Three aspiring Italian Big Brother contestants preparing for a few weeks of easy celebrity in a comfortable apartment got a dose of hard reality on Monday as 60 supporters of a far-right political party trapped them in a Rome piazza to demand housing rights for low income Italians.
Waving fire crackers and carrying a banner reading "A home is no game", the protesters attacked and burst a four metre high transparent plastic bubble set up in the piazza to host the hopeful contestants, who were appearing live on TV waiting to hear if they had been selected to enter the Big Brother house.
The live footage was quickly blacked out as chanting protesters stabbed holes in the bubble using knives according to press reports. The party behind the demonstration, Fiamma Tricolore, denied knives were wielded, although the bubble slowly collapsed as the contestants inside - a young student, a mechanic and a gym instructor - fled to safety, leaving protesters, some masked, to dump leaflets demanding cheap housing.
By the end of the evening, the student had been voted into the Big Brother house, set up at Rome's Cinecitta film studios, joining an entire Sicilian family and a transsexual from north Italy among other contestants. The protesters, meanwhile, marched away in triumph across the nearby Roman Milvian bridge.
The Milvian Bridge neighbourhood today boasts a lively youth scene but has also recently witnessed frequent knife fights involving Roma fans and rival supporters including Manchester Utd fans, with five British supporters stabbed before a Champions League match in December. The area was also the scene of violent clashes between football fans and police after a Lazio supporter was mistakenly shot by police in November.
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