It’s a curious experience meeting the person behind what is arguably the most famous voice in the country. The person is entirely unfamiliar to you, the voice instantly recognisable.
But here he is nevertheless, Marcus Bentley, the booming narrator of Big Brother, sat on a bench in a leafy square in central London, flat cap on his head, great beaming smile on his face. If there is anyone more excited about the legendary reality show’s imminent return – and his along with it – then they’ve not yet made themselves publicly known.
“Oh, this is such a big and important show,” Bentley enthuses, every vowel sound as rich as Bovril, “and it’s one that’s sparked so many copycats along the way. But we are the original! Some shows need a rest – and I guarantee you that at some point The X Factor will return, too – but now’s the time to bring ours back.”
Big Brother, which broadcasts nightly at 9 o’clock from this week on its new home of ITV2, is hoping to revive some of the original spark that made it such compelling television back in the early part of the 21st century, by “going back to basics”.
When the series debuted in 2000, inspired by the Dutch original a year before, it felt more like a profound psychological experiment than TV entertainment, gathering together 11 strangers and forcing them to live in close quarters for weeks on end while undertaking a series of nonsensical tasks in exchange for food. They were constantly directed, and dictated to, by the titular – and forever unseen – Big Brother, and filmed 24 hours a day, Bentley relaying updates as they happened.
We watched in our millions as the kind of gripping intrigue never to be found on, say, EastEnders unfolded nightly. There was “Nasty” Nick Bateman (series one), who was revealed to have broken house rules by smuggling in a pencil which he used to write – on actual scraps of paper – the names of the fellow contestants he thought should be voted out next, and there was Jade Goody (series three) who ill-advisedly took all her clothes off on the couch one evening.
And then there were the celebrity spin-offs, which if anything proved even giddier: former MP George Galloway either enacting – or, worse, so very much worse – re-enacting a feline-based sex game with actor Rula Lenska; Jackie (mother of Sylvester) Stallone swaggering around in a fur coat wondering quite where she’d misplaced her Hollywood mansion; and TV presenter Vanessa Feltz spectacularly losing her shit with a piece of chalk and a large dining room table, and refusing to go to the diary room even though Big Brother was instructing her to do so. The absolute nerve of the woman.
There was a kind of genius at work here, the most mundane television somehow elevated to the heights of riveting drama, making its contestants briefly famous (and occasionally infamous), and launching the subsequent TV careers of, among others, Alison Hammond and Brian Dowling.
It was never going to sustain such momentum, of course, because in place of early naïveté came cannier contestants who knew just how to play up to the camera. Suddenly, every new housemate had abs and cheekbones (and agents), and the show quickly lost its lustre and became instead a pantomime played out on screen, out of season.
After a decade on Channel 4, where it had been a reliable ratings winner, it moved to Channel 5 to enact a slow death. When finally it was axed in 2018, few mourned its passing.
But after ITV2 announced its intention to revive it – this time, it promised, with all sorts of people from all walks of life (ie, not merely Love Island rejects) – interest was swiftly renewed. It may long ago have lost its original presenter Davina McCall, and then Emma Willis who helmed for Channel 5, but as it returns to ITV2 with AJ Odudu and Will Best, Marcus Bentley remains in place. He’s part of the furniture.
“This will be my 19th year doing it,” he beams, “and I’ve got to tell you, I’ve never known [anticipatory] bigger feelings around it. People are gagging for it, they really are. It’s going to feel revived after its rest, I think. It’s going to come back feeling really fresh.”
Bentley had been a jobbing actor before landing the Big Brother gig. Raised in Durham, he has the kind of rich, resonant voice that, in a parallel universe, might have given him a career on the stage. His accent isn’t quite Geordie, as many have suggested, but he does boast a North East baritone so strong it makes Ant and Dec sound like Prince William.
“I got the job because the producers liked the way I said ‘chickens’,” Bentley, now 56, says. (In the first series, housemates were required to look after chickens in the hope that they might lay eggs for them.)
At first, his narration was low-key, as narration tended to be back then. But in later series, he ramped up the intonation, along with the drama. His “chickens” now had the gravitas of Laurence Olivier, and his style would go on to influence many subsequent reality shows that also relied heavily upon voiceover, like Come Dine with Me.
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“Oh, it did wonderful things for the ego,” he laughs. “I’d meet people in the street, and they’d say that the show wouldn’t be the same without me!”
His is ultimately a small role, perhaps, but it’s also a crucial one, and so if you ask about his “method” he will very happily tell you. The voiceover, he says, can be neither sarcastic nor judgemental, for that is not required from him. “But I can give a sort of wink, a little nudge, in my voice so that people watching know when I’m calling someone a knobhead.”
He would soon come to feel paternally possessive over the show, and points out that Big Brother has never won a Bafta, “which is f***ing ridiculous when you think of the innovations it’s made year after year”.
Yes, he concedes, it’s occasionally got into trouble with Ofcom – a 2018 episode that featured an accusation of assault was the most complained-about show of the decade – but it was also very inclusive: in 2004 a transgender woman, Nadia Almada, won it. “It’s always been groundbreaking.”
When Channel 5 pulled the plug five years ago, Bentley, who is married with three children and lives in Bristol, suddenly found himself short of work. “When it’s not on, I’m drifting, you know, I’m looking for work… and getting work.” He’s done some continuity announcing on Channel 4, and has just narrated a children’s show for Sky. “I do a lot of events too, introducing the CEO of John Lewis to the stage, or whoever.”
If he hasn’t done so much acting of late, then that’s because, he suggests, “as soon as I open my mouth, people immediately think of Big Brother. But that’s OK by me. I feel so lucky to be part of such a cultural phenomenon.
“You know, I must have watched every episode at least twice, and all the experiences it’s given me, and all the people I’ve met along the way – people like Jade Goody and Nikki Grahame [both of whom died tragically young] – well, I can get emotional just thinking about it. I’m emotional right now, in fact.”
He coughs discreetly into his fist. “It’s been such a big part of my life, you see.”
Big Brother screens nightly on ITV2 from Sunday at 9pm