Craig Phillips didn’t go home for 97 days after he won the first-ever series of ‘Big Brother’.
The 47-year-old reality TV star shot to fame on the programme’s inaugural season on Channel 4 in 2000, and while he found life in the house "boring and hard", things "kind of exploded" when he was announced as the winner, so much so he went more than three months moving from hotel to hotel.
He said: "I mean, it was a whirlwind at the time. I went into the house very naive not expecting anything to come out from it, I don’t think anyone was, because reality TV wasn’t born then.
"It was really, really crazy I don’t think I went home for 97 days, I changed hotel every night, I had bodyguards chaperoning me around.
"It was life-changing overnight, instantly overnight, and I was the last person to know about it."
Craig has become a dad for the first time after his wife Laura gave birth to their daughter Nelly six months ago, and he has found fatherhood "really tough", but he wouldn’t change it.
He said: "She [Nelly] steals the show. It’s gone really fast. It’s tough, I’ve got to be honest, it’s really is tough, I would never change it or the world but [it’s] challenging to say the least."
And Craig admits pursuing Laura also wasn’t that easy – because she initially declined his advances.
Speaking on ‘Lorraine’, he added: "When I met her … and asked her out on a couple of dates, she declined me, I had to chase her for weeks and weeks and weeks, didn’t I?"
Craig Phillips didn’t go home for 97 days after Big Brother win
