The Big Brother Africa 2 entries have closed and the auditions are in full swing.
It's the perfect time to blast into Big Brother's past so I decided to get goss about the experience of it all from a contestant who was in the very first South African season of the show.
Can you believe it happened in 2001? On one hand it seems forever ago and yet I can remember some scenes so vividly it also feels like it happened yesterday.
I got in touch with Leigh Bennie specifically 'cos of her falling in love with Big Brother and turning her thirteen weeks in the house into a successful radio career.
She's currently a presenter at Radio 702 and CapeTalk and can't remember what position she ended up in. I can't either but we think she got voted out fifth last?
Tashi: What have you been up to since Big Brother? I know you're a presenter for CapeTalk and 702 - what else have you done since then and now?
Leigh: The first year was pretty much just being on the road gigging. I packed up my home, put everything in storage and did that for a year - which was quite exhausting and strange. Then, I was very lucky, I went up Africa for a couple of months. Riaad went with as well and it was
great. We travelled 10 African country's.
When I came back from that reality started to kick in and I thought, "Best I get myself a job now." I started looking around and it was very soon after that I started working for 702 and CapeTalk but I was only on once a week from 12h00 to 16h00 so I went into PR for a couple of months - literally two months - and then luckily got promoted and managed to make radio full time which was grand.
Tashi: Did the radio stations approach you? Did you approach them?
Leigh: They approached me right at the beginning after I came out of the house but we had so many commitments Big Brother related that I couldn't commit to anything else and I didn't need to. Then afterwards I went to them - I was kind of at the end of my tether because PR is
not for me - there are just too many princesses there. It's all "Oh dahling, but you look faaabulous," (laughs).
I was so unhappy and I had a meeting with someone else in radio actually because we had a mutual acquaintance who thought we'd hit it off - boy was he wrong. The person I met was so mean to me that it was kind of: "Okay, I'm either gonna go home and kill myself or I'm gonna show him."
Luckily I dug my heels in, stubborness won out and I walked into 702 on the brink of tears - I put my nose in the air, stuck my chin out and said: "I need a job, I need one now," and they said: "Okay."
Tashi: So you went through a high, then a low, then a high again?
Leigh: Ja, there wasn't a lot of that but there was a lot of extreme emotion. I had such ball in Big Brother, we had such opportunity - the trip up Africa was priceless in all senses of the word. Everything we did was such opportunity and people threw such grand gestures at us that it was quite overwhelming to realise how much people loved us. It made it all extremely emotional and overwhelming and I didn't know what to do with it.
Tashi: Did you make a lot of money?
Leigh: No. No, in fact, if anyone tells you they made a lot they're lying. Ferdi did obviously, I'm sure he made more than a million coming out of the house and doubled his money at least but anyone else who tells you they made a lot of money are lying through their teeth.
At the time people were running their mouths off and at the same time they were moving back home to live with their mothers 'cos they couldn't afford to live any more. It was an easy life at the beginning because we were earning nice money for working two hours but every two hours that you work you were doing three or four charity gigs. We weren't managed at all when we came out of the house and of course we didn't know how to manage ourselves.
Tashi: Would you advise the crowd who're going into Big Brother Africa to get themselves an agent before they go in?
Leigh: I would say that, if there were agents, yes, but there aren't. There are booking agents as it were - they all sit on their bloopers and they do absolutely nothing and if someone comes to them they hand over your name and take 25% of your profit.
If somebody wants to find you, they'll find you. Unfortunately there aren't real real agents in South Africa.
Tashi: True, you realise this big time when you watch Entourage. You see the agents in Hollywood and how they operate and they have heart attacks they work so hard for the people on their books - which is how it should be.
Leigh: It is. There really is no-one who does that here.
Tashi: If you were to do the show again, what would you do differently?
Leigh: I wouldn't do that much differently - but when I was inside the house my big thing was realising that I'd been the biggest idiot in the world. Who takes on a fourteen week project without doing any research?
I was one of the only ones - if not the only one - who hadn't watched an episode from overseas or gone onto the website to see what to expect. I was completely clueless - I thought I'd signed up for a Survivor type thing and really didn't know what I was getting myself into and thought: "It's the stupidest thing you've ever done."
Coming out and putting it all together, I don't regret that anymore because that's how it all worked out. I think if I'd known more it would have been a less natural experience for me so now I like that it turned out like that - but now I
always research projects.
On the light hearted side - you know I was outed for hiding the cutlery. Some schmuck on the outside - Steve's brother actually - he ran up the red carpet with a T-shirt saying "Leigh hid the cutlery," and then I admitted it and said: "It was me, I buried it in the garden, here it is."
Obviously I wouldn't have been able to get out of that but if I did it again I would have said: "It was me - I threw the cutlery away and you can't have it back." They were gonna vote me out anyway. Other than that, I don't think I'd change much at all.
Tashi: I
chatted to the director of the show Rikkie Proost some time ago about how you fell in love with him when he was Big Brother.
Leigh: (Laughs) I did, I did! You love them all but we had our favourites. We used to listen to who it was and we'd look at each other and there would be a twinkle and we'd be like, "Okay you go ask" or 'I'll go ask" - depending on who had a special relationship with that particular Big Brother.
I absolutely fell in love with him. He had this soothing voice - he was my lifeline. To the extent that almost a year later I thought someone was breaking into my house and you don't realise how messed up you are. I woke up in the middle of the night with this light shining in my eyes and I thought: "Someone is about to take my things and they're breaking into the house. Big,
do something. I still thought he would save me. I wanted to marry him, I proposed to him.
Tashi: Did your relationship extend once you met him afterwards?
Leigh: He's married!
Tashi: But did you feel the same way about him?
Leigh: I was incredibly embarassed. I mean this person has no face, they're not a person, just a thing or friend on your side and then suddenly there's a person. I was incredibly jealous in the house, yes, whenever he would talk to other housemates I was a bit sort of, "What are you doing?"
Tashi: Did you know it was Rikkie and that he was the director?
Leigh: No, it was just a voice.
Tashi: As far your first season housemates go, I know Mags is at East Coast Radio and Bad Brad's obviously in prison - what's the goss on the rest of them?
Leigh: What? Brad's in prison?
Tashi: I assume that's where he is. He's been out of the news for a long time.
Leigh: No, he was in the news about two weeks ago. He got beaten up in some hick town somewhere - I can't remember the details but I meant to phone him and say: "Are you okay?" but I just thought I better let the media die down though 'cos otherwise he'd try to get on 702 and I can't help him there. There were pictures of him - he didn't look like he'd been beaten up but he'd been smacked around a bit and threw his toys out the cot.
Tashi: His political career didn't last very long did it?
Leigh: I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to run again.
Tashi: And the others?
Leigh: Vuyo I speak to - he's in Jo'burg. He's working for a media house of some kind, I see him and speak to him. We actually got in touch about a year ago - we hadn't been in touch before and it was wonderful to see him and the man he's grown into. We get along fabulously.
Irvin I see occasionally, he actually works for a PR company so we met up through work again and we've been out for lunch a couple of times. He's still the Swerve and speaks in riddles with lofty ideals.
Ferdi, I've seen a couple of times in Cape Town - we also got in touch just over a year ago ...who are we missing ...? Nobesuthu - I often wonder about her and I have no idea where anyone else is. I obviously know where Mags is but I don't know where the others are at all. Mags and I were in touch non-stop until she got a job at East Coast Radio and I haven't heard from her since.
Tashi: Do you think it's a radio competition thing?
Leigh: I don't, I think it's that when we were going through one particular journey we leant on each other a lot and then our journey became more stable and we could sustain it without somebody else. She got the job at East Coast and she flew.
Tashi: Whatever happened to Season 2's Richard?
Leigh: He owns a farm in the Eastern Cape, he married and he went back to the farm. The other person I see a lot of is Rabin from the second season - he's actually the one I'd say I'm most friendly with.
Tashi: Hmmph. I didn't think Richard should have won - Mandy should have won. She wouldn't have just disappeared with the cash like he did. The entries for Big Brother 2 have just closed and people are going for auditions. What's your advice to hopefuls? What should they
do at the auditions?
Leigh: Be as natural possible. These people are professionals, they have panels of psychologists that are staring at your video and believe me, they're filming you all the time. The people who try for the shock factor and the people who try to put on an act - they'll pick it up in a heartbeat.
They don't care who you are, they just want to make sure that who you are makes it on television - so it's got to be the real you. Look at the statistics - one over-the-top volatile person usually makes it into the house - they always do that - but everybody else, they want real people.
One of their favourite questions is: "What is the worst thing you've ever done?" They love to ask you because they watch your face. A lot of people are so embarassed by the worst thing they've done that they down-play it because they want to look better - but they don't want better, they want real. A lot of people also go for the shock factor and tell them that they shagged their uncle but they can see in their faces that it's not true because this is what these people do. Just be so real. Everything is a test.
Tashi: What else do you have to do?
Leigh: With us they put us in a room and said: "I'm terribly sorry, we're running late," and we were being filmed. Then they came back in and said: "Are you guys talking? You musn't because that'll jeopardise your chances of getting in." They actually film you as you all lie and go: "
No we weren't."
Then they take you in for about five minutes in front of a camera and they ask you questions. They make you entertain them - you've got to tell a joke or dance or whatever it is and then they split you into groups of three and they say, "Right, you've got fifteen minutes to choose who's going through to the next round and there are people filming this."
You can see the cameras and psychologists sitting there watching you but you don't know they're psychologists at the time though - I don't know, I can't remember. They say, "You can't draw straws to decide and if you can't decide no-one goes through, end of story."
This is where you need to creative because if you all sit down and talk about why you think you'd be good for it you're never come up with an answer and that's not what they want to see. That was interview number One.
Number Two was the psychology test - it was about two hours of written and about an hour of one-on-one with a psychologist. That's quality time - really good time for you. If you get into the house, they know you really well and that's the psychologist who'll come see you in the house and also that's where they decide when you're gonna crack and how they can manipulate you.
Then the final interview was a panel of producers and M-Net people asking you questions and urrgh, it's such pressure. They're all in jeans, they look casual and they're smiling but I could hardly breathe.
Tashi: What was the toughest thing about doing the show?
Leigh: Not seeing my family and my friends. I lived for my dog and my brothers and throw me in with strangers - who for all intensive purposes want to ruin my life because they wanna get you kicked out. I was so depenent on my brothers, we were inseperable and I missed them so much. My boys.
Tashi: What was the easiest?
Leigh: Giving up work! (guffaws) I was like, "Oh no, don't make me lie around in the sun for eight hours a day that'll be awful."
Tashi: What would you like to see in the new season of Big Brother Africa that's different from the first?
Leigh: I quite enjoyed the first one so I don't know that I'd want to see that much different. The changes are more from the producers side - new and exciting things. In terms of the contestants, there's not that much I'd like to see that's different, I found the people incredibly natural - more so than Big Brother SA2 and they were a fun loving bunch.
I want the lot that go in now to be fun loving too. The only thing that I'd like to see is more of an age differential. In our house - the oldest one was 30 and the youngest was 21 and in the second one the gap was even smaller. I would like to see a 50 year old thrown in - again, that's from the producers side. From the contestants, more of the same please.
Tashi: Out of every Big Brother contestant across all three shows - who would you say the best casting out of them all has been?
Leigh: Me.
Tashi: Yes, you first, then after you.
Leigh: You can't choose the producers are so good at what they do that they choose people who bring out the best and the worst in each other which makes them the best and worst cast. The people around you couldn't be the best if they didn't do this.
They see things in you that you don't even know you had. Brad was a fabulous cast because he drove everyone insane and that was what his job was. Vuyo was a fabulous cast because he did exactly what he was supposed to do. Everyone did what they had to do so it's a team and if I had to choose a team I'd choose mine because they're all very special to me.
Tashi: A friend and I chatted about the best casting and decided that the best casting so far was Janine Orderson because she was totally who she was and ended up legendary.
Leigh: Yes she got a lot negative publicity that was so mean - again, so much emphasis was put on - look, I didn't see the blowjob scene, I just heard about it when I came out but we take ourselves so seriously. We need to just take everything with a pinch of salt. She was absolutely a character - last I heard actually, she'd met a sugar daddy and he was spoiling her rotten so I hope she's still doing that.
Tashi: What's the most essential thing someone going into the house needs to pack?
Leigh: I would say soul stuff. The things you think you need to stock up on you actually don't. They give a lot of toothpaste - I was so concerned with face cream and deodorant but you get quite a few gift packs in the house. I went in Survivor style with not a single pair of high heels or anything pretty and girlie and sometimes I needed that.
I needed to feel attractive and pampered in some way so whatever it is that makes you feel pampered and secure you should take in. Whether it's a facial mask or candles - whatever it is that makes your soul feel pampered you should take.
Ends
Catch Leigh on Talk Radio 702 every weeknight at 19h00, and on Saturday mornings at 10h00. 702 is available on your radio on 106 or 92.7 FM, or you can listen via web streaming -
go here to tune in.