This is Dayorama's BBCH launch night live blog. Updates appeared at the top so start at the bottom if you want to read it as it happened. Don't forget to give us your comments on the housemates!

She's got more GCSEs and A levels than me, which as OJ will tell you really doesn't endear people to me, but she looks quite sweet and innocent, and hopefully Lucas will have John lick her or something. Ultimately, she's opted to go on Big Brother, so she forfeits any mental advantage immediately.

Looking a bit like Tarzan - alright, Jane - in her leopardskin outfit, she waves enthusiastically, giggles, burbles "I love you!" at the world and then disappears inside those doors.

Down the stairs, dress trailing on the manky carpet of doom, and inside the house. "John, this is the final hit," says Lucas, plotting something big. "I want you to gather everybody in a circle, ignore her entrance, raise your voice ... come on, you're on live TV John," he adds, as though that will help the poor boy focus.

Everyone is ignoring John, which Lucas can hardly complain about since he's the architect and executionist in all this. John only has three minutes of broadcast left but nobody is paying the blindest bit of notice, and Lucas admits a grudging defeat.

"John, crawl to the diary room please." If he does this slowly enough, they'll run out of time on the broadcast. Lucas has failed dismally tonight, and now he addresses the house as a whole for the first time.

"This is Big Brother, aka Matt Lucas. This evening I am hijacking the Big Brother house. John, please come to the diary room."

God, that kilt is still showing all sorts. Bad John! Now, the rest of the housemates finally get to see what's going on (and more, with the kilt).

So has John passed or failed? Lucas says he passed! Well by Matt's own abysmal standards I suppose he did, even though John chickened out of most of the weirder stuff as the evening went on.

And a round of applause for John from his fellow housemates. "I'm so sorry, everyone!" John says, running around undoing all the damage he spent the evening doing. Then he finishes with "I'm the chairman of the Scottish Youth Parliament", redoing all that damage in one stroke.

With that, goodnight. Your thoughts? Welcome in the comments. But first you must stand up and scream, "Cake!" until somebody notices and confronts you.

22:27 - Jay
Penultimate housemate and it's the token... well hold on, he might not be. Just because he's a fashion designer. Let's not draw conclusions, even though the accent would also strongly suggest... no, Ollie, come on, let the man flourish on his own merits.

This is Jay, who has well pruned facial hair and that annoying tone of voice which insists on ending every statement on a note slightly higher than the rest of the sentence.

"I first fell in love with fashion when I was about 13," says John. "I don't know what it was." Oh, John, I think I can guess.

Oh God, he just did a funny little shakey-head thing in his pre-intro video. Here he is then, in a white suit, looking absolutely chuffed with himself simply for being there - and well he might. Didn't they all do well!

Up the stairs he skips, shimmies up to the door, cheeky wave, and through the door. Down the steps where the white suit puts the carpet to shame, and already John is laughing - at the carpet, no doubt.

Immediately we get Lucas again, who I do wish would just bugger off now, cos I want to see the other housemates. Not Lucas, not John, the other lot. If I was John I would be making "pssssh" noises back down the line and feigning utter ignorance of anything Lucas says - maybe whispering "I wonder why Matt isn't saying anything" every now and again.

Lucas, bless him, is under the strain of having to be funny live and on demand, but then this is a peril of the business known as stand-up. He ought not to be flagging. How do we evict the hijacker?

22:20 - Latoya
Latoya, who's been in music videos for plenty of top names, certainly has a high opinion of herself but something tells me she's actually quite a nice lady. "Even though she's big time, she's still humble," says one of her friends. Not got a Wikipedia page, though, have you love?

Big time Layota steps out of her car wearing an all-white outfit which Dermot gives a big thumbs up, while reeling off her list of honours. Latoya, for one of Mariah Carey's stage dancers, looks a little overwhelmed by the comparatively small Big Brother crowd, but hsa a purposeful stride towards the house door.

"Look at my hair," says Latoya, who has done well to find something to distract herself from the shitty carpet.

John is still being abused by Lucas. This was initially a funny ploy but the problem is, we hardly get any time to find out about all these other housemates, because all we see is their entrance and then Lucas bollocking John down the earpiece. As a comedy device, it simply doesn't last for twelve different introductions. Lucas has jumped his personal hijacking shark.

22:13 - Fame
Interesting fact during this ad break: only Nathan and Jeremy have their own pages on Wikipedia. Poor show from geek Liam, who should have written his own, like a certain Dayorama contributor (no, it's not me!).

22:11 - Liam
Oh look, a web geek! You can tell because he's trying to do something different with his hair but just ends up looking silly. Which web geek do we all know who matches that description?

"I wouldn't say I'm a geek," says the geek, who also rates himself "the most ambitious person you'll ever meet". Au contraire. You haven't met my dog, Toby. He still thinks he can chase tennis balls for 24 hours a day, at the age of 80-odd in dog years. That, my boy, is ambition.

Geek boy nips up the steps with the standard issue toaster-cum-shoulder-bag, waves to the crowd like he's an Arctic Monkey, and trots merrily down the stairs.

"John, go and tell this man his hair is lopsided," says Lucas. By now, if I were John, I would be regretting the decision to take part in this show to such a degree that I would have to eat my own kneecaps.

I think there is a strong possibility that John - who is now being forced to tap people on the shoulder and say the word 'cake' - will lose his mind by the end of the evening. He may never be able to go out again.

22:06 - Nathan
Nathan, the miniature Dizzee Rascal, is next into the house, filmed with a mixing desk behind his back as though that somehow makes him cool by definition. Suddenly BBC local radio is the home of mojo, we must assume.

Nathan has funkier music to do his walk to than the rest of them, I swear. He's in all sorts of sparkly bling - it's toe-curlingly sad.

He was nominated for best R'n'B act at the 2007 Mobo awards, apparently. Big deal. I could have been, too. I just didn't fill in my application form in time. Too busy laying down some funky shit, brap.

Ahem. Down the stairs, then.

In he goes. "What a suit!" That's the Lucas reaction. He has to say everything twice before John reluctantly gives in and says whatever Matt is trying to get across.

Lucas is making John pretend he has cramp. John is almost beside himself on the floor, not through cramp, but through sheer deep-seated embarrassment and humiliation. Lucas wants him to make Nathan rub his leg.

"Go on Johhhhn!" Lucas is having to work hard, and eventually has to give up. Nice to see John show some spine! Dignity over the win, son. Dignity over the win.

22:01 - Amy
'Obsessive compulsive in a healthy way' is how Amy, who studied Fine Art at Oxford, describes herself. Prize this, prize that. Don't you just despise people who win lots of prizes?

Elsewhere I have read that Amy wants to enter her time in the Big Brother house for the Turner Prize. This speaks volumes for the Turner Prize. She'll almost certainly win it, the judges would love that.

Amy looks every inch a frazzled, psychologically crippled Oxford graduate. Here she comes out of the car, reminding me a little of my friend Hannah, which may thrill Hannah (who is eight years older) or may not (Amy is a headcase). Black and red number for Amy, who has a little nervous wave and ignores the wolf whistles.

Amy 'likes her food, and men, hot', says Dermot, who one assumes is not talking from experience. All the talk is that Amy's OCD will manifest itself in keeping the house clean. Not if she can't find the door, however, which eventually she does.

Down the stairs - clean that carpet, woman! - and into the house. Matt asks John to talk in a cockney accent, which John is completely unable to do. He's remarkably Scottish throughout.

"I'm psychic," says poor John, as Lucas changes tack. "Are you 21?" Lucas reads off the Amy cue sheet. "You from Oxford?"

Amy should see through this. Come on, love, you've got an Oxford degree. "You're not a natural blonde, either, are you?"

21:55 - Relax (don't do it)
Note, while we're in this ad break, that Lucas always tells John to 'relax' at the end of each housemate introduction.

a) As if the poor boy's going to relax
and
b) This clearly means John gets the ad breaks, and the breaks while Dermot chats shit, to somehow compose himself and talk normally to the rest of the housemates. How he must treasure every second Virgin Mobile spend trying to be a poor man's Carphone Warehouse. If I were him I'd pretend the radio link has gone down and start complaining that he can't hear Lucas. Perfect get-out clause.

21:50 - Jeremy
Jeremy, a budding F1 driver, says he's 'extremely competitive' and will 'do anything to win'. He'll fit right into F1 then. Have you met Fernando, Jezza?

Getting more than his fair share of booing on the way in, poor boy, and he has a rueful look back at the crowd as he wanders through the doors and down the crappy carpet.

So, into the fray. What's Lucas going to do? "Introduce yourself, John," says the hijacker.

Lucas: "Tell him he looks like Harry Potter." John did superbly well to mask this as a natural remark, so Lucas inflicts a little more pain. Every time John cleverly resists-while-complying, which is often, Lucas turns the screw.

John, under Lucas' control, takes Jeremy to one side and talks about snogging another housemate.

If John ever gets voted into parliament, Scottish or otherwise, we are all going to enjoy watching a lot of highlights of this evening.

21:45 - Emilia & Victor
Next into the circus it's... the circus acts. These two will be right at home, performing daft stunts in front of a deranged audience as they do. Emilia was born in Birmingham, apparently, although if that's a Brummie accent then I'm a German Shepherd.

"We do what we do together as two people working in one," says Victor. Always a recipe for Big Brother success. Emilia sometimes bleeds out of her eyes, apparently. She's been watching too much Channel 4.

Out the car they get. Emilia is the younger at 18, Victor is 19. Emilia has a fetching black top on with a fair bit of frontage on display, let's say. Victor is very smartly turned out! Shirt tucked in, even.

Down the steps they go and into the pit of Lucas mirth. What's the baldinator going to make John do? Poor effort from Lucas who's going on about hiding or something. A poor show compared with the latent homosexuality he was inflicting on John and Anthony a moment ago.

The thing with Lucas is once he gets onto something, he doesn't give up. That's the true horror of John's plight. Lucas won't let go. It's like owning a plump chihuahua with OCD. A plump chihuahua with OCD that has an earpiece installed in a local tomcat, then makes it prostrate itself in front of cars.

21:35 - Anthony
Anthony Ogogo does not mess about - he's still got the blood speck on his World Cadet Championships 2005 gold medal.

"Some people think I'm quite arrogant, but everyone who knows me knows I'm a nice kid," he says. "If I got big-headed or arrogant my mum would give me a bit of a slap."

He's got more trophies than Manchester United and here he is, getting out of the car in a very nice pinstriped number with open white collared shirt. Looking a bit like a footballer, in as much as he's gone for something posh but looks quite surprised to find himself wearing it.

"Incredible hair," says Dermot. What? His hair is pretty nondescript. Dermot's clearly stuffed for anything to say.

Down the steps, then, to funky Calista and the Lucascotsman. "Can I call you Tony?" Asks John under the bald one's direction.

J: "I do a bit of boxing, actually."
Lucas: "Touch his hair where he's shaved it." Alright, maybe the hair is a bit weird. "Give him a shoulder massage."

Oh he's doing it as well. This is a future political career going down the drain as we speak. I can hardly bear to watch. Matt Lucas, who has up til now been everything but funny, is now being downright cruel. A top boxer is about to demolish an affable young Scot.

21:28 - Calista
"I've written hundreds and hundreds of songs, from drum 'n' bass to garage to grind," says Calista, who says her song about bongos is "taking over the funky house scene". Can't say I'd noticed, love. Good skills on the piano, mind you.

Looks a bit like Holly Valance if her face were prised open slightly then some of those eye drops added which make your pupils go funny. Calista turns up in a silver sparkly number, oblivious to the fact that one half of Little Britain is in control of a gurt big Scotsman in full regalia inside the house. And that's all she'll have for company, initially.

In fact let's call it a day there. John (and Matt) and Calista. Get it on! (Not like that.)

In she goes... down the god-awful beige carpet with murky white lighting... and into the house to meet John, who is parroting everything Matt Lucas says.

John (seconds after Lucas): "I can pretty much just pick up an instrument and play it. I like to play the kazoo, I'm very good with the kazoo. I like your hair! I like some of it. I like one side. I composed the Sound of Music, do you know that?"

"What a git," says Dermot.

21:22 - 'Is that not David?'
John has worn a kilt. Bless his highly visible cotton socks. Lucas calls him to the diary room.

J: "Mr Lucas, how are ye?"
L: "Sure you want to be wearing a kilt tonight? Now I chose you to be first to enter the house as you are the person most capable of carrying out my secret task."

John opens up a box and finds an earpiece. Lucas tells him the earpiece means John is totally under his control.

There's a lovely little moment where Lucas and John get the earpiece volume right.

L: "I'm worried the earpiece may still be seen so I've provided you with a box of hats. Feel free to accessorise your head."

John chooses a tartan hat. I bet the box only has tartan hats in it.

You can almost see up that kilt from the diary room chair, by the way. It's horrifying. Beautiful retort from John at the end, when Lucas says he's the funny one from Little Britain. "Is that not David?" Says John. I want that boy to win.

Quick thought though - if John wants to be a politician, he's going to live to regret this. Think about Galloway's Big Brother performance. If John becomes the next Alex Salmond, this footage is going to come back again, and again, and again, and again, and again...

21:17 - A complete John
Is anyone finding Matt Lucas even remotely funny? Poor boy. Saw David Walliams in the canteen at work the other day looking very happy with himself - he's well shot of Lucas.

Our first housemate is John Loughton, of the Scottish Youth Parliament. He wants the young people of Scotland to 'have a strong voice'. He looks a fine, upstanding fellow. He's clearly been chosen because he'll look like a wassock (and a ginger one, at that) up against people E4 reckons are 'cool'. Lovely. I hope he wins and shoves it down their throats.

21:10 - Give us a break
After what feels like four minutes - oh look, it was - we're into our first ad break. Channel 4! What are you doing! God, give me that bloody norovirus already, it's got to be livelier and more entertaining than this.

Housemate introductions coming up, which had better be good. We've had it explained to us that the housemates were handpicked by C4 - no, sorry, the ubercool E4 - this time around, without open auditions. It'll be interesting to see if that affects the quality of in-house action.

21:06 - Not good so far
Rubbish supposed-to-be-funny intro from Lucas and we're off. There's Dermot, who is neither pregnant nor Davina. It's all so disappointing.

Bless them for trying to make the decision to restrict this to E4 into a reason why E4 is cool. No, that is a reason why E4 is not. No bugger watches it. This is why this show is on it.

Dermot: "When the housemates are evicted, they'll be interviewed by me."

Emphasis Dermot's. He's loving the Davinalessness of it all. No swimming pool but a hot tub, and we have a ginormous Big Brother control room where we'll doubtless get to see our celebrities playing God.

Lucas has 'cheeky naughtiness' planned, including sending 50 dogs into the house, except 'the RSPCA weren't happy with that'. So he's secreting an earpiece in the ear of a housemate. Not exactly Pure Evil, is it?

21:02 - Here we go!
Yes, get excited, get pumped up, because a bunch of people you've never heard of are about to enter a second-rate Big Brother house for an unspecified but short period of time.

Except this time, they're all supposed to be successful and/or intelligent. Which is deeply troubling because if they are, they'll sensibly sit through it and do nothing even remotely untoward. What a let-down.

20:55 - Wan moment
Five minutes to air. Gok Wan (Fashion Nil) is finishing off showing the fatty bits of another poor woman, humiliated on national television, and we're almost ready to roll.

Let's not forget that the change in format is brought about by the racism scandal in last year's Celebrity Big Brother. Channel 4 claims this is sufficiently different that any such problem will now be avoided - by introducing people in their late teens into a house controlled by unhinged media luvvies. Can't help but wonder about the wisdom of this decision.

20:50 - Duhhhmot
Let's get the worst news out of the way early doors. No Davina. We're stuck with Dermot What's-his-chops because Channel 4 are sufficiently underwhelmed by the new format that they're only putting it on E4 after tonight. None of that digital-spinoff nonsense for Davina, who is probably off getting pregnant in time for this summer's Big Brother 9.

20:45 - Intro
Okay, so here we are again, gathered in front of the television to watch egotistical no-marks make fools out of themselves in front of the anonymous Big Brother.

Except the housemates aren't egotistical, they're not no-marks, and Big Brother is most certainly not anonymous.

Channel 4 have tempted a selection of the UK's Bright Young Things into the house, most notably the boxer Anthony Ogogo, who I'll be writing about in greater depth for the Beeb tomorrow. So we'll be keeping an eye firmly fixed on him.

There's also a ginger Scottish youth parliamentarian, a classical musician, a dancer, a pair of circus performers, and more besides.

Meanwhile, Big Brother itself takes the form of a different celebrity each day, with Matt Lucas taking the reigns to start with. The likes of Jimmy Carr are promised in future, all deciding their own rules and toying with the housemates' minds. Excellent. Nothing like turning up at a house to discover you must bow to the every whim of Matt Lucas. *Shudder.*