AS the presses rolled on last week's copy of Heat, the self- styled "official Big Brother magazine", staff were probably crowing at the headline they had come up with to introduce this year's housemates. "Unleash the mentalists" it read. Even by Heat's high standards, it was a beaut.
Accompanying it was a spread of pictures featuring, among others, Tourette's syndrome sufferer Pete Bennett, "wacky Paki poof" Shahbaz Chauhdry from Glasgow, and bunny girl Nikki Grahame. "The most bonkers lot ever to grace the BB house, " said the magazine's editorial.
But by the time Heat actually hit the newsstands on Tuesday the headline wasn't looking so clever. "Shahbaz on suicide watch", screamed the same day's Sun on its front page, relaying the fact that the 37-year-old had threatened to kill himself. Hours later the Mental Health Foundation, which had been deluged with calls and e- mails over the weekend voicing concerns about Shahbaz's mental state, issued an open letter to Channel 4's director of programming Kevin Lygo asking him to outline exactly what psychological screening measures were in place to ensure the welfare of the Big Brother contestants. At the time of writing, the Mental Health Foundation had not received Replica Movado Watch a reply, but Channel 4 is promising a prompt response.
By Wednesday, the rest of the red tops had caught up with the turbulent events playing themselves out in the Big Brother house. At 8pm on Tuesday, Shahbaz had left the house after a 90minute consultation with a nebulous entity known only as "Big Brother's producers". He did not say goodbye to his fellow housemates - unsurprising as by that point they had handcuffed him, gagged him, locked him out of the house, stolen what few clothes he had and taken to leaving any room he walked into. And so he left, in pieces, which may have been the same state in which he arrived.
He did, however, appear on spin-off show Big Brother's Little Brother on Wednesday night, after his departure from the Big Brother house had been shown. There he told presenter Dermot O'Leary: "I am disturbed - I don't know if I'll survive in the outside world."
Television regulator Ofcom has received 184 complaints about Big Brother so far, 150 of them relating to that Wednesday night episode. It's a large amount, but by no means the largest ever received.
When 2005 Big Brother contestant Kinga simulated sex with a wine bottle, there were 259 complaints. And 517 people contacted Ofcom when, in the same series, Zimbabwean nurse Makosi was evicted, the imputation then being that there was a racist element to the crowd response and that the manner in which presenter Davina McCall conducted the traditional post-eviction interview amounted to racial discrimination. In neither case was Big Brother found to be in breach of Ofcom's code.
LED Flexible Strip Ribbon Series Ribbon 3528 Shahbaz is currently "holed up in a hotel room" - the words are those of a Channel 4 insider quoted in The Sun on Thursday - where he is, once more, on suicide watch under the scrutiny of "mental health experts" (another nebulous term). "He is not a well man, " continued the insider.
Meanwhile, Pete Bennet has become the bookies' favourite to win Big Brother 2006, a rich irony given that it was his inclusion which Channel 4 expected to generate the most - excuse the pun - heat. Instead it is a different issue which has jumped up to bite Channel 4: a mental health issue, certainly, but not quite the one the station was expecting.
Exactly how much psychological screening goes on before contestants are allowed into the Big Brother house and how rigorous that screening is has been a controversial subject since the show's inception. But it has never before come quite so sharply or tragically into focus.
Channel 4 won't reveal the name of the consultant psychologist who advises on all aspects of housemate psychology. They will say, however, that the person is a chartered clinical psychologist with an MSc in psychotherapy and a BA in psychology, and that they are a member of the British Psychological Society.
In a statement, Channel 4 added:
"The welfare of all our housemates is of the utmost importance to us and housemates are intensively screened by professionals to ensure they are psychologically strong enough to cope with their experiences. During their time in the house, housemates are monitored 24 hours a day and psychologists are on hand to talk about any concerns they have."
One of those who tuned in last week to watch Big Brother was Daniel Sokol, a medical ethicist at Imperial College, London. Sokol didn't like what he saw and isn't convinced that Channel 4's screening and assessment procedures are intense enough.
"It seemed quite plain to me that these people were not psychologically robust - certainly not Shahbaz. Besides, how do the psychologists define 'psychologically robust'? I wanted the psychologists of the show to clarify the methods of assessment that they use. The whole Shahbaz debacle was, to me, just further evidence that the validity of their assessments is dubious."