'Mickey Rourke could be Celebrity Big Brother's greatest booking or biggest disaster'

Yahoo

08-04-2025

It may be early days for the latest series of Celebrity Big Brother, but already one thing is clear. Hollywood actor Mickey Rourke will either go down as the greatest booking in the history of the show or the most disastrous call the producers have ever made.
After the lustful and inappropriate way the 9 1⁄2 Weeks star treated the show's female host AJ Odudu on his way in, many people will be understandably wondering why ITV let him stay for even 9 1⁄2 minutes, let alone the whole first night.
It was ironic that Rourke was the thirteenth housemate of the night — because his presence could prove to be very unlucky for ITV.
Mindful that it was a live show and that they were up against the clock, Odudu and her co-host Will Best handled it as well as they could have been expected to, embracing the chaos and making sure 72-year-old Rourke actually entered the house before the famous ITV News bongs sounded.
Weirdly, for the rest of the night, it seemed to me like ITV was trying its best to ignore what millions of viewers had witnessed live on TV — a bit like its horseracing team did when Broadway Boy had that terrible fall in Saturday's Grand National. The unofficial line appeared to be leaning heavily towards 'Oh my gosh, what is he like?!'
To his credit, Alan Carr at least addressed the elephant in the room on ITV2's Late And Live partner show, but even he seemed to be making light of it, likening Rourke's behaviour to a kind of lecherous cartoon character.
I'm sure someone from the production team will have had a quiet word with Rourke in the Diary Room by now, but you have to wonder what the hell ITV was expecting in the first place. Come on, he isn't known as 'Hollywood hell-raiser Mickey Rourke' for nothing. (Cynical narrator's voice: 'ITV knew exactly what it was doing, kids.')
By his own admission, Rourke knows nothing about the show and revealed that the only reason he agreed to sign up was that it was 'either go to London or do another s***y independent movie.'
The fact that he proceeded to ruin the opening night's secret gameshow twist by blithely doing his own thing simply reinforced the feeling that ITV will have a job on its hands trying to control the uncontrollable.
Still, I'm sure ITV knows what it is doing. Everything will be fine, right?
To be fair, the acceptable side of Rourke's brand of chaos did liven up what had been a fairly standard procession of vaguely familiar names and faces through the Big Brother house's famous double doors.
With all respect to American pop star JoJo Siwa (ask your kids) and her 80 million social media following, Rourke is clearly the biggest — and, with a reported fee of £500,000, priciest — name in this year's cast.
The rest of the line-up followed a very familiar pattern. Soap stars, reality TV contestants, retired sports stars, jobbing TV presenters, nostalgia bookings, a Tory MP and, of course, a drag queen. I know Odudu was probably contractually obliged to call it 'A who's who of the celebrity world', but she could have easily replaced 'who' with 'that' and added a question mark.
Let's just say, when a quarter of your cast has already done Dancing On Ice your booking team has not exactly been pulling up trees for the past six months. In the case of 'actress Donna Preston', ITV could have just booked someone called Donna from Preston and we'd have been none the wiser.
ITV will no doubt argue that this approach worked fairly well last year when the Sharon Osbourne/Louis Walsh combo trousered the majority of the budget — and early screentime. That series may not have broken ratings records, but it was by no means a flop either. More importantly, it finally got people talking about the show again.
On first impressions, the 2025 run could spark a similar reaction — not least because alongside headline-grabber Rourke ITV has assembled what we might kindly call 'a lively bunch.'
Michael Fabricant may not be the outspoken Tory MP with the wild hair that ITV actually wanted for the show (I'm guessing Boris Johnson is probably still holding out for I'm A Celebrity), but I have a feeling he will deliver. However, he will certainly need to put a shift in if he's to fulfil his pre-show prophecy that 'the most annoying thing about Big Brother is probably gonna be me.'
The insanely loud Siwa looks to be his strongest challenger on that score, and she wasn't exactly shy about it. 'People will think she's going to be annoying,' she explained. 'Then they'll get to know me, and say 'B***h is funny'.' At this (admittedly early) stage, I'd say we're very much still in phase one of that operation.
Something tells me we should also keep our eyes and ears on the likes of TOWIE's Ella Rae Wise, 90s one hit wonder Chesney 'I'm a nudist' Hawkes and Corrie's painfully earnest Jack P Shepherd.
RuPaul's Drag Race UK winner Danny Beard could also give Fabricant a run for his money — once the producers have tired of the 'showing the real me' gimmick and persuaded Danny Curtis to get the wig and the heels back on. They might have to sneakily make it part of a task, but, trust me, it will happen.
As for who will win? Well, in light of David Potts' surprise victory last year, I'm afraid that is anybody's guess.
I know who I'd like to win it though. Honest Daley Thompson. Not least because he came into the house saying, 'It's an excuse to not do any work for 23 days', and treated Will Best's suggestion that winning the show would be up there with his two Olympic gold medals with the disdain it deserved: 'It would be up there with my GCSEs.'
However, the biggest question at this stage is at what point will EastEnders legend Patsy Palmer react to Rourke's antics by yelling 'Mickaaaaaaay!'? I mean, surely that's the only reason ITV booked her.
Celebrity Big Brother airs every night on ITV1 at 9pm.