With thatched roofs, a duck pond and trimmed hedges, the Amsterdam suburb of Laren is the last place you might expect to find John de Mol, the television tear-away whose shows have scandalised audiences from Australia to Albania.

But it is from this genteel setting that the creator of the Big Brother reality TV format is working on a comeback that, he says with a smile, may cause the same level of uproar that accompanied his most notorious output.