This morning Big Brother Australia 2001 housemates Sara-Marie Fedele and Blair McDonough reunited for the first time in over 15 years and it’s truly amazing that I still care about contestants from a show 22 years ago.
It’s official. I am old. But if you’re reading this then you’re probably on your deathbed too.
In case you’ve forgotten, Sara-Marie and Blair were both in the final three of the show’s first-ever season in Australia.
While neither won (back then it was all about flying under the radar, like Ben Williams, to take home the $250,000), they were easily two of the most iconic players of the season, somewhere amongst the “dancing doona” of Christina Davis and Peter Timbs.
For the uninitiated, “dancing doona” was code for “everyone thought they were fucking thanks to the blanket’s movements”.
But even though they spent three months in a house together in one of Australia’s most iconic television series ever, the pair had not seen each other since 2007.
Blair and Sara-Marie appeared on Sunrise this morning Monique Wright and Kochie‘s replacement Matt Shirvington to promote the new campaign they are doing with Jetstar, explaining that getting together and doing the shoot for the campaign was the first time they’d spoken or seen each other in over 15 years.
“Our lives just got so busy,” Sara-Marie explained.
Sara-Marie released a song and pyjama line following her time on Big Brother Australia, and Blair went on to build an acting career with roles in Neighbours and Winners & Losers. I’m still recovering from how his time ended on that last one.
“To catch up with Sara-Marie, it was probably one of the highlights of my year. It’s been a long time,” Blair said. “That first moment was pretty special.”
The pair, who are now both in their 40s, also discussed how pivotal their season of Big Brother was in Australian television history, recalling the lack of agendas for going on reality TV in the early 2000s.
“It was all just about fun back then, there was no agenda, it was all as authentic as we could be and we just had a great time.”
Ah, the good old days before social media. You can watch the entire interview over at 7News here.
