Posted by Simon at May 18, 2006 07:50 PM

The seventh year of Big Brother is about to hit our screens in just a little over an hours time, and this year it promises to be many things, with the main theme of it being 'twisted'

Inside out twisted house

Producers have turned the house inside-out, putting the living room furniture out in the garden, alongside parts of the kitchen, whilst inside there's some fake grass instead of carpet.

It's also said to be the smallest house ever, with the idea of making it a really difficult place for the housemates to live (The Eye predicts we'll see at least two people walk this series, probably one during the first week in the typical "I've done the wrong thing, I shouldn't have ever come in here!" breakdown, followed several weeks later by another housemate who has just had "too much" and wants to walk, claiming they've made it x number of weeks and it's more than they thought they'd stay for, blah blah blah...) and of course a small house which is hard to live in, is surely going to raise the tempers and cause arguments if not full scale fights - and who can forget "fight night" from Big Brother 2004?!

Have the papers leaked the housemates?

The tabloid papers have been awash with their stories of who's going in to the house this year, and other than a couple of years ago they've never actually managed to get the names leaked "early".

That's not to say that they're wrong of course, and some of the rumoured housemates that have been all over the papers in the last few days may well be those which have been picked by the Big Brother producers to appear in BB2006... we'll only know though once all of the housemates have entered tonight, and even then we might not know for sure as it's claimed there's 14 bed spaces and only 12 going in tonight, meaning two are almost definitely going to join during the coming days.

Are these the (un)lucky 12?

The latest 12 names to have shown up online as "the housemates" are:

Oscar
Daniel
Richard
Jeffrey (Jeff)
Abdul
Max

Anika
Grace
Shelley
Rachel
Bonnie
Amelia

Are they this years bunch of housemates? Maybe. Maybe not. The names certainly seem more "normal" than some that have been in the papers, and quite a few of the people who had been down as going in (such as the "rock star with tourettes") shown to not be "in hiding" and out doing their normal things around the country - which of course they'd not be doing if they were one of the bunch who had been whisked off to a foreign location to be kept away from the news of what was going on back here in the UK...

But that still hasn't stopped the "other" list of possibles, including loud-mouth Shabaz and "miss wales" Imogen along with several others who have been in the papers during the past couple of days:

Shabaz
Imogen
Mikey
Lee
Caesor
Nikki
Lisa
Pete
Grace
Glyn
George
Dawn
Bonnie
Richard

Usually if a housemate gets revealled before the show they get dropped from the lineup and replaced by someone else who was shortlisted, and rumour has it that FIFTY potential housemates have been taken away by the BB crew this year so as they've got enough to pick from for the launch night - and possibly for that matter to bring in during the weeks if the numbers of housemates drop rapidly beause of people quitting early.

Live launch show, tonight at 9pm on Channel 4

Tune in to Channel 4 tonight at 9pm for the LIVE launch show, with Big Brother's Big Mouth on Channel 4 at 12:40am before the overnight coverage from the house on Channel 4 starts at 1:10am and runs for a pretty short 1hr55mins. Thankfully for anyone with E4 there's Live streaming all night, and of course, the interactive red button.