Celebrity Big Brother is back with a new houseful of controversial housemates including EastEnders star Patsy Palmer, Olympic champion Daley Thompson and outrageous Hollywood star Mickey Rourke.
When Danielle Meagher Collins – aka Dr Botox – appeared in Celebrity Big Brother Series 12, she shared the house with reality TV star Charlotte Crosby, dancer Louie Spence, model Sophie Anderton and Corrie stars Vicky Entwistle and Bruce Jones.
Now living in California, Danielle is a popular act on the stand-up comedy circuit, and she describes in her book – Diary of a Botox Bitch: Spilling the Tea on All Things Reality Television – the lengths to which the CBB show’s producers go to keep housemates’ identities a secret before the launch.
In fact, before Danielle entered the house, she was terrified about the press leaking her participation in the show. “I knew any press leaks could be lead to my removal from the show,” she writes. “And contrary to popular belief, contestants don’t know who else is going into the house.”
The production team gave contestants code names to make sure as few people as possible knew to avoid leaks. “Mine was Desdemona, which, in hindsight, was a bad omen given her tragic end in Othello,” says Danielle, who was the first person to be evicted.
Not that her short stay affected her celebrity fee as it is fixed no matter how long you stay in the house. She adds, “Whether you’re evicted first or last, the payment remains the same.”
The live show was set for Thursday, but contestants were put into hiding on the Tuesday. The night before, Danielle packed her suitcases. She reveals, “The production team later unpacked and repacked everything into brand-new suitcases, inspecting every item to ensure no contraband slipped through.”
A car arrived in the morning to take her to Boreham Wood, where she had to stay before entering the Celebrity Big Brother house at Elstree Studios. This was Danielle’s last chance to make a few phone calls. “Once you arrive at the hotel, your phone is taken away, and you’re only allowed one final call after checking in,” she says, admitting it was very jarring to be cut off from the world.
At the hotel, the driver called the production team, and they took huge precautions in case there were paparazzi waiting in the catch her leaving the car. “Two members of CBB team greeted me along with a security guard – and they handed me a towel to drape over my head and I had to enter through the hotel through a side door. It was all very ‘showbiz’.”
Using walkie-talkies, the security team protected their celebrity like they were on presidential detail. “I heard them say things like, ‘We have Desdemona. Approaching her room now. Is Desdemona’s chaperone in situ?’ It was all very high-stakes and dramatic.”
Inside her bedroom, Danielle met her chaperone was assigned to stay with her nearly 24/7. “It was tough being confined to a small, basic hotel room with no phone, TV, or even hotel staff allowed to interact with me. Cabin fever set in quickly,” she writes.
There were things to break up the monotony, like photo shoots, press interviews, and filming for Big Brother’s Bit On The Side, which was hosted by Rylan Clarke at the time.
“I didn’t meet host Emma Willis in the lead-up to launch night, and I only met Rylan after my eviction,” she says, “But I did meet with show’s doctor, who was kind and reassuring. Not everyone passed the psych test – one American celebrity’s daughter had to be flown home after failing.”
Danielle’s belongings were once again were searched by the production team – this time to ensure all logos were covered up. “A producer went through my bags making sure any logos and brands with covered with gaffer tape. To this day, I still find items with tape on them, a reminder of my time in the house,” she writes, adding, “My chaperone told me once in the past she had labelled 200 individual pieces of jewellery for a contestant.”
On the morning of launch night, Danielle and her suitcases were whisked away to the next secret location by the production team. “My chaperone and I climbed into a blacked-out people carrier we were taken to the Ibis Hotel near Elstree Studios,” she says, although she jokes, “The en suite bathroom was like a Portacabin toilet, and the room itself wasn’t much better.”
By this point, Danielle was sick of being surrounded by chaos. “I desperately craved some alone time, but up to five or six people were in the room at any given moment, plus an OK! photographer taking behind-the-scenes photos.
“Hair and makeup teams came and went, filling the tiny room and ratcheting up my nerves. I hadn’t been alone, not even to use the bathroom, for three straight days.”
At 6.30pm, it was time for Danielle to get dressed. “The sound department arrived to attach my microphone and sound pack, which had my name on the back of it – no more Desdemona!” she writes. “They explained that the housemates would be responsible for changing their own mic batteries twice a day. Things were beginning to get real.”
At 8.45pm, the launch finally began but Danielle wasn’t the first contestant to go in, so she stayed in her room, listening to the walkie-talkie chatter. The big reveal that year on CBB was that three housemates became cult celebrities and lived in secret, away from the rest, but at the time, Danielle had no idea. “We were told to keep the curtains closed which I thought was to avoid paparazzi, but looking back it was probably so we wouldn’t see how many cars had already left, which would have revealed how many contestants were in the house.”
At 10pm, there was a knock at the door. A security team escorted Danielle to chauffeur-driven Mercedes with a few additional security guards in tow downstairs.
Danielle admits, “My nerves were kicking in now and my chaperone tried to reassure me with a pep talk. ‘Walk slowly down the ramp, enjoy it, and smile because everyone will be shouting your name and the photographers will be going mad.
“And I was warned not to panic if I got booed – it was all part of the pantomime.”
The driver then drove Danielle out of the hotel, waited briefly in a nearby car park, then headed towards Elstree Studios. As the car approached the compound, the driver turned up the music, so Danielle couldn’t hear, and she was even blindfolded.
“We reversed into a parking space, and I could sense the buzz of activity around me. The contestant who went in before me was parked beside us – I later learned it was Abz Love from the boyband 5ive. The wait felt endless.”
Finally it was Danielle’s turn. “I was driven to the compound and I could hear Emma introducing the next housemate just behind the wall. Then came the call – I had 30 seconds.”
The car stopped, and Danielle was quickly guided to a small stairwell behind the iconic Big Brother eye. “The dry ice was everywhere, and I could hear my VT (video tape) playing for the audience. Suddenly, all my nerves vanished,” she recalls. “The eye opened, and I stepped out to a sea of people waving and cheering. To my relief, there were no boos.
“As I descended the ramp, Emma greeted me warmly and asked a few questions. Honestly, I couldn’t even tell you what we talked about – it was all a blur. Then the security guard signalled it was time to head into the house.
“That was it – I was officially a Celebrity Big Brother housemate. Showtime had begun.”
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