Click here for the Times Online Big Brother Celebrity Hijack Blog

This time last year a bunch of has-been and never-been celebrities entered the Big Brother house, and ignited an international race controversy, resulting in 45,000 complaints to the authorities. The annual summer “ordinary Joe” Big Brother is frequently criticised for attracting the fame-hungry and talentless.

So, time for a rebrand — and instead of Celebrity Big Brother, we have a three-week winter show with 12 genuinely talented, not-famous-yet young people, aged 18-21. From a young political activist to a spooky brother-and-sister circus act, the house is stuffed with people who are notable in their chosen careers.

Whether they will open themselves up to the kind of humiliation that is Big Brother’s stock-in-trade is another matter.

Channel 4, despite showing the opening show, has passed this special BB to E4, like a parent wanting a break from an unruly child. And the unruly child has a rebellious new parent. E4 has decided that the voice and role of Big Brother will be taken by a celebrity, and that celebrity will be seen by us. They will “hijack” the show in any way they see fit, the host Dermot O’Leary (so much better than Davina McCall) promised.

Presumably their authority is in some way moderated, or Jimmy Carr could brew up an international race controversy.

The first housemate to enter the house, the 20-year-old political activist John, had to greet each arriving housemate in the manner instructed through an earpiece by the launch night’s Big Brother (Little Britain’s Matt Lucas). If he passed this task he’d win a place in the final; if he failed he’d be up for eviction.

John had to tell the singer/songwriter Calista that he had composed The Sound of Music, and he was told to hug the amateur boxer Anthony.

My favourite character so far is Jeremy, an arrogant 19-year-old racing driver, universally booed, who looked like a gawky kid on his first day at prep school.

The fashion-designer Jay had an incredible neck that swivelled like a giraffe’s. Jade the brainy beauty-queen skipped in wearing a leopard-print hankie.

Liam the teenage business executive had a deranged bouffant. Amy the artist may turn her experience into a Turner Prize piece.

Somehow John passed the task without getting beaten up by his new housemates. Future “hijackers” will include Carr, Joan Rivers, Ian Wright, Alan Cumming and those art-world bovver boys the Chapman Brothers.

The elements are there to make it as combustible as “Shilpagate” — clearly Channel 4 and E4, despite much critical baiting, want their brand to remain provocative, though the emphasis on “talent” gives it the whiff of X Factor meets Duke of Edinburgh Award.

The general reaction on sofas across the land might have been envy at how bloody pre-eminent these teenagers already are, Celebrity hijackers, please make them suffer.

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