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.
Donna Preston is ready to 'spice up' the Celebrity Big Brother house
All this “super secret very hush hush game show” schtick is getting a bit wearing,
Anyway, it’s time for housemate number 10: actor Donna Preston, who wants to win some money for her car. Extra marks for honesty, Donna, and for the Chappell Roan walk-on music! She’s clearly not well versed in her CBB lore, though, given that she just took offence at Will Best’s reference to “old maiden type of shoes”, a classic Tiffany Pollard insult from a series gone by.
From CBBC to CBB, it's Angellica Bell!
“I began my career 25 years ago on CBBC,” says Angellica in her entrance video. Way to make a millennial feel utterly ancient, Angellica. Doesn’t she look radiant in yellow and green, though?
And the penultimate housemate is... Danny Beard
Early reports had claimed that Danny would be a late arrival, but that’s been firmly debunked now that the RuPaul’s Drag Race winner has turned up, wearing some truly fabulous shoulder pads (that are potentially in danger of knocking out the other housemates).
Mickey Rourke is the final Celebrity Big Brother housemate
So the rumours were true, then. Actor Mickey Rourke is the thirteenth and final star to turn up, decked out in a cowboy hat and a red leather jacket.
According to his introductory video, he has no idea what Big Brother is, but Ray Winstone told him he should sign up. Oh, to be a fly on the wall during that conversation.
“I had nothing to do tonight,” he quipped before lingering a bit too long with AJ Odudu and seemingly stopping to greet just about every fan gathered outside.
Social media responds to Mickey Rourke's entrance
So Mickey Rourke’s entrance was a bit uncomfortable, wasn’t it? AJ Odudu is being praised on Twitter/X for the way she managed to handle the situation
And that's the launch episode done and dusted!
So Mickey has been nominated to take part in the first task. We’ll see how that pans out tomorrow, but I can’t imagine it going particularly well, given his, erm, lack of general awareness about how the show works.
The verdict is in and it's... not great
Let’s just say I wasn’t hugely impressed by tonight’s launch show, which felt alternately bleak and beige...
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