A 25-year-old Harrogate woman is among the 16 housemates on the new series of Big Brother.
The programme, which has returned after a five-year hiatus, sees strangers live together in a house for weeks on end. The last one to be voted out wins £100,000.
New hosts AJ Odudu and Will Best introduced the show, which is now on ITV, last night.
Among those entering the house was customer support agent, Yinrun, 25, who is originally from Shanghai, China but now lives in Harrogate.
She described herself as “a pretty adventurous person” whose boyfriend would describe her as “quirky but lovable”.
She told ITV:
“My friends in China think I am like the crazy mother because I always take care of them. I’m very playful.”
Yinrun added that since moving to the UK, she drinks a cup of Yorkshire tea with milk every day.
Asked what she would do with the prize money if she won, she said:
“I want to move to a farm. That’s my final dream, I will live on a farm and have some chickens, grow my organic vegetables and have a puppy to run around. And I’ll have eggs from the chicken, it will be so wholesome. This is my dream.”
She nominated Michael McIntyre as her dream celebrity to live with.
Yinrun and the other 15 housemates. Pic: ITV
The return of Big Brother
ITV describes Big Brother as “the ultimate social experiment”.
It added:
“Big Brother will see a new cast of carefully selected housemates, from all walks of life, become the first people to take up residence in the brand-new Big Brother house.
“Given its own contemporary new look ready for this reimagining of the show, the iconic Big Brother house will play host to all the action – clever tasks, nail-biting nominations and live evictions will be back.”
Big Brother first hit screens in the Netherlands in 1999. Since its debut, over 500 series of the show have aired around the world in over 64 countries and regions.
In the UK, it ran for 11 series on Channel 4 and also led to seven series of Celebrity Big Brother.
The show subsequently aired for eight series on Channel 5, with an additional 15 celebrity series, before ending in 2018.
Big Brother is now broadcast from Sunday to Friday on ITV2 and ITVX at 9pm.
What is being filmed at Crimple Valley viaduct?Speculation has been mounting on social media after a photographer snapped pictures of a film crew in action at Crimple Valley viaduct yesterday.
James Forster, a wildlife photographer, set out to capture the wildlife in Crimple Valley when he spotted some unusual activity on the viaduct.
Pictures he shared with the Stray Ferret show a limousine, film crews with cameras and boom microphones as well as three actors preparing for the shoot.
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It is unclear what film or TV show the film crew is working on. There has been much excitement in Leeds where Samuel L Jackson has been filming a new Marvel series for Disney Plus but he is not thought to have headed north to Harrogate.
Mr Forster’s images on Twitter provoked comments that ITV has been filming Emmerdale in the area.
The Stray Ferret asked ITV whether it was filming Emmerdale in Harrogate but the broadcaster said it was unable to comment at this time.
The 31-arch viaduct is one of the most photographed structures in the Harrogate district.
Rare heather moorland holds up TV transmitter replacementPlans to replace the fire-damaged Bilsdale transmitter and restore TV and radio signals for large swathes of the Harrogate district are being held up by the transmitter’s location within a rare heather moorland.
The blackout of Freeview TV channels and loss of radio signals has affected thousands of homes, particularly in the northern part of the district, after a major fire on August 10 put the 1,030 ft mast out of action.
Patience is wearing thin among many people, who have now been affected for three weeks.
Stray Ferret follower Lynette Cooper, who lives in central Harrogate, summed up the mood when she said:
“I’m totally fed up. For weeks now, I haven’t been able to see any of my favourite programmes.
“It’s the same for my daughter Helen at her home in Pickering and a friend told me that some elderly people at a Harrogate nursing home she goes to, just sit there with nothing to watch.”
The Bilsdale transmitter, built on the moors near Helmsley in 1969, is one of the most powerful transmitters in the UK, serving hundreds of thousands of viewers and listeners from North Yorkshire to the North East and beyond.
The Bilsdale mast’s moorland location.
In a statement on August 13, transmitter operator Arqiva said:
“Our plan involves the erection of an 80m temporary mast at Bilsdale and we have been surveying the site to identify the best alternative locations within the restrictions we have.
“Included in this is the fact that Bilsdale is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, meaning we have to seek agreement to place any additional equipment.”
In its most recent update since the fire incident, the company could still not provide a likely date when services would be restored. It said:
“We continue to work through the process to enable access to the Bilsdale site to build the temporary mast.
“There is no specific new detail to share at this point but we are continuing to work round the clock to find a way forward.”
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The transmitter’s location within a government-protected area of 44,000 hectares of moorland continues to be a stumbling block.
The area was designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest for its heathland habitat and breeding birds. Special permission needs to be granted for access across it.
Natural England says on its website:
“Heather moorland is rare on a worldwide scale – there is probably less heather moorland in the world than tropical rainforest.
“One of the largest continuous expanses of upland heather moorland in England and Wales is here in the North York Moors – a sheep could wander from Egton to Bilsdale without leaving it. Moorland covers a third of the North York Moors National Park and most of the higher ground is covered in heather.”
The area is also a designated Special Area of Conservation — a status reserved for important plant habitats in Europe — and a Special Protection Area because of its importance to breeding birds.
Although the access issues are yet to be resolved, Aquiva said last week some Freeview services had been restored for those who receive signals from smaller relay sites. None of them are in the Harrogate district.
A TV Licensing spokesman has said customers unable to receive TV coverage for more than a month will be eligible for a refund or free extension of their TV licence.