How to Watch UK TV Channels Outside of the UK? I'll give you a simple trick that will explain how to watch UK TV channels live abroad. Now you can watch all of your favorite UK TV programmes while you are away from home without VPN with 1Fakt.com
As hard as it may be to believe, this year marks 25 years since the genesis of a cultural phenomenon. Long before we were watching singletons trying to find love (and do bits) or celebrities slumming it in the Australian jungle, 10 ordinary people moved into one extraordinary house – and Big Brother was born.
With a new bunch of housemates currently under the surveillance of the all-seeing eye, and the nation, heat thought it was about time we caught up with reality TV’s OG ‘It’ couple, Grace Adams-Short and Mikey Dalton.
Grace, 40, and Mikey, 42, met in 2006 on series seven of the show and fell in love in front of the cameras and their housemates, including Aisleyne-Horgan Wallace, Grace’s live-in nemesis Suzie Verrico (who she infamously threw a glass of water over as she was evicted), series winner Pete Bennett, and the legendary Nikki Grahame, who sadly passed away from anorexia in 2021, aged just 38.
Fast-forward 19 years, and Grace and Mikey now live in Liverpool with their four children, Georgiana, 13, Spencer, 10, Allegra, six, and Atticus, three. Here, they reminisce on the good old days.
It’s been almost 20 years since you met on Big Brother – can you believe it’s been that long?
Grace: I feel so old! I’m the worst at time-keeping . I’m like, ‘Yeah, we’ve been together seven years’. Well, how does that work, because we’ve got a 13 year old? Time flies when you’re having fun! We’ve done a lot. We’ve had four kids, we haven’t been messing around.
Mikey: We have been messing around...
G: Yeah, that’s why we’ve got four kids together.
What will you do to mark your 20th anniversary?
G: I’m expecting a nice big rock. I’ve got my eye on one.
still sweeping her off her feet... ©photographyandrewlee
How do you look back at your time on Big Brother?
G: Life was so different then. There was no Instagram, it was just a totally different world. If you wanted to say something, you had to do an interview with a glossy mag. We used to do so many interviews with heat, because that was the way you would respond to things. Whereas now, everyone just does a social media post.
M: I liked the old way – I’m glad we did it at a time before social media. There’s more negativity now, while we just enjoyed it for what it was. We both went in just for the experience and were lucky to find each other.
G: We were speaking to Lucie Cave [heat’s Chief Creative Officer] the other day. She feels like an old school friend, because we did so much with her when we came off the show. I liked the old days when it was face-to-face, and you knew the person. Now, you know people from Instagram, but you’ve never met them.
Do you ever watch old clips from your series?
G: People have been putting clips from it on TikTok. Someone made a really nice edit of us. It makes me fall in love with him all over again when you look back on it.
M: The other day we were spinning sticks and our friend said, ‘You’re like majorettes’ and I said, ‘It was a Big Brother task – I had to do cheerleading and all sorts’. It’s funny we remember those things.
Would you let your children watch it?
G: No, I swore so much! It’s the worst advert for parenting. They have seen some of the fun things, and it’s nice that they’ve seen clips of us when we were younger. It’s funny, our eldest said, ‘Mummy, you sounded so much posher when you were in the Big Brother house and Daddy was so much more Scouse. Now, Daddy sounds so much posher, and you sound so much more Scouse.’ We’ve rubbed off on each other.
grace with late bb housemate nikki grahame ©Getty Images: Sylvia Linares/FilmMagic
Grace, you were portrayed as the villain after you came off the show – how was it dealing with all that?
G: Yeah, I was the baddie. I think this is where it’s different with social media. Now, you get loads of backlash online but, honestly, I’ve never ever had anybody come up to me and give me abuse on the street. Everybody says they loved my character and that I was funny and controversial. But then sometimes on Instagram, I’ll post a picture and people will comment, ‘Are you still a Big Brother bully? Are you still a bitch?’ Get over it, it was 20 years ago. But I do find it quite funny.
It must be quite weird when people feel like they know you, because they watched an hour of edited footage of you every night?
M: In a way, they do know us, because we were in their living room every night. Sometimes people remember stuff that you don’t. Our series was voted the best one ever!
G: We had all the characters. We had Nikki and Pete – it was a house full of absolute nut jobs.
Grace, in the interview you did with us in 2006, you said it was awful what people thought of you, but you understood. Has that opinion of you stuck?
G: No, people see the real me now. When I watch the old clips, I can see I was such an opinionated madam, but most 20 year olds think they know everything. I’m older and wiser now. I have a different outlook on life, being a mum of four. When I watch it now, I’m like, ‘Where did my balls go? Where did I get those from?’ I remember Mikey used to say, ‘Grace, shut the hell up. You’re live on TV.’ I just couldn’t keep my mouth closed.
Do you ever worry about how people will perceive you when they first meet you?
M: Grace has got a good energy about her. When people walk into a room with her, they feel that connection straight away, there’s no hostility with anyone. When school parents, friends, and work colleagues say, ‘We love being around you guys,’ I know they actually mean her. She’s got a good vibe about her.
they fell in love on big brother in 2006 ©Getty Images: C. Uncle/FilmMagic
Apart from your relationship, what else did you take away from the Big Brother experience?
M: Just experiencing the moment. It wasn’t about wondering what work you’re going to get afterwards or if you’ll still be in the industry in a year. We just went in to have fun in our early twenties. We were just lucky to get on the show.
G: I think these days a lot of people go onto reality TV for the wrong reason. We literally just enjoyed the moment, and I think that’s why we’ve stood the test of time, because we’ve done everything that feels right for us. We got engaged after four months and everybody said it was a short amount of time, but they didn’t understand that we were with each other 24 hours a day. Our first week together felt like we’d been in a relationship for six months. If you meet somebody on a date, you’re together for a couple of hours, but straight away he was seeing me with my make-up off, waking up with my hair looking like shit with my morning breath. It felt like we’d been married for 20 years by the time we got out of there.
Are you still in touch with any of your former housemates?
G: I still speak to Glyn [Wise] over Instagram. Richard [Newman] and Lea [Walker] are always really supportive of what we're doing. We were speaking to Nikki before she passed away. A lot of the housemates from our year tried to rally around and boost her a little bit when she was going through that dark time. It was a huge loss, she was such a fantastic character.
Big Brother is a unique experience in itself – but it must be even more so if you lose a housemate…
M: It was so shocking. I was most shocked when someone on the WhatsApp group sent through a picture of Nikki towards the end. It was pretty horrifying. I was so shocked, it was upsetting. She was replying to messages at first, wasn’t she?
G: Yeah. Not too long before that, some of the housemates from our series did a Zoom chat with Rylan and she was in good spirits then. Obviously, it was a long battle for her, even before Big Brother. COVID didn’t help, because then she had a lot of alone time.
M: In a way, it’s nice to think she’s still here. It’s not like we see people from the show weekly or monthly. There might be an event every now and then where housemates meet up, so we just see it as if she’s still there. It’s easier to deal with these kinds of things that way. Otherwise, you can get bogged down and upset all the time.
GET THE BEST CELEB INTERVIEWS IN HEAT MAGAZINE EACH WEEK ©Bauer Media
Any idea what Pete’s up to these days?
G: I have no idea. I think he was always a bit of a wildcard. I don’t think anyone knows what he’s up to. I heard he spent all the prize money on a good time, as opposed to investing it.
M: He enjoyed himself and that’s nice to see. Even people who we didn’t see eye to eye with on the show, we all have respect for each other, as we had this same experience. We just want to see everyone in a nice place and doing well.
Does that mean you’ve made up with Suzie?
G: I have never seen her since. She’s basically disappeared! Poor Suzie – if we saw each other now, I hope she’d laugh.
Why do you think Big Brother has stood the test of time?
G: It’s the cockroach of reality TV – it can’t be killed.
M: I think people like the mundanity of it. It’s the simple moments that are the best. I remember one vividly where Nikki came over to Grace and she had the tiniest pants you’ve ever seen on. She says to Grace, ‘What do you think, babe? Are these alright?’ Grace goes, ‘Oh, amazing. They’re gorgeous.’ She hadn’t turned her back for five seconds before Grace went, ‘Can you believe what she’s wearing?’ It’s gold.
G: I don’t know why everyone thought I was a bitch!
Hair styling: Eva Cossack, make-up: Gracesloanemua, studio: Oso Content Studio, jewellery: Say It With, photographer: photographyandrewlee