Ex Big Brother runner-up accused of sexual assault
Former Big Brother star Jason Cowan has gone on trial accused of forcing himself on a woman as she slept after a festive work night out. Cowan, runner-up on the show in 2004, denies performing a sex act on the party-goer during an overnight stay at a lodge park in Lochgoilhead, Argyll, in December 2011. The alleged victim, 36, told the High Court in Glasgow that she went to sleep in a room at his lodge after she thought she had been locked out of her own accommodation. She had left the cabin earlier when Cowan, 39, had 'not taken kindly' to her asking if he was gay because of his 'polished' appearance. The woman said she woke to find Cowan, from Glasgow, on top of her. She said: "He was leaning over me and I started to fight him to get him off. I was screaming at him to get off me. I don't know if he was speaking, I just remember he had a really nasty face." The woman said she had not met Cowan before the night out, where he was a guest of a colleague, and had not watched him in Big Brother. The witness said she drank around four gin and tonics and some champagne and Red Bull before dinner, when she had a further four or five gins. Afterwards, she said she went to a party at the lodge where Cowan was staying and, after briefly returning to her own accommodation, went back to the lodge where Cowan was now alone. She said: "I asked him if he was gay because he was so polished. I don't think he took kindly to that. I thought I'd better go, and left." When she could not get into the lodge next door, which she mistook for her own, she went back to find Cowan in bed and asked if she could stay in the twin room. Cowan denies performing a sex act on the woman while she was asleep and incapable of giving or withholding consent.
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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.
An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.