Gretel Killeen Reflects on Big Brothers 25 Years

Gretel Killeen has reflected on the incredible success of Big Brother 25 years after it first hit Australian screens – and revealed she almost didn't audition because she believed she was already 'too old' for TV.

The veteran presenter, 63, tells this week's Stellar magazine that she was convinced she had already aged out of the industry's beauty standards when she landed the groundbreaking hosting role at just 38.

Looking back on the career-defining opportunity, the Sydney-born presenter said she couldn't imagine herself being chosen to front a prime-time show.

'When I was asked if I wanted to audition for it, I remember thinking: I'm 38, I've got dark hair, and I'm a woman – there's no way in the world they're going to want me,' she began.

'I thought 38 was too old and you had to have blonde hair to be a host. Those were the parameters in those days.'

Instead, Gretel went on to become one of Australia's most recognisable television personalities, fronting Big Brother during its cultural peak and breaking new ground as one of the country's first female hosts of a major live reality show.

Reflecting on the era, she said the show's impact is difficult to explain to younger audiences, who have grown up in a completely different world.

'To put that in perspective, it's kind of unimaginable now... we didn't have YouTube. Facebook didn't exist,' she recalled.

'Remember in those days, if you wanted to text, you had to press A four times to get D... all of that business.'

'It was the first reality show, but there were other firsts. To have a female hosting, that was unheard of. Not as a sidekick, but hosting a live show.'

Gretel also reflected on how the industry viewed women when she first began her career.

'When I was first doing voiceover work, there used to be a theory that men got eight times more work than women. This was in my early 20s,' she said.

'We got the same money per hour, but men got eight times as much work. This was the theory, because men didn't want to hear women's voices on the radio or on television, because it reminded them of their wives or mothers nagging.'

She credited the men who backed her for helping change Australian television.