This year the programme has been extended to 16 weeks, eventually concluding in late August, and for the first time, it features no Irish contestant.

Previous Irish entrants have included RTE presenter Anna Nolan, Northern 'model' Orla McAllister, winner Brian Dowling, who went on to become a television presenter for ITV, and Q102 reporter Ray Shah.

The Big Brother house is this summer more disorientating than ever. Lower ceilings and plastic living room furniture are proving claustrophobic and uncomfortable respectively, while a communal bathroom with two urinals, one toilet, bath and shower is making things even more cramped.

Tensions were already running high in the house on Friday, with most housemates not getting their suitcases and then two of them, Lisa and Shahbaz, being giving special privileges as founder members of a 'Big Brotherhood'.

The expected 'twist' in the programme has transpired to be a Willy Wonka-style 'Golden Ticket' competition, whereby members of the public who find a ticket in a Kit Kat chocolate bar get the opportunity to enter the house.

A spokeswoman for the UK PR firm handling the promotion said: "One hundred people who find the ticket have to phone a special number. They will then be invited to London where they go through some vetting procedures. As long as they pass that, they will be revealed to national newspapers and, on 9 June, one person will be chosen to enter the house."

In an exclusive interview with the Sunday Tribune magazine this weekend, Big Brother presenter Dermot O'Leary speaks about his part in the series, along with voicing his personal views as an Irishman and a practicing Catholic.

Revealing that he refuses to sing 'God Save The Queen, ' he said, "I won't sing the national anthem. Never have done."

O'Leary, who is involved in a children's charity in Belfast, also spoke of his horror at the murder of 15-year-old Ballymena teenager Michael McIlveen, saying sectarian hate was "going to permeate through generations".