A rundown of all the controversies the Celebrity Big Brother housemates of 2025 have had

Celebrity Big Brother launches tonight for its 2025 return, and the rumoured cast is probably the worst kept secret in TV. These might of course all prove to be false, but considering the press usually release the “full” lineup in the lead up and haven’t ever been wrong before you can hedge a decent bet on the fact its the people mentioned in this story who will be walking into the house tonight. It wouldn’t be Celebrity Big Brother without a load of housemates rife with controversies, so here’s a rundown of them all as the show launches for 2025 on ITV2 tonight.

Mickey Rourke

A bit of a light one here because he’s actually rescinded his comments in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but Mickey Rourke used to love Putin basically. And had him on a t-shirt. In 2014, the Hollywood actor said “If I didn’t like him, I wouldn’t buy the T-shirt, believe me. I met him a couple of times and he was a real gentleman. A very cool, regular guy. Looked me right in the eye. Good guy.”

JoJo Siwa

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A post shared by JoJo Siwa (@itsjojosiwa)

So many minuscule controversies to note here. Funniest is of course the entire fiasco with her grown up pop rebrand with last year’s Karma – which then came out to be an old song from an artist called Brit Smith. JoJo said she had no clue who Brit Smith was and then Brit Smith released her own version of Karma on streaming.

She also got backlash from queer artists after saying she was the inventor of “gay pop”. Legendary.

Daley Thompson

The Olympic athlete had some backlash in 1984 after he wore a t-shirt that said “IS THE WORLD’S 2ND GREATEST ATHLETE GAY?” It was taken to be a slight at US athlete Carl Lewis who was facing rumours about his sexuality, and people thought that Thompson was cruelly making a jab at the situation. Thompson said at the time “The second athlete could be anybody, Carl Lewis, anybody.”

Jack P Shepherd

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A post shared by Jack P. Shepherd (@jackpshepherd88)

Aka, David Platt. Shepherd had a controversy when he fathered a child with another woman whilst being in a long term relationship with Lauren Shippey – who he has two children with. Sammy Milewski said she had a one night stand with Jack, who denied he was the father. However he took a paternity test, and turned out he was. He started to pay child support.

Michael Fabricant

Being an extremely outspoken Tory MP, you can imagine that the controversies Michael Fabricant has been wrapped up in before he goes in as one of the Celebrity Big Brother 2025 housemates tonight have indeed been plentiful. One particularly shocking one was when he defended Boris Johnson during the Covid Partygate by suggesting that teachers and nurses enjoyed “a quiet drink” in staterooms during lockdown. He was forced to apologise and take it back.

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