Celebrity Big Brother audience down half a million viewers

L to R: Christopher Biggins, Sam Fox and Ricky Norwood are among the housemates

The launch of Channel 5's latest series of Celebrity Big Brother was watched by an average 2.3 million viewers.

That was half a million fewer than the audience for the launch of the previous series in January this year.

Yet the ratings were up on the launch of last summer's show, which debuted in August 2015 with a 2.2 million average.

Christopher Biggins, former glamour model Sam Fox and ex-EastEnders actor Ricky Norwood are among the latest edition's 15 celebrity housemates.

Others include reality show personalities Saira Khan, Marnie Simpson and Katie Waissel, from The Apprentice, Geordie Shore and The X Factor respectively.

L to R: Saira Khan, Marnie Simpson and Katie Waissel swell this series' female contingent

Celebrity Big Brother was beaten in its 21:00 BST timeslot on Thursday by both Hugh's War on Waste on BBC One and The Investigator: A British Crime Story on ITV.

The former attracted an average audience of 3.6 million, while the latter drew an average viewership of 2.5 million.

Celebrity Big Brother's peak audience came around the 22:00 mark, when 2.5 million viewers were watching the show.

The ratings are only provisional overnight figures - final numbers including viewers who recorded programmes and watched them later will be released in seven days.

All figures mentioned include +1 timeshift viewing.