Barclays Capital has refused to join other banks selling off at a bargain-basement price the loans it made to fund the buyout of Big Brother producer Endemol.

A host of banks lined up to provide financing for the €2.6 billion (£2 billion) takeover led by the company's founder Jon De Mol before the credit crunch started to bite.

Now the value of those loans has collapsed, and the backers have been unable to sell them on at anything near their face value.

This week, Goldman Sachs and four other banks including Royal Bank of Scotland sold €1.1 billion of the debt for as little as 70 cents on the dollar.

Barclays declined to join in, presumably because it balked at the low price. It refused to comment.

To add to the gloom, the ninth series of Big Brother opened this month in the UK with 5.2 million viewers - a 26% decline from 2006.

The world's banks are desperately attempting to offload LBO debts run up in the years prior to the credit crunch. Analysts estimate $237 billion (£120 billion) of such debts remain unsold.