Brian Belo walks out of the Big Brother house

Brian, who triumphed in 2007 when he picked up almost two thirds of the votes in the final, climbed over the garden wall to escape barely a week after he was brought back to the house with Helen and another former star, Nikki Grahame.

The row, which resulted in Helen being given a formal warning, saw Brian describe her as having “no principles, morals or self-respect” while she taunted him: “Straitjackets in the store room. Psycho.”

Speaking in the diary room after the row, he said: “I feel like I’m being ganged up on. I don’t want to cry. I’ve tried to keep away from there. I shouldn’t have come back here. This is really hard. I feel like I’m living in hell. I’m defeated. I’m getting a barrage of abuse.”

Afterwards he told Nikki: “I just feel degraded,” before quitting the Channel 5 show.

Helen won the last series of the show but caused controversy with her aggressive behaviour.

Communications watchdog Ofcom said it received 3,784 complaints about that series, with many about her behaviour and allegations of bullying.

Brian hit the headlines during his first stint on the show when he asked his fellow housemates “who’s Shakespeare?”. He later appeared in Harry Hill’s TV Burp and performed Shakespeare scenes in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2008.

Speaking before he entered the house a second time, he described it as “like a home away from home”.

He said: “I need to remember to just enjoy it, I’m more grown up and I’ve scratched up on my literature this time, so I know who Shakespeare is.

“I have been watching the Australian Big Brother and the guy that won it was 27, which is the same age as me, and I wondered what would it be like for me to be in there in my mid-20s.”