Jade Goody | The Exec Behind Big Brother’s Most Explosive Era
6/17/202647 min
Executive Producer Paul Osborne takes Alice and Matt behind the scenes and into the key decisions made during the Jade Goody years.
Paul worked on Big Brother 3, where he first met Jade during her home visit before she entered the house. He later became Executive Producer of the controversial Celebrity Big Brother 5 featuring Jade Goody and Shilpa Shetty - a series that sparked international headlines and one of the biggest racism controversies in British television history.
Paul explains how housemates were selected, the thinking behind the show’s most me...
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsAlice Levine· Host0:00
Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of British Scandal ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. [upbeat music] I'm Alice Levine.
Matt Forde· Host0:10
And I'm Matt Forde.
Alice Levine· Host0:12
And this is British Scandal, an Audible original, and this is episode four in the Jade Goody series. [upbeat music] So Matt, Big Brother made Jade Goody the biggest reality star this country has ever seen, but it was far from sunshine and rainbows. What did you take from looking back?
Matt Forde· Host0:36
I think my main takeaway is that four Oxo cubes is definitely too much for pasta.
Alice Levine· Host0:41
Yes, that's the real scandal. You'd be up all night drinking pints of water. Um, but it is always about food with you, isn't it? Is that, is that all you took from it?
Matt Forde· Host0:49
I obviously took serious lessons as well. Um, and it is incredible the impact that it had on conversations about racism and bullying in class, not just in the UK, but then incredibly around the world. And obviously it was horrific at the time. Revisiting it reminds you just of how vivid it all was, and it's very easy to judge things in retrospect. You hope now, many years later, that lessons have been learned.
Alice Levine· Host1:13
And what about Jade? What did you think of her in the end?
Matt Forde· Host1:16
Well, she obviously made massive mistakes, and the good thing is that the show, in a way, revealed her true character. And ultimately, it's about her response to that controversy that is the making of her because she was genuinely mortified.