Big Brother stole my life - Times Online

Bart Spring in't Veld comes to meet me at Schipol airport, Amersterdam - “I have shit all to do,” he explains. Nobody recognises him as we weave through the crowded concourse towards the station. He attracts no attention as we take the train to the town of Hilversum, near where he lives. He sits undisturbed in the Papillon coffee house, smoking a spliff while we talk. The only flicker of recognition comes from the waiter in the caf�where we go for lunch, but even he cannot quite place this articulate, good-looking Dutchman with his unshaven face and ragged old T-shirt.

This is astonishing. When I last saw Bart in February 2000 he was the most famous man in the Netherlands, mobbed wherever he went. He had just become the first winner of a revolutionary new television show called Big Brother, and his on-screen romance with a beautiful housemate - consummated in front of three million viewers - had saved the programme from dying in infancy.

Bart, now 31, has spent most of the past eight years trying to"