UK Big Brother 4: Cultural Exchange

During the four years since Big Brother first aired on Dutch television, the show has become a true global phenomenon, with more than twenty countries around the world signing up to the concept and airing their own domestic interpretations. With Big Brother houses springing up across different continents, it was perhaps only a matter of time before someone had the bright idea to bring a whole new international dimension to the show. Now viewers of the fourth season of Big Brother in the UK and the inaugural Big Brother Africa are witnessing the first ever Big Brother housemate swap, whereby one of the housemates in each house has been plucked from their familiar surroundings and flown across the hemisphere to spend a few days living in the other house.

Naturally, news of this unique crossover was kept from the housemates of both houses until the last possible moment. The exchange participant from Africa was chosen through winning a cocktail-making task, while in the UK house, one housemate was asked to volunteer without actually being told in advance what they were volunteering for. Both were then taken from their respective houses and flown to their new destinations, while the other occupants were kept in the dark as to their whereabouts until their new temporary resident made a dramatic appearance.

As chance would have it, the two people taking part in the exchange couldn’t be more different. Africa’s representative is Ugandan Gaetano Kagwa (Gae for short), a law student educated at the University of Wisconsin whose interests are jazz, cooking, and politics. He has been a popular figure in the Africa house and has already indulged in some unspecified intimate sub-blanket activity with South African girl Abby. As there are only three women left in the UK house, he might find his options over the next few days rather limited.

Meanwhile, representing the UK in the African house will be Cameron, the deeply religious fish trader from the remote Orkney Islands - a place as far removed from any African cultural influence in the UK as it is possible to get, although he has travelled to South Africa before. He has previously expressed concern about some of the alcohol-fuelled flirting in his own house and unsurprisingly soon became alarmed at some of the open habits in the Africa house, including the mixed-sex bedrooms and the communal nude shower.

It will be interesting to see how both Cameron and Gae react to their new temporary environments, and one wonders whether this experiment will spread to other Big Brothers around the world. Hypothetically, one day we could see swaps between housemates in the U.S. house and those in, say, Germany, Brazil, or Australia. One day, the idea could even be taken to its extreme and there might be a true global Big Brother with housemates representing different nations around the world, in the same way that the African version represents twelve different countries on the continent now.

We shall be following this fascinating experiment in more detail from both the British and African perspective on RealityNewsOnline over the next few weeks.

You can contact Phil at philrno@yahoo.co.uk.

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