Ask anybody to state one fact about the 2003 winner of Big Brother, Cameron Stout, and you can virtually guarantee that they’ll respond with a considerable amount of glee—“He’s a virgin!” And certainly, a Christian in his early 30s who’s chosen to stick rigidly by the ‘no sex before marriage’ rule is something of a rarity these days and worthy of a degree of fascination. This Sunday, Dundonians will have the chance to catch a glimpse of this unusual breed in the flesh when Cameron attends what is expected to be the largest Easter Sunday service the city has ever seen.

Here he speaks to Emma Seith about his one dislike—the Press—and exactly what kind of woman it would take to win him over . . .

We’ve already been through the, ‘Have they/Haven’t they?’ scenario with the once squeaky clean Britney Spears and her then boyfriend Justin Timberlake as the world—or perhaps more accurately certain glossy magazines and tabloids—obsessed about whether the pair had carnal knowledge of each other. Now that Bible Bashing Britney appears to have veered away from the righteous path at speed, even the most optimistic must have reconciled themselves to the fact that, if ever they need a virginal role model for young ladies, Miss Spears is probably no longer their best option.

Cameron, however, has been more successful at keeping his pure-as-the-driven-snow image intact and remains, he assures me, uncorrupted by his Big Brother driven celebrity. Now the programme, however, is very much in the past, but Cameron continues to be in the lime light.

Just last week, for instance, he appeared on television’s Offside presented by Tam Cowan and he tells me he is booked up to make appearances as Big Brother’s Cameron right through until January next year. When I speak to him, however, he is in the midst of one of only a handful of rare periods of respite at home on Orkney since winning Big Brother in July 2003.

So why is it that people are still interested in Cameron when his fellow housemates seem to have evaporated into the ether? Perhaps it’s because Cameron has carved out a role for himself as cool Christian. Maybe a seemingly virtuous man has the ability to hold public attention more effectively than a man or woman who possesses little else of interest than their ability to live in a house with strangers for varying lengths of time.

When he left the Big Brother house, newspapers commented that, usually, the programme launches its winners into television careers. In Cameron’s case, the bulk of the demand seemed to be coming from his fellow Christians, with his own minister commenting that there was a clamouring for him to speak at religious meetings and services.

He, however, claims to find being hailed as a positive role model for young Christians all a bit baffling.

“I’ve taken part in a couple of broadcasts on radio and telly on this subject, and I don’t know what to say really.

“The point that I’ve tried to make is Christians are normal people, and normal people are Christians.

“Just because there are a few unruly football fans, people think all football fans are unruly. Just because there are a few loud mouth, outrageous Christians people think that all Christians are like that.

“I think that a lot of folk have realised you actually get normal Christians.”

Cameron had always seemed to me a little out of place in the Big Brother house, mainly because I didn’t dislike him so much that I wanted to inflict physical pain upon his person.

Usually, it would appear, loose morals, no sense of shame whatsoever and an overwhelming urge to be famous—with no particular talent to back this desire up—are the requirements for getting past the selection panel. Here, however, you have a man who, quite clearly, wasn’t going to be up for any hanky panky and refused to get blind drunk and make a fool of himself.

However, given that it’s more unusual to come across a principled Christian than a moral-free moron, you can see why the producers were prepared to take the gamble that people might find him a tad more interesting. Perhaps the more pertinent question therefore is—why would Cameron want to do it?

Clearly, when the programme makers decided to have Cameron on the show, the point would be to see if the Christian could be corrupted. This put him in a slightly awkward position, and saw him being sent off to South Africa where he was asked to strip off for a communal bath and one of his fellow contestants tried to lure him into bed in a more blatant fashion than you’d ever be likely to come across in Britain.

So was Cameron just in it to bring the British back to church?

“I am a big fan of Big Brother. I really have been a total addict since it started. It just looked like fun, I think, I didn’t have any other reason to do it other than it looked like fun.”

Apparently I wasn’t the only one to be puzzled by his decision, however.

“The psychologist kept saying things like, ‘You’re the enigma this year’, just because they couldn’t make out why I wanted to do it.”

Cameron is adamant that spreading the word was not his reason for taking part. In fact, it didn’t even occur to him that this could be a medium to persuade people round to his way of thinking until the contest was over and the opportunity arose for him to lend his new found fame to Christian events.

“I never thought about afterwards once. I’d never given it a thought because the producers had said, ‘Don’t expect anything to happen. When the programme is over, just go home and back to work.’

“I just thought, ‘Oh right that sounds fine’.”

And, so in the end, was he glad he did it?

“It was absolutely brilliant. I think I said at the time it exceeded my expectations in every way. It was absolutely brilliant.”

Certainly, Cameron seems to be Big Brother’s biggest fan. He feels it’s the king of reality TV, he would definitely do it again if given the chance, and Cameron believes that if any of the contestants came over badly, it had nothing to with “careful” editing.

“It’s difficult to edit down 24 hours to 24 minutes.” This “it’s a tough job, you can’t really blame them” attitude disappears rapidly when it comes to the Press, however. They—or we—I’m not entirely sure if I’m being included in his comments, are big, fat liars.

“Luckily I know how inaccurate Press reporting is from having worked in the food industry and whenever there’s a food scandal it’s all highly sensationalised in the Press, so I know how little reporting is actually true. We were also well warned by the producers that there would be a lot of stuff in the media that would upset us.”

Cameron uses as an example the assertions that his former housemate, Scott, was boring when, in fact, he was, “easily the funniest person in the Big Brother house.”

Was this not more to do with the editing of the programme, though, than the papers? The answer to this, however, is that Cameron has not seen enough of what made it on to television to know how the programme was edited.

Once again Big Brother is not to blame.

However, Cameron does admit that there has been nothing in the papers, so far, that he himself has found particularly upsetting. It seems more to be the background threat, certain facets of the Press lurking in the shadows, waiting to bat him off his pedestal, that bothers him. Here, even I have to admit, he has a point.

“In all truth I don’t have anything to hide, and most of what is reported about me is pretty tame anyway. Having said that, there are some papers that if I do have a drink or if I got caught for speeding or if I bumped into someone else’s car there would be an enormous scandal.”

I suppose, to put it bluntly, why Cameron continues to be a source of such fascination is that we are all waiting for him succumb to temptation. Even he has joked he believes in no sex before marriage and thus—he can’t wait to get married! So what calibre of lady is it going to take?

“I was asked something similar on the Big Brother application form and I said somebody who looks like Demi Moore (the original not the recent version), sings like Eva Cassidy, cooks like my mum and has a sense of humour like Chandler of Friends.”

I think even Cilla would struggle with those criteria, but Cameron we wait with bated breath and wish you, ‘Good Luck!’.

The Resurrection Day event that Cameron Stout is due to attend will take place this Sunday at the Caird Hall at 6pm.