Sunday Mirror claims Big Brother faces axe

The Sunday Mirror claims Big Brother faces the axe next year after poor viewing figures for this year's series which finished on Friday. Some shows were seen by less than 3 million viewers.

Last year the series was already well down on the 5.8 million average audience of Big Brother 3 with an average of only 4.5 million viewers. This year's ratings slumped to 3.8 million and will probably slide further if the Big Brother is scheduled again in 2008.

The paper's claims are probably not true as the series is still more popular than most of the other shows on Channel 4.

The paper also points out that host Davina McCall is not showing as much commitment to this series as she commuted from her villa in St Tropez to host her weekend shows.

The Sunday Mirror claims that another housemate, Ziggy Lichman, used the n word but was not then evicted as Emily Parr had been and remained in the house after a rebuke in the diary room. Previously Channel 4 said it would not tolerate racism or racist words - but then failed to apply this consistently.