‘I love Katie… I’m so sorry’: Christopher Biggins sobs over sick Nazi gag that saw him get boot from Celebrity Big Brother
Telly legend 'mortified' following comments that left the nation reeling and saw him kicked off CBB
EMOTIONAL Christopher Biggins sobbed as he apologised for the sick Nazi gag which got him booted off Celebrity Big Brother.
He revealed that after being rapped by show bosses he begged house pal Katie Waissel for forgiveness.
The 67-year-old actor said: “I found Katie and said ‘I am mortified. I would never do anything to upset you. I love you and I’m really sorry’.”
Biggins had earlier made a concentration camp “joke” to the Jewish former X Factor star, 30, as fellow housemates rowed in the bathroom.
He said: “You better be careful or they’ll be putting you in a shower and taking you to a room.”
The Panto star now admits that he was making a joke about Nazis, who gassed Jews in shower blocks.
He said: “I suppose I was, yes. But it didn’t occur to me that’s what I was referring to.”
Panto star Biggins, axed from the Celebrity Big Brother house in his underpants on Friday night, had made earlier controversial comments about Aids and bisexuals.
Yesterday Biggins insisted: “I am mortified by what’s happened, really mortified. Most of my friends, in fact, are Jewish. I apologised to Big Brother and Katie.”
He said: “I love Jewish people. Listen, my best friend is Lesley Joseph. You can’t get much more Jewish than that.
“I have a lot of bisexual friends and I’m not in any way a bigoted person.
I’m 67 and I love everybody. I live in Hackney and I have a lot of black neighbours who are fantastic.
“It’s just not in my vocabulary that word. So to be chastised for those sorts of things is very sad.”
Biggins said: “Katie is a very sensitive girl with a few issues.”
That evening they were sitting in the bathroom while other housemates were using the showers.
He said: “It was getting a bit heavy, people were fighting around us.”
It was then that Biggins made his shocking statement, which he now admits was a reference to the Nazi concentration camps.
He said: “I suppose I was, yes. But it didn’t occur to me that’s what I was referring to.
At the time, she laughed and then gave a shocked reaction to me. Quite rightly.
“She didn’t say anything. I don’t think she walked away immediately. We sat there for a little time and it wasn’t evident she was offended.
“It is like a sort of prison in there because there’s no way out. You’re stuck in there and you don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
He said: “That was the first time I had ever been taken into the diary room to be given a formal warning. I said I was terribly sorry.”
He says that after apologising to Katie she told him: “Don’t worry, there’s no problem, it’s all forgotten.”
Biggins said: “We were really good friends and there was no animosity, we’d cleared the air days before.
“She never raised it again with me. I don’t know if she even raised it with anyone.”
Viewers were unaware of what had happened until rumours began to leak out on Friday.
Biggins said: “I think Channel 5 were trying to protect me by not screening it.
“I think it’s unfortunate that someone has decided to leak the story. Then they had to do something.
“I was called into the diary room so I went along in a shirt and underwear. They said they’d warned me twice now and I’d broken the rules so they were going to evict me.
“I honestly thought it was a joke or trick.
“So I sat there in total disbelief. They told me to exit by the left-hand door so I thought maybe my partner was going to be there as a surprise.
“But in fact there was a casting director, a producer and somebody I didn’t know.
“They said: ‘We’re so sorry, this is terrible, we believe in you.’
“I wasn’t really taking it in. I walked in my underwear out of the house and was just in disbelief. I didn’t get to say goodbye to anyone. I was so stunned and so shocked.”
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LIFE AND TIME ON STAGE AND SCREENS
By BEN PERRIN
CHRISTOPHER Biggins’ life of performing began when he was just a boy.
Born in Oldham, Lancs, he started elocution and acting lessons young.
He moved to Salisbury, Wilts, where he grew up, acting in drama groups.
Biggins got his big break in 1974 as regular character Lukewarm in hit TV comedy Porridge, starring Ronnie Barker.
He was also in comedy series Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? and Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em in the Seventies.
Biggins co-hosted TV family show Surprise, Surprise with Cilla Black in 1984 and fronted a jungle-themed children’s game-show called On Safari from 1982 to 1985.
On stage, his credits have included Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Biggins, 67, made a TV comeback in 2007, winning I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out Of Here!
Also on his reality TV CV are Celebrity Come Dine With Me and Celebrity MasterChef. He has done Christmas pantos for four decades, but says next year will be his last.
Earlier on Friday Biggins got a second warning after he made controversial views on bisexuality and Aids during a conversation with US reality show stars Aubrey O’Day, 32, and Renee Graziano, 48.
Biggins said: “We were discussing Aids. Renee said she knew a CIA man who told her that the American government had come up with the virus in order to get rid of people in Third World countries.
“I’d heard the rumour. Then I said there were a lot of bisexuals who went to these countries and had sex and then took it back to their wives or lovers and gave them the virus.
“That’s what I’ve read and that’s what I believe. It was a very interesting conversation.
“A day later I was taken in again to Big Brother and they said I couldn’t talk about bisexuals in that way. They said they’d had complaints from numerous bisexuals that I was being antagonistic about them.”
In later comments broadcast by Channel 5, Biggins slagged off bisexuals as the “worst type” of gay people.
But the ex-Porridge actor, who wed an Australian actress in the 1970s, said: “I know a lot of bisexuals and they’re very nice people.
“But I think they do f*** up a lot of relationships.”
He is also standing up for his right to say what he thinks.
He said: “If I’m not allowed to have an opinion, I’d just go and sit in the corner. Do you just shut up?”
But Biggins added: “The one desperate thing was the conversation with Katie. I wish I could live that again.
“That was a really trite, ridiculous remark to make that was because of the situation we were in.
“Thank God, I didn’t say anything worse because I could easily have done. But that is all I said.”
Biggins also admitted his partner Neil Sinclair, an air steward, did not want him to take part in the show.
He said: “It was such good money and a no brainer really.”
Three bombshells behind TV boot
Holocaust
What he told Katie after she said she was Jewish: "You better be careful or they’ll be putting you in a shower and taking you to a room"
Bisexuals
I think the worst type though is, I’m afraid to say, the bisexuals. What it is is people not wanting to admit they are gay
AIDs
A lot of bisexuals who went to Third World countries, had sex and then took it back to their lovers and gave them the virus, which then became Aids
FIRST CRISIS AFTER CILLA
BIGGINS’ BB shame follows his heartache over the death of best friend Cilla Black a year ago.
He said: “My God, she would have been the first person I’d have called. But of course I can’t.
“I used to love calling Cilla. She would have been very supportive.”
Asked what advice he thought she might have given, he said: “Just forget it, ignore it. We know that’s not you. We’re not worried.”