Big Brother Panto

Broadcasts

Big Brother Panto aired from 20 December 2004 to 5 January 2005 and was presented by Jeff Brazier. It was broadcast each night on E4 at 10pm and repeated the following morning the T4 slot on Channel 4. On 28 December there was a live show on E4 at 11am where comments and suggestions from the public were read to the housemates. The finale aired at 9pm on E4.

The housemates went home twice, firstly from 23 to 27 December and secondly from 30 December to 3 January to spend Christmas and New Year at home. Unlike all other Big Brother series, there were no evictions and no winner. The only public vote was for who played Cinderella.

On 27 December, Channel 4 accidentally broadcast the first half of the late-night E4 show, containing adult language and content, pre-watershed on T4. They later apologised. Big Brother Panto was sponsored by TalkTalk.

House

The housemates spent the duration of the series in "The Lodge". There was a kitchen, bedroom, diary room, and a great hall. The Lodge was located in Bristol Studios. The great hall is the living room in which most of the housemates spent their time rehearsing. The great hall was cabin themed with red walls and wooden flooring. The mirrors used for the cameras were enlarged to resemble dance studio mirrors. Some polar bears and reindeer sit in exhibit boxes. The kitchen had bright pink carpet with turquoise blue walls with an igloo styled snow door leading to the bedroom. The diary room was located through the wardrobe in the kitchen based on the classic story The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe. The inside of the diary room had two Christmas trees either side and skiers skiing down a mountain against the night sky full of stars. Once again there was only one bedroom cabin log themed with half of the beds being double wooden beds and the other half being snow looking beds on a raise platform. The garden was covered in snow and had a hot tub in it. It was situated through the kitchen but had a ceiling covering it.

Housemates

Ten former Big Brother housemates took part. From Big Brother 1 were Nick Bateman and Melanie Hill, from series two was Narinder Kaur, from Big Brother 3 was Tim Culley, Jade Goody and Spencer Smith, from the fourth series was Anouska Golebiewski and the fifth series' was represented by Victor Ebuwa, Kitten Pinder and Marco Sabba. The housemates were paid for appearing.

In addition to the housemates, there were coach and staff to train them for the pantomime. The director was Chris Denys, the dance coach was Louie Spence and the dame coach was Dave Lynn. The stage manager was Ruth and the voice coaches were Mike and Nick. Jonathan Harvey also appeared on the show.