Author: Tim

Another day another housemate secret is cracked.

Behind Big Brother user Sledge has found Angela Murray’s profile on the Queensland Weightlifting Association website where she is listed as being part of the ‘Cougars’ club.

The association’s June 2006 magazine includes a photo of Angie with the Under 16s weightlifting group alongside some info on her performance. The young Angie is sporting brown hair.

We don’t speak weightlifter so we don’t know what terms like “clean and jerk” actually mean, but here’s a snippet from the magazine anyway!

“Angela Murray in the 48kg category came out strong, powering her first snatch of 25kg. Her third attempt was an excellent fight to achieve 32kg. She made her first two clean and jerks look easy, but missed the clean on her third attempt and ended up with a 32kg snatch and a 40kg clean and jerk with a total of 72kg placing 2nd in both Under 16 and Under 18 in the 48kg division.”

Did Sarah look familiar when entering the house? You may have seen her butt-naked in the middle of Sydney a few years back.

The now-housemate took part in an Animal Liberation anti fur protest in 2008, where she posed nude with a group as part of a campaign to highlight animal cruelty within the fur industry.

One of the secrets explained on Sunday night was “I was a nude protestor”. No guesses on who it is now.

The protest campaign was specifically set up to to raise awareness during the Beijing Olympics and protests were held around the Chinese embassy as China exports a large number of fur products.

The story was covered by the Associated Press and published in the Sydney Morning Herald and Sina, a Chinese newspaper.

Thanks to the many fans who sent us this story!

Update: We had a really nice photo of Layla on this page but the photographer then sent us an invoice for photo use – which we laughed at – but have decided to take the photo down.

Oops – first it was revealed George is the millionaire, now another big housemate secret has spilled.

At the beginning of the season audiences were told that one housemate was related to royalty.

Behind Big Brother user Taylor did some sleuthing with Layla’s full name (which was revealed in a Sunday Telegraph article today) and found “Layla Joyce Subritzky” born 1988 in Carlisle, England listed on a website called the Subritzky files.

The site details the heritage of the Subritzky family tree and sure enough Layla’s relatives have distant connections with John III Sobieski, a former monarch of Poland.

It’s a bit of a long read but the page describes how Layla’s relatives emigrated to New Zealand and became a high profile family in the colonial days. Layla has previously said she is half Maori.

After tonight’s live show Big Brother will swap the secrets task around and boys will be required to guess the girls’ secrets.

And on a side note – a modelling profile page for Layla was also discovered. It was taken down within an hour of the Sunday Telegraph article being published, but luckily Google has saved a copy.

Turns out Sonia Kruger may just be Big Brother’s biggest fan.

Behind Big Brother supporter CJ has uncovered an internet radio interview he did with Sonia in 2008 where she is described by former Dancing with the Stars colleague Todd McKenney as “Australia’s biggest Big Brother nut”.

When asked about her thoughts over Big Brother coming to an end, Sonia says “I have gotten into a bit of a routine watching the daily show and I like a bit of Friday Night Live with Mike Goldman … but it’s the end of an era.”

“Maybe Big Brother just needs a rest from TV land” she adds.

When CJ states that Channel Nine is the only network with a genuine interest in reviving the show, Sonia says “I think there might be some truth to that, actually”.

Todd McKenney continues “we’re trying to start a rumour that Sonia’s actually hosting the Channel Seven version it’s called Big Sister”.

Both personalities were contracted to Channel Seven at the time. The interview was during “CJ Live”, a segment on the our former Behind Big Brother Radio show (here’s a very old archive of it).

Listen to the whole interview here:

Producers are starting to feel the heat for not offering any live feeds or ‘Uplate’ content. They’ve lost 600,000 viewers over the four days since Big Brother launched. Last night’s daily show did not break the 1 million viewer mark.

Here’s how ratings have panned out so far:

Launch show: 1.6m
Tuesday live show: 1.3m
Wednesday daily: 1.1m
Thursday daily: 973,000

Meanwhile the official Big Brother Facebook page has been bombarded with messages from fans angry over the lack of live feeds, Uplate show and Friday Night Live.

The consensus among viewers returning from older seasons is that Big Brother has been sterilised to the point of becoming boring, and they’re now tuning out. One fan from our own forums described this season as “diet Big Brother”.

But why are there no feeds from the house? The official word from Big Brother is that it cost too much. We don’t believe that’s true. Channel Nine have been riding the ‘family friendly’ concept since the BB return was announced and ultimately they’re terrified of another turkey slap.

And what happened to the nightly adult show that was promised by Channel Nine? We suspect it’s been canned in the name of being ‘safe’.

We previously reported how viewers can voice their concerns. Fans are hoping producers and Channel Nine will turn the show around and avoid “diet Big Brother”.

Here’s a great find courtesy of Marquisite in our forums – one clever Justin.tv user has responded to the lack of a live feed this year by replaying the live feed from 2006!

So until Southern Star and Channel Nine listen to pleas from fans to bring back the live feed (come on guys, you can find a way to make it work), perhaps this will satisfy some of your cravings.

Head to justin.tv/bigbrotheriswatching to check it out!