Rumours are rife that Sony TV's recently launched "Bigg Boss" series, modelled on Channel 4's "Big Brother", is not meant for family audiences. But the channel denies it.

The show, which went on air last week, is a reality show with 13 celebrities living together in a house for three months. Every week, one person unable to cope with the situation will be eliminated.

"With all this excitement in the first week, do you think the show needs sex? The contestants are free to have sex if they want. But I doubt that would be the case. At heart we're all Indians. And Sony is an Indian family channel.

"So, I don't know where this 'news' about sex on the show comes from. We're certainly not advocating a peep show here," said the channel's creative head Sandeep Sickand.

"We're going to capture the contestants doing normal things, in the beautiful house that we've specially built for 'Bigg Boss' with a swimming pool, et al in Karjat. Of course, the contestants are excited and they are planning to do all sorts of things. But no sex! They'll do normal things like play games, cook food and etc," Sickand told.

The show features unusual scenes like model Carol Gracias kneading dough, item girl Rakhi Sawant playing chess with Bobby Darling - and a cow making an appearance at the Karjat house.

Question Sickand about the rather poor turn-up of celebrities on the show, and he rises to the show's defence.

"Look, we did ask so-called bigger names. But they asked for ridiculous amounts of money. I think we've finally got an eclectic mix of people from different walks of life. And if you ask me, the biggest celebrity on 'Bigg Boss' would be the cow."

According to him, he's already hooked to the show.

"We were up through a large part of Thursday night recording the first episode. And then I just kept watching till morning. It's that addictive!"