Kerry Katona tells 2.2m C5 viewers she was hacked by NotW

By Maisie McCabe, brandrepublic.com, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 11:08AM

An average audience of 2.2 million tuned in to hear troubled reality star Kerry Katona claim she had been hacked by News of the World, among other things, on 'Celebrity Big Brother' last night.

Kerry Katona: Celebrity Big Brother contestant claimed her phone calls were hacked

Katona told housemates she felt "a bit violated" after conversations with ex-husband Brian McFadden and with her former drug dealer had been tapped.

She said: "It made sense because they literally destroyed the little bit of my career I had going. The amount of stuff that they had [on me] was unbelievable."

Channel 5 secured the rights to ‘Big Brother’ in April in a deal reported to be worth £200m over two years and ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ launched with an audience of 5.08 million on Thursday night (18 August).

Other events in the house yesterday (22 August) included a row about cleaning the kitchen, and House of Commons Speaker’s wife Sally Bercow discussing the pressures of being married to a politician and admitting she would never be able to be a politician, as much as she'd like to.

Last night, ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ had an average audience of 2.23 million viewers between 10pm and 11pm, a 12.3% share of the available audience and second only to BBC One with ‘BBC News at Ten’ and ‘A Question of Sport’.

By comparison, Channel 5’s ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ audience was 3.14 million viewers during the 9pm-10pm hour on Friday night and 2.74 million viewers between 9.15pm and 10.15pm on Saturday night.

Both ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ and the series of ‘Big Brother’ that will follow it from September, have been sponsored by skincare brand Freederm in a multimillion-pound deal negotiated by Bray Leino.

Channel 5 has also announced a number of other commercial partnerships, including Domino’s Pizza as the show’s convenience food partner, and a product-placement deal with Touchstone Pictures' ‘Fright Night’.

‘BBC News at Ten’ had an average audience of 5.55 million on BBC One and BBC One HD between 10pm and 10.30pm last night, a 27.2% share of the available audience.

Former England footballer Ray Parlour and model and polo player Jodie Kidd helped ‘A Question of Sport’ to an audience of 2.92 million, a 19.2% share, between 10.30pm and 11pm on BBC One and BBC One HD.

‘Celebrity Big Brother’s Bit on the Side’ had an average audience of 696,100 on Channel 5 last night between 11pm and 12pm, a 7% share of the audience.

This article was first published on brandrepublic.com