Posted by Simon at May 17, 2004 02:50 PM

Just like Big Brother watches, The Eye will be watching back - and love it or hate it Big Brother returns to our screens next week for the 5th year. Let's hope it's better than last year's abysmal flop.

As with previous years there are rumours abound - everything from housemates that are supposedly shortlisted to appear in the house, to weird and wacky changes to the rules, a split house, two houses, only 6 housemates, or 10, or 12, or more. Truth is no one really knows and even once the show has kicked off on May 28th there's still a good chance the producers will introduce twists and turns along the way.

What has been confirmed though is that Big Brother 5 is "cruel and nasty" - reports in today's papers claim the series producer as saying that they have picked 10 (or 12, depending on which source you read) housemates who are all very different, and won't get on with each other. But haven't they said things like this before? Hasn't every pre-arranged fight/friendship that the Big Brother producers have attempted for, gone completely against how their experts though it would? Fact is, until you put them all together in the house, subjecting them to the real Big Brother, with the cameras watching 24 hours a day, and everything else associated with it, you won't know how they're really going to react.

However Big Brother's producers do know how the housemates could react, after Sunday's papers reported that stand-in contenstants testing out the house before the new series launch trashed it, by writing on walls, spilling drink on the carpet and causing considerable damage to furniture - some of which Channel 4 aren't too sure can be fixed in time! Presumably Big Brother wasn't watching closely enough there...

And just before the heat-wave weekend that we've had, Channel 4 launched a set of new adverts for Big Brother, giving the very first (official) glimpse inside the new house - it's looking mighty odd.

Previous houses have had a rather calming influence in their design and colour schemes, but the BB5 house looks set to turn all this on it's head as there's bright coloured walls and furniture, including sloped walls, harsh angles and odd green bumps on the walls.

It's also been picked up on several Big Brother fan forums that there are ramps everywhere in the house, and the wood-style bridge is thought to lead out to the garden where it's believed the bedrooms may be located - seperate from the main living area itself.

Several weeks ago the News of The World revealed plans for the BB5 house which they've managed to get hold of. Of course they needed to be taken with a pinch of salt as they're a tabloid newspaper trying to sell copies. However, everything that has been revealed so far in photos in The Sun and The Star appear to prove the Mirror has got it right - there's still a lot that hasn't been revealed though, so it's quite possible some of the details from the plan below are far wide of the mark...

We'll only know for sure once Big Brother 5 swings in to action on May 28th at 10pm when the housemates (6, 10, 12 or more of them) enter the house. There's also a preview to proceedings in the form of Big Brother Little Brother on Channel 4 at 8pm, and "Big Brother - 50 Best Bits" is being aired over three shows, starting at 9pm on May 25th with 50 to 31, continuing down to 11 on the 26th, and concluding with the top 10 moments on Thursday 27th - exactly 24 hours before the full show kicks off.

For everything Big Brother, keep an eye on The Eye.