sneaky look inside the new Big Brother house. As ever, it’s been decorated with all the extravagant zeal of an over-excited kid decorating on Sims 2. Minimalism? The CBB interior designers haven’t heard of it. 2025’s aesthetic seems to be all about dripping blobs of paint in pink and blue.
And there’s a swirl-patterned dining table that, more than anything, reminds me of the opening moments of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.
The colourful new Diary Room chair
Of course, a Big Brother redesign wouldn’t be complete without a weird new Diary Room chair. This one continues the explosion in a Dulux factory theme: it’s covered in big, bold paint drips and decorated in a frankly migraine-inducing array of colours.
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
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Mickey Rourke has made many horrific career moves – Big Brother is the worst yet
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...
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
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.
Hollywood star ‘turns down £1m offer’ to appear on Celebrity Big Brother
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.
Celebrity Big Brother: All the former winners as show makes a return to ITV
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.
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