CELEBRITY Big Brother 2006 may well witness the greatest convergence of acrylic hair weaves that television has ever seen. With surgically warped Eighties pop star Pete Burns, disturbingly tanned Baywatch star Traci Bingham, Page 3 Girl Jodie Marsh and Channel 4’s planted “civilian” — a blonde wannabe model from Essex called Chantelle — the rooms bristle with static electricity. Just one person with a balloon, rubbing heads, could wreck havoc. Surely no one will be using the provided sauna? Put these guys in a temperature above 30C and their hair would fuse into one single, solid hair, like a Playmobil figurine.

Of course, while one expects Celebrity Big Brother to dish up a sizeable portion of semi-disturbing, B-list barrel-bottom botherers, all having petty domestic disputes until one wins and gets to release a fitness video, this year Channel 4 has ramped the affair up a notch.

This year, there’s some serious viewing to be done on two counts: Michael Barrymore and George Galloway. After his career vanished in the wake of finding a dead man in his swimming pool, Barrymore has only been able to get arrested (and then released, obviously) in the legal sense, rather than the metaphorical one. Looking like a broken man, he has been brought on the show in the hope that he will have a nervous breakdown on air.

At one point during last night’s launch show, it looked like he might even have it before he even got into the house. Walking the runway to the Big Brother door, Barrymore received the audience’s applause like a dying man receiving a reprieve, pausing to wipe away tears on several occasions. Sadly, these tears also blinded him to the production crew, desperately trying to get him to enter the house before an advertising break, so Barrymore took an agonising seven minutes to go in — almost as long as he took “coming out”.

And then there’s George Galloway. George Galloway! Already his presence has caused a stir. Usually, the first night of a Big Brother series attracts 6,000 texts from a screaming squadron of fixated gays. Last night it was earnest, correctly punctuated but still screaming texts from lobby correspondents and armchair Paxmans. “I’m even going to watch the live coverage on Big Brother's Little Brother!” one said — a sentence that sounded as odd from an old Etonian as Pete Burns saying, “Have you got any really hot heated rollers?”