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Pulse reporter joins the Big Brother house

This week PulseToday editor Steve Nowottny got one of the more astonishing calls of his time as a journalist

This may be an outrageous, stereotyping assumption, but like many outrageous, stereotyping assumptions, it's probably not untrue. So I'm going to hazard a guess and say that not many of the nation's GPs tuned in to the opening night of the final series of Big Brother on Wednesday.

Despite having been a guilty, occasional viewer of some of the earlier series - who can forget Jade, Nasty Nick or the masterclass in pop psychology that was the friendship between Anthony and Craig - neither did I.

So it was with no small amount of astonishment that the Pulse team heard yesterday afternoon that one of our own had entered the Big Brother house for its final-ever show.

Now, I should clarify. 'Sunshine' Martyn, as she is now known, doesn't currently write for Pulse, and nor has she ever been a full staff member.

But earlier this year Yvette, as we knew her, was a medical student who had taken a year out to study medical journalism, and became an honorary member of our clinical news team while here for a spell of work experience.

We were told the news in a call from BBC Cambridgeshire (Yvette is from Peterborough), who were asking for us to go on air. Could we tell them what she was like? What was her personality? Why had she changed her name to Sunshine?

We declined, mainly on the grounds that there wasn't much to say and we'd had no idea she was going to appear. But as the first and quite possibly last member of the Pulse editorial team to appear on a national reality show, we wish her all the best.

All we could really say - and this may not have been of huge interest to the radio listeners of Peterborough - is that she was friendly, hard-working and writes a mean clinical roundup piece.

Whether that's enough to save her from eviction, we'll leave for you to decide.

PulseToday editor Steve Nowottny