Tomorrow, the UK enters its 64th day in lockdown. Throughout this whole miserable situation, one word has been thrown around again and again: ‘unprecedented’. It is, of course, completely accurate, given that we have never before been compelled to seek safety from a fatal virus in our homes for months on end. But for a select few in this country, a quarantine of this scale is a walk in the park. Some have dealt with worse. And as we reach this seemingly unremarkable milestone, the man who matched this feat on live television is pondering how he never expected to have to repeat it.
Twenty years ago, Craig Phillips entered the Big Brother house in East London’s Bow. 64 days later, he walked back out again as the winner of a competition that became a bonafide sensation. In the years that followed, the series introduced wild challenges and twists, but Craig and his fellow housemates were, largely, left to their own devices and make their own entertainment. There were no clocks or calendars. No communication with the outside world. Few distractions. It was the perfect training for our current situation.
‘When we starting locking down at home, we were talking about how it was like the Big Brother House - although Laura was still in school then’, he says of his wife. ‘I was thinking about how I did it. Our house had nothing, no doors except into the garden, no windows. No social media or phonecalls or texts. 64 days of living with people I didn’t know. I know that we didn’t have this level of stress from a global pandemic, but some of the strains, and what we went through, is just like what we’re going through now. You lose track of time.’
'To go from running a building company to the Big Brother house, it was hard. No appointments. No diary. I didn't know what to do.'
‘Before I went in the house, I had a building company, chasing work, organising staff, managing materials’, he recalls. ‘I was run ragged, and it was my choice but it was hard. To go from that, to being in a house with no diary or wallet. I didn’t have to be anywhere. I had no appointments. No picking up materials. All of a sudden it was gone, and I didn’t know what to do. You find yourself recapping your own life, your business, your social life. You start to think about game plans and how you’re going to get by, with all that time on your hands.’
Craig was, as his victory proved, a hugely popular housemate, beating former nun Anna Nolan to take the £70,000 prize. But as entertaining as he was, he remembers the ennui more than anything. ‘I’ve never watched the series,’ he insists. ‘So I’ve never known for sure how I was presented, but you hear what people thought and people’s favourite bits. But for me, sitting on the sofa, without the clever editing, I was bored. The hardest thing was keeping your brain occupied.’ Endemol, however, did provide him with VHS tapes of the entire series when he entered public life. They are still in storage, and he is contemplating dusting them off at last for a Gogglebox-style revisit.
If he’s going to pick any tape, it should be the episode featuring the confrontation that went down in TV history. Nick Bateman, beloved by housemates, the only inhabitant to avoid a single nomination, was caught in a web of tactical voting, deception and lies. Craig was a crucial component in unearthing his dishonesty and demasking the man who had become known across the UK as Nasty Nick. The calm counsel around the kitchen table was oddly gripping.
‘The night before when I started piecing it together, I was starting to feel the tension in there’, Craig recalls. ‘We were all getting a bit angry and frustrated, and I thought we should all sleep on it and think about it. With Nick, I just thought that he was going to feel bullied, and I wanted to hear what he had to say. I was quite calm. The press took the Mickey out of me afterwards because at the end, when we’d confronted him, I just got up and asked if anyone wanted a cup of tea.’ Nevertheless, Craig was taking it very seriously, and spoke to Big Brother to ensure that Nick was handled appropriately.
‘I felt very betrayed’, he explains. ‘I went into the Diary Room - I’m not sure if they ever showed this - and I said “Listen, I’ve come here to win. I don’t want to make friends or anything like that. I want to win. He’s broken the rules, and signed the same paperwork that I have. He needs to go.’ Nick left shortly after. If Craig’s attitude to victory seems excessive, it would be prudent to remember that he gave the entirety of his winnings to his friend Joanne, who had Down syndrome and was in need of a lung and heart transplant.
'I went into the Diary Room and I said "Listen, I've come here to win.'
At the beginning of 2020, as the twenty year anniversary of the show approached, the world changed. Craig and Laura were more ready to go into lockdown than others, and imposed a personal quarantine period weeks before the official guidelines, in the hope of keeping their young daughter, Nelly, safe. ‘We were watching world news, and we could clearly see that this was coming our way,’ he explains. ‘So we just decided that we were going to cut ourselves off - from our family and all our friends - to protect Nellie. Laura and I, we’ve both lost parents at quite a young age, we know how hard it is to lose a family member suddenly, and the last thing we want is for Nelly to grow up without one of us. We’ve been very clear and sensible about it. I'm the only one who's been going out of the house, to do the big supermarket shop once a week.’
Thanks to Craig’s DIY background - post-Big Brother, he has forged a career in television as an expert in programmes like 60 Minute Makeover and If It’s Broke, Fit It - he is in a strong position to advise others on home improvements. Laura is along for the ride, and the pair run Mr And Mrs DIY TV via Facebook and Instagram, sharing tips and support. ‘Basically we just want to empower people to be able to do their own jobs around the house’, he says. ‘We’ve built a studio at home so that we can film video classes, and I'm really looking forward to really getting into that when this is over. It’s a bit of a selfish reason, but over the last twenty odd years, I’ve been traveling all year. But now, with the baby, I don’t want to do that now. I want to be at home.’
Craig says he, Laura and Nelly will continue their own lockdown months beyond any governmen guidance, just to be safe. For him, it’s the second length period of time spent in voluntary isolation. But it’s worth it, if it means being there for his family. And, for the first time in two decades, he’s not approached while out and about due to masks and social distancing. ‘For the last 20 years in the supermarket everyone wanted a photograph or selfie,’ he says with a laugh. ‘Not anymore!’
Follow Craig on Instagram here, and find Mr And Mrs DIY on Instagram and Facebook
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