Fed-up neighbour turns hose on Big Brother cast

Ria Slabber hooked up her hosepipe, leaned over the high wall between her restaurant in Linden, Johannesburg, and the Big Brother house next door and sprayed the cast and crew of the reality show in a bid to shut them up.

She had had enough of the non-stop noise, the loud music at all hours and the sounds of the electric drums that constantly blared from next door.

The 54-year-old coffee shop owner is among a group of Linden residents who have been waging a battle against the producers of Big Brother Mzansi for disturbing the peace and quiet along Fourth Avenue.

"This was my way of saying enough is enough, and they stopped their dancing competition after that," said Slabber.

So far, two seasons of the reality show have been filmed at the Linden house and residents fear their woes will continue when filming of the new season kicks off. They are now insisting that M-Net installs adequate soundproofing to spare them the trauma of a new batch of loud contestants.

They also want producers to provide proper parking for the hordes of people who arrive for the after-parties on eviction night.

block_quotes_start A production project like Big Brother should be done in an industrial area, not in a residential area. block_quotes_end

The popular series sees unsuccessful housemates being evicted at weekly intervals.

Neighbour Baverd van der Merwe said that on one of the eviction nights, he measured the noise level at about 75 decibels, nearly 24 decibels above the normal standard.

"This was not acceptable. On several occasions I had to take my children to study somewhere else because they couldn't work with the noise coming from the house," he said.

Big Brother Mzansi wrapped up last weekend when it turned Soweto couple Ntombifuthi "Ntombi" Tshabalala and Nkanyiso "Ace" Khumalo into instant millionaires after 56 days of filming.

Slabber said she had lost many customers at her coffee shop because they could not tolerate the noise - especially the deep voice of "Big Brother" when he spoke to contestants on the property.

story_article_left1

Another nearby resident, town planner Eduard van der Linde, said they were initially told that M-Net and Endemol, the production company, would only record one season after the previous Big Brother house in Balfour Park was damaged during a fire.

He said the City of Johannesburg planning office confirmed to him that the property was not zoned to allow for a big TV production of this nature. He was told: "A production project like Big Brother should be done in an industrial area, not in a residential area."

Red Pepper Pictures, which owns the Big Brother house, said it intended resolving the parking issue in a bid to mollify neighbours.

The CEO of Red Pepper Pictures, Cecil Barry, said it was not in the company's interests to upset the neighbours and it was trying with M-Net to resolve the matter.

M-Net spokeswoman Bongiwe Potelwa said the company had engaged the community in the hope of resolving their concerns, while Endemol Shine Africa, the producers of the upcoming Big Brother Angola to be filmed Linden, had undertaken to minimise noise levels.

The show faced major drama last month when two contestants were evicted from the house following claims of "sexual misconduct".

 - Additional reporting by Taschica Pillay