Sun Jan 23, 2005 10:48 PM GMT
By Tim Castle
LONDON (
Reuters)
Happy Mondays dancer Bez has won the third series of Channel 4's Celebrity Big Brother, outlasting eight other contestants to win the reality television show.
Bez, who danced with the Manchester band from its inception in the mid-1980s, was a surprise winner on Sunday after bookmakers had made teenage rap singer Kenzie their runaway favourite.
"I enjoyed my time in there, met some good people," the 40-year-old said after he emerged after 18 days isolated inside the Big Brother house at the Elstree studios north of London.
Bez, whose real name is Mark Berry, won a 50,0OO pound prize, after gaining 54 percent of the final viewer vote compared to Kenzie's 46 percent.
Danish actress Brigitte Nielsen was eliminated from the final three earlier on Sunday evening after earning just 28 percent of viewer votes.
"I'm so happy to have come this far," said Kenzie, a teen heartthrob who at 19 was the youngest competitor in the camera-filled house. "I've got friends for life now, " he said of his fellow contestants.
"I'm not disappointed at all," said Nielsen, at one time married to American actor Sylvester Stallone. "It's been a great experience."
The show raised 262,000 pounds for charity from 1,048,007 viewer pay votes cast by phone, text and interactive television.
The original line-up of stars also included Australian feminist academic Germaine Greer, ex-Holby City actor Jeremy Edwards, DJ Lisa I'Anson, American model Caprice and horse racing pundit John McCririck.
Greer walked out of the Big Brother House after just four days and Jackie Stallone, Nielsen's former mother-in-law, a late addition to the house, was evicted in the first public vote.
An average of 4 million people watched each night of the show, equivalent to a 16 percent share of the television audience, Channel 4 said.
