Channel 4 was in the firing line today after reportedly shutting down the Big Brother Webcast when a fight started to break out in the house.

Viewers were outraged when the link to the site was cut at 2am this morning - just as resident bad guy Nick was about to be rumbled. According to today's Sun Website, fellow housemate Craig threatened to "knock him out" after he and Tom discovered Nick had been lying through his teeth since moving into the house.

They shared their discovery with Anna and Mel, then slipped off to the boys' bedroom to rummage through Nick's possessions. They found papers which showed Nick, who is widely rumoured to be a Channel 4 plant, had been playing the housemates off against each other.

At this crucial point the Webcast went dead.

Today Big Brother officials were refusing to comment on the episode. Morgan Holt, editor of Big Brother online, was fielding all calls via the press office - which saw its switchboard "totally inundated", according to one source.

Another Big Brother representative finally claimed no-one knew what had caused the coincidental Web cut off. "We're looking into it at the moment," she said. "They're putting it down to technical problems".

Big Brother technical wizards still managed to fix the site within three hours, despite not knowing what had caused the hitch. ®

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