Christine wrote:
She certainly didn't do what BB had expected of her. Why do you think they didn't want her to win? Because she had let them down. From what she said and did at her audition, they were expecting a very talkative, loud, bubbly, lively, sexy, opinionated, bitchy person and she turned out to be a boring, fence-sitting person who tried to stay in the background, bit her tongue throughout and held back her opinions.
Interesting that it seems to be accepted that 'they didn't want her to win'. Makes the fact that she did win even better - their line 'You Decide' might actually have turned out to be true, despite their best efforts. Excellent.
I'm not so sure - I think Rachel was brought in as 'the nice one', and she played her role, as foil to Rex and others. I imagine those choosing had a good idea that Bex would be more zany than Rachel, etc.
As regards Rachel not being 'bubbly' - I would have thought there were very few who were as constantly upbeat as she was. Grant it, the pink-clad, squealing twins last year were more 'bubbly'...but I hardly think Rachel could be described as morose and dull. After all, her happy disposition was one of the things Rex was irritated by (and I sympathise with him to a certain extent!), and the housemates thought she couldn't be as 'nice' as she seemed.
Craig from BB6 turned out to be quite different from his audition tape. Possibly he was chosen because they thought he'd be a real top dog, bitching and domineering. Instead, he turned out to be a needy love-struck crying human being - and his strange obsession with Anthony gave us the biggest story line of BB6, and enabled the rather lacklustre Anthony to go on and win.
Maybe after that, the producers tried to pick more stereotypical, and rather more one-dimensional housemates...the wag-wannabe, the shouting deluded self-proclaimed 'IT' girl, the eccentric.
I didn't vote for Ray when he was in the final of BB4, despite the fact that I thought he was okay guy. My head was turned by some geezer from Orkney, so I voted for him instead.
(Of course I've since seen the error of my ways

)
Actually, the only time I chose an Irish HM above another, was when I voted for Anna in BB1. Even the phenomenal Brian Dowling didn't get my vote - because I couldn't bear to vote against Helen, in BB2.
Therefore I'm not so sure that any Housemate who is from Wales or Scotland would necessarily have all of their country behind them. I've seen posts elsewhere from people saying things like 'I'm from X, and I won't be voting for Housemate A - he/she is a disgrace to X'.
Of course a few Welsh people will have cast a vote for Rachel because she's Welsh, but then, the same could be said for any area - Newcastle, South East London, Liverpool, etc.