Endemol confident about CBB6 success

Endemol bosses are confident that Celebrity Big Brother will be a success when it returns for a new series next year.

The show's future was uncertain following the racism controversy that surrounded this year's series in January, with producers fearing that no stars would run the risk of appearing on the programme. Executives therefore decided to start recruiting celebrities for the show last month, rather than following the usual tradition of waiting until October.

A number of names are already being rumoured for the sixth series, including Paris Hilton, ex-Corrie actor Chris Quinten (Brian Tilsley), former Liberty X star Jessica Taylor and her fiancé Kevin Pietersen.

A source told the Daily Star: "After the Jade Goody-Shilpa Shetty race row - which caused such controversy for the show - we did wonder whether we'd get anyone to take part in Celebrity Big Brother ever again. We were genuinely worried that this would scare celebrities away.

"But having had a few tentative meetings with some stars, we found that most people believed this was a one-off incident that had not completely damaged the series. They agreed that a lot of celebrities - like Ian Watkins, Jermaine Jackson and Dirk Benedict - came out of this year's show unscathed."

Channel 4 was forced to broadcast three on-air apologies earlier this year, after Ofcom found that the 2007 series had breached the broadcasting code.