Boris Johnson’s sister confirmed as the first CBB contestant

Boris Johnson's sister Rachel has been revealed as the first contestant for the upcoming series of Celebrity Big Brother

Channel 5 made the announcement in a tweet posted on Sunday, confirming the 53-year-old journalist would enter the Big Brother house when the series starts on January 2. 

The year will see an all-female line-up enter the house on launch night, though it's believed that male celebrities will enter as the series goes on.  

Sister to Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and daughter of former MEP Stanley Johnson, Rachel is no stranger to the world or reality TV, with her father having recently found success on ITV's I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here. 

Stanley, 77, proved to be very popular among his campmates, but his time in the jungle came to an end  when he became the fifth celebrity to be voted out by the public. 

Speaking about the announcement in her Mail on Sunday column, Rachel explained he reasons for wanting to take part. 

"I am a firm believer that you only regret the things in life you don’t do, not the things you do do," she wrote. 

‘I’ve never sat down and watched CBB in the way my children religiously binge-watch it, but when Channel 5 came calling, I didn’t delete the annual email asking me to be on. It was because this one said that the new series was all about female empowerment and 100 years since women got the vote.

‘It was going to be called Big Sister (it’s ended up being called Celebrity Big Brother: Year Of The Woman), with a “classy” all-female line-up for the launch. Female politicians, performance artists, broadcasters. Serious stuff. Big names were duly dropped, and the emphasis on “empowerment” rather than “ritual humiliation” promised.’

Celebrity Big Brother kicks off at 9pm on Channel 5 on January 2. 

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