Mickey Rourke has made a number of horrific career decisions – Celebrity Big Brother is the worst yet

Mickey Rourke is rumoured to be among the stars of next week’s ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ - (Shutterstock/ITV)

The strangest thing about Mickey Rourke’s much-rumoured appearance on next week’s Celebrity Big Brother is that it hasn’t happened already. Few legitimately famous people feel more appropriate for a series that has spent 24 years rounding up the odd ducks of pop culture and throwing them into a house together.

The show has long platformed a particular strain of US celebrity, of which Rourke is a card-carrying member. It’s best embodied by figures such as Tara Reid, Gary Busey, Kirstie Alley and Stephen Baldwin – individuals whose early recognition as actors had long migrated by the time they entered the house, their celebrity ultimately defined by tabloid scandal and odd prurience. Was it Busey’s acting work that made him Big Brother material, or his oversized veneers and history of addiction? Reid had American Pie to her name by the time she took part in the show, but also tales of LA club-hopping and plastic surgery gone awry.