When Jess Hardy was evicted from Big Brother in 2002, her new boyfriend Nathan ‘Marty’ Martin was gutted.
The young pair were besotted with each other, and had made it to the final four, vying for the $250,000 cash prize.
“Big Brother goes bonkers,” read headlines from the time, as the public followed, picked apart and egged on every milestone of their very fresh relationship which got very hot and steamy much to the camera’s delight.
Watch Jess exiting the Big Brother house after 11 weeks. Post continues after video.
“Have they had sex though?” The Australian public was desperate to know.
There’d never been any actual fornicating on the Aussie season before. It was a big deal.
18 years later, Jess explained why she decided to have sex on the show.
"I’m not an exhibitionist, but you do kind of forget and you like the intimacy, you feel like you’ve got an ally, you get a little cosy and before too long it’s the dancing doona all over again," she recently told Triple M’s Moonman In The Morning.
"It’s just a comfort thing. Dad said to me when I got out, 'Couldn’t you wait?' but when the intense chemistry is there and you’re unable to leave, it’s undeniable.
"It feels like it’s the right thing at the time, you don’t remember the cameras are there."
But the most interesting part of the Jess and Marty coupling came in hindsight.
Marty had a girlfriend prior to entering the house who (unbeknownst to him) dumped him before he got out.
More than a decade later, history would repeat itself with Tully and Drew – however in 2013, a very very different narrative played out.
To this day, six years after her time in the Big Brother mansion, Tully Smyth is asked about and ridiculed for cheating on her girlfriend while in the house. She went through what can only be described as a fresh slice of hell as trolls made it their mission to destroy her.
