Bateman grew up in Scotland, into a large family, suffice to say a rather upper class one, and was privately educated at Gordonstoun, before becoming a stockbroker in London, after a stint in Australia working as a fruit picker.
After 10 years of working in this environment, becoming a vice-president in Fulham FC and qualified Reiki practicioner on the way, Bateman decided to jack it in after seeing the Dutch version of Big Brother on TV, and applied to do the UK version.
This is where Bateman became the most talked about man in the UK over the entire summer of 2000. When they all moved into the Big Brother house on July 14th, they were faceless nobodies, but soon became the latest batch of celebrities after a few weeks. Bateman, however, got the most limelight due to being the villain of the piece.
The first week breezed past, with Nick vying for group leadership with fellow housemate Mel Hill, but Nick certainly came out on top, especially with the male contestants.
After the eviction of dippy hippe Sada a couple of weeks into the run, the audience started to turn on Nick, with no help whatsoever from the footage they were showing or a comment from Sada's father, obviously upset that his daughter was proven to be obnoxious, unlikable and, well, a dippy hippie blonde. He was depicted as being a manipulative Machiavelian genius (The Observer likened him to a cross of Nicholas Machiaveli and American Psycho's Patrick Bateman), despite the fact that it was obvious he wasn't the only one double-crossing the entire house, just the least subtle.
After the second eviction it really heated up, with The Sun sending pamphlets into the house stating they should nominate Nick for eviction, as well as numerous articles in the newspapers. It was clear that Nick was making the show. When the 3rd eviction, the hyper-annoying Caroline, was announced, most of the crowd at the house wasn't there for her, as presenter Davina McCall said, but to chant 'Nick Out'.
Numerous rumors started to surface. He was a Channel 4 plant to spice up the show, he smuggled a mobile phone into the house (even though there was a mobile jammer), he was evil (according to Johnny Vaughn on The Big Breakfast), he bit the heads of puppies...none of this had any effect on the house, since they had no contact with the outside world to know of this.
However, the 4th round of nominations still had no votes for him-he was the only contestant never to get a single nomination, but the ego of one of the nominees, eventual winner Craig Phillips, finally undid Bateman. He was kicked out by the producers for repeated rule breaking, culminating with showing names to other contestants of who to evict.
After being whisked off to a secret location, and sparking off the greatest UK internet event (4.5m people logged on to see him confronted by the other housemates, and 6m for the show), he was generally assumed to be in hiding for fear of a public lynching. Instead, the next day when Gremlin housemate Nichola was evicted, there were chants of 'Bring Nick Back', and certainly the show lost a little of its edge at the same time.
Instead, he signed a £70,000 deal to write for The Sun (irony being he gained the same amount for winning, and wrotew for the tabloid that was intent on getting him evicted), and even spotted at the UK Premier of Snatch a mere week after his expulsion, making the front page when pictured with Guy Richie, Brad Pitt and Vinnie Jones, as well as attending the remier to The Cell a few weeks later. Presenting an award at the TV Quick ceremony wasn't such a good idea, though. Other evictees CCaroline, Nichola and Sada were in attendance, and not happy. OK, most of that was staged, but who knew?
In the end, it was Nick who presented winner Craig with his winnigs as Big Brother ended, and the crowd was told to boo him as he entered the scene in a very theatrical sense. Retribution? Or was it that the real star was letting in one of his disciples on the act? Either way, he became the main icon of Summer 2000, since we were terrible at Euro 2000.
