10 Things you don’t know about Big Brother

1. The idea for Big Brother is said to have come during a brainstorming session at the Dutch-based international Italian television production firm Endemol on March 10, 1997

2. The first version of Big Brother was broadcast in 1999 on Veronica in the Netherlands.

3. Big Brother originates from George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four

4. Big Brotheris a worldwide TV franchise, airing in many countries in a number of versions.

5. Big Brother is a reality game show franchise created by John de Mol.

6. Mark Pilgrim was the host of the first season of Big Brother Africa

7. The book from which the term big brother was termed from was listed as one  of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005

8.  The Big Brother character in the book omnipresents government surveillance, and public mind control, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism.

9. Contestants occasionally develop sexual relationships on Big Brother ,  the level of sexual explicitness allowed to be shown in broadcast and Internet-feed versions varies by country.

10. Big Brother is Africa’s biggest reality television show