The World According to Gogglebox Page 7

STEPHEN: I just love her. She’s mental. And really, it’s the same case every time. It’s either ‘You smashed my car’ or ‘We moved in together, then you moved out and you’ve got my VCR’. That’s all it is. But I just love her responses. She’s this old Jewish battle-axe, but she’s really good at her job. She just wants facts and then she makes her decision. It makes me laugh. But it is crap.

  STEPH & DOM, SANDWICH

  STEPH: I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! I just love Ant and Dec.

  DOM: BGT and The X Factor. And we sort of enjoy The Voice. But then, when you get to the end of The Voice it becomes either a BGT or an X Factor, because they’ve seen the face. And actually, you should probably not see the face at any stage.

  STEPH: They should do it all behind a screen.

  DOM: That’s not such a bad idea, you know. Funnily enough, just thinking back to that apparent masked orgy (we weren’t here, we don’t know) that’s pretty much going to have sex with a bag over your head. It’s probably about the only time these people get to have sex, because nobody knows what they look like.

  BILL & JOSEF, CAMBRIDGE

  JOSEF: Prisoner Cell Block H. I found myself being drawn to watching it, simply because I thought it couldn’t get any worse. And every week it seemed to. It was like a school play. Ridiculous. Crass nonsense. I’ve forgotten how or why I started watching it.

  THE MICHAELS, BRIGHTON

  CAROLYNE: Escape to the Country. That’s on in the middle of the day, when you really should be doing other things.

  THE TAPPERS, NORTH LONDON

  JOSH: Homes under the Hammer, and Location, Location, Location.

  NIKKI: He’s obsessed with property.

  JOSH: It’s not like what house they’re buying, or they should buy that one. I just like seeing the houses. I prefer Phil to Kirstie, though.

  AMY: I watch hair and make-up tutorials on YouTube. ‘Hey, so today I’m gonna be showing you how to roll your hair …’ I wake up in the morning and I come downstairs, and watch a bit of TV before I go to school.

  JONATHAN: In the morning, it’s Babestation daytime.

  AMY: And I turn on the TV and go into the TV guide and find Babestation’s been recorded at two o’clock in the morning so they’re fully naked. I just delete it.

  LINDA, PETE & GEORGE, CLACTON-ON-SEA

  GEORGE: I really love BBC4. I had an awkward moment when I got deeply involved in the Drake equation the other day. You know, the one they have for working out if there’s alien life. I watch and then I start Googling shit. I’m on my tablet, looking up everything. I go on ‘Safari’ and I’m looking up the double slit experiment, and then I’m off looking up something else. It’s powerful. You know, Schrödinger’s cat, is it alive or dead? And so on. I’m reading about that at the moment, but I haven’t got to the end yet. No spoilers. I didn’t do that stuff at school. They were still counting in quarters and eighths. I got to about the age of twenty-six and thought to myself, I’ve got to learn something. So I watch an enormous amount of National Geographic and Discovery. So, like Ricky Gervais said, I know a lot about Nazis and sharks.

  REV. KATE & GRAHAM, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE

  KATE: A fish-finger sandwich on white bread with a smear of mushy peas on it and I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! And a cup of tea.

  GRAHAM: I’ve got a guilty secret late at night.

  KATE: I’ve caught you watching it. You dirty boy. And it wasn’t sex. I would’ve been happier if it’d been Sexcetera, but it wasn’t.

  GRAHAM: Mighty Ships.

  KATE: One night, I could hear the telly on. I thought, what’s he doing still up? I came down in my dressing gown and walked in and he turned it off really quickly. He looked like a guilty man. I thought he was watching porn. He wasn’t. He was watching an engineering programme about ships.

  GRAHAM: The best one was about a cable-laying ship; they laid this cable across from Norway to England or something. And it was incredible what they were doing, welding these things together, going for miles and miles. And it had to be dead on, you know. Four miles down they got a little joystick and they were, like, ‘Oh, I’m just about in the box now, there’s two millimetres.’ It was very exciting.

  KATE: And I have to sleep with this man.

  REV. KATE & GRAHAM, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE

  KATE: Quiz shows with questionable formats and rules that you can’t understand. It’s always some hairdresser from Burnley and they always wheel them out and it’s some easy question and then they’ve just won £1,000 and you’ve got no idea how they got there. I’ve got GCSEs and A-Levels and degrees and I don’t understand it. I like my quiz shows like I like my men – simple, and straightforward. And not too many flashing lights. And big knobs.

  STEPHEN & CHRIS, BRIGHTON

  CHRIS: That whole judging panel thing. Too much of that. Everything’s got fucking four judges.

  STEPHEN: Masterchef. You can’t even follow the recipes, because they don’t tell you them, do they?

  CHRIS: And they’re just such miserable bastards as well. All they do is shout at each other. Oh – and I don’t want to watch adverts for fanny pads.

  STEPHEN: Vagiclean or something.

  CHRIS: Yeah, for thrush and stuff.

  STEPHEN: Women know they’ve got to clean their minge. They don’t need an advert about it, do they?

  CHRIS: And it’s always when you’re eating.

  STEPHEN: There’s something about the word ‘vag’.

  ZOMBIES

  THE MOFFATTS, COUNTY DURHAM

  SCARLETT: The thing I don’t get about The Walking Dead is who cuts the grass?

  REV. KATE & GRAHAM, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE

  KATE: We like lots of the same movies. We both like a good body count.

  GRAHAM: Tarantino. And you like zombie movies.

  KATE: I love a zombie movie.

  GRAHAM: Every time we go to somewhere new, like on holiday or a town or a shopping centre, Kate’s always going, ‘Well this would be a great place if there’s a zombie apocalypse because you could go in there …’ She works out a sensible place to hold out.

  KATE: I can’t believe you don’t. Whenever we go anywhere new, it’s my first thought: how will I survive a zombie apocalypse here? Why wouldn’t that be your first thought?

  GRAHAM: What’ll happen to Buster in the event of a zombie apocalypse?

  KATE: Well, he’ll get eaten eventually.

  HARRY POTTER

  STEPHEN & CHRIS, BRIGHTON

  STEPHEN: Emma Watson – she don’t come off the estate, does she?

  LINDA, PETE & GEORGE, CLACTON-ON-SEA

  LINDA: I always wanted you to be Harry Potter, George. Because I wanted you to fly.

  STEPHEN & CHRIS, BRIGHTON

  STEPHEN: You watch: give it a couple of years, old Radcliffe will have blown all his money on drink and hookers. He’ll be phoning up old JK Rowling – she’ll be in an old people’s home stinking of piss – going, ‘Go on, write another one, me career’s on the skids, I’m skint, bring Harry back …’ and he’ll do a Harry when he’s about thirty-five.

  TITANIC

  STEPH & DOM, SANDWICH

  DOM: OK, so it’s 1912, Jack’s twenty years old, Rose’s stark naked – tell me he hasn’t just jizzed in his pants.

  LEON & JUNE, LIVERPOOL

  LEON: If you love somebody it’s everything, isn’t it? I’m crying, June.

  GHOST

  REV. KATE & GRAHAM, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE

  KATE: She’s up in the middle of the night making pots. Most people get up and watch Family Guy.

  THE WOERDENWEBERS, THE WIRRAL

  RALF: They’re forming a cock together.

  LEON & JUNE, LIVERPOOL

  LEON: If you were sitting like that, June, I wouldn’t bother with the pottery.

  LINDA, PETE & GEORGE, CLACTON-ON-SEA

  GEORGE: He’s a right goer, he is. I’d never last until the end of the record.

  Rev. Kate & Graham

  NOTTINGHAMSHIRE


  Reverend Kate Bottley, 39, and her husband Graham, 46, live in Nottinghamshire. Kate is the vicar of three churches and Graham, a vicar’s son, is a violin teacher. They have two children, Ruby and Arthur, and a greyhound called Buster, whose undercarriage has become something of a star in its own right.

  HOW DID YOU MEET?

  KATE: Ah, it’s a lovely story, how we met. I first saw Graham at school. I was about thirteen or so.

  GRAHAM: And I was a loser trying to retake my A-Levels.

  KATE: I saw him running across the quad for his violin lesson. I remember it very well. And I said to my friend, ‘Who’s that?’ And she said, ‘That’s the vicar’s son'. And I thought, ‘Better get my arse to church.’

  GRAHAM: So it’s my fault you’re a vicar?

  KATE: I went to church for a snog and ended up with a dog collar. It wasn’t quite my intention. I was twenty-three and Graham was twenty-nine when we got married. And my dad’s, like, a steel-working footballer kind of thing – and I bring home a violin teacher who’s a vicar’s son. My dad took me into the kitchen and went, ‘Is he right, hen?’ I went, ‘Yeah, he’s fine, Dad. Don’t worry. It’ll be all right.’

  HOW DID YOU GET ON GOGGLEBOX?

  KATE: They found me because they wanted a vicar. And I did a flash mob at a wedding that went viral on YouTube. I do between twenty and thirty weddings a year, and the weddings here have gone from just a few a year to a massive number – partly because I’m The Vicar That Likes To Say Yes as much I possibly can. So, when someone says, ‘Can we get married at your church?’ the answer is always yes. And I always say to them, if you want to personalise your wedding, just ask. And this particular bride and groom, they’d been waiting for their wedding day for a long time, you know, and she wanted something very different. She wanted it to be a wedding to remember. So she said to me, ‘What’s your craziest idea?’

  And I said, ‘Well, I’ve always wanted to do a flash mob.’

  Now, flash mobs are early noughties, rather than right now. But the Church of England is always a healthy twenty years behind everybody else. Next thing I know, she’s booked eight weeks of rehearsals. She sent me the video of it, because I couldn’t get to all the rehearsals (because they were on Sundays), and it was ‘Everybody Dance Now’ by C&C Music Factory, and ‘Celebration’ by Kool & The Gang.

  And we did this flash mob. I don’t need any encouragement to be over the top, so, as it was coming to an end, the bride went, ‘Go on, Bottley!’ Well, I’m a massive hip hop fan. So I just went into Running Man down the aisle. And while they were on honeymoon, they posted it on YouTube so their friends could see it, and it got 25,000 hits in twelve hours. And I think it’s got two million hits now.

  HAVE YOU BEEN ON TV BEFORE?

  KATE: Channel 5 asked me to do a pilot which was based on the cartoon Wacky Races. They wanted to get cars and teams of drivers themed around professions; so the hairdressers would be racing in a giant hairdryer-shaped car, and the farmers would be racing in a giant sheep-shaped car, and the dentists would be racing in a giant tooth-shaped car, and the vicars would be racing in a giant church-shaped car. And I was so close to saying yes, just for the laugh.

  GRAHAM: I hadn’t been on TV.

  KATE: I’d been doing little bits and bobs of media for years and years and years, and Graham goes straight in with a double BAFTA nominated 4.5 million on a Friday night. I’ve been trawling Calendar and local stations for years. Git.

  Rev. Kate’s collection of tea cosies

  WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOURSELVES ON SCREEN?

  GRAHAM: Well, the first time it was very weird. The first time we were actually shaking on the couch.

  KATE: And I wasn’t scared on my wedding day! Our bits don’t seem real. It feels like only we see our bits and nobody else is watching our bits. It’s only when you go out you realise. I was in London last Saturday, and people stopped me on the tube to take pictures and ask me if it was me and stuff, and you think, shit, people watch it.

  GRAHAM: Three million people a week.

  KATE: I had TweetDeck for a while, and if anybody tweeted anything about ‘Gogglebox vicar,’ I saw it coming in. But I’ve turned that off because it all got a bit too much. But there were some very funny exchanges.

  There was one that said, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe how much I hate the Gogglebox vicar.’ And then his mate had come in and said, ‘I know what you mean, with her dirty pig trotters up on her husband’s lap, the fat bitch. I bet she stinks too.’ So I waded in – because I just can’t help myself – and went, ‘Thank you so much for your feedback.' At which point, the guy went, ‘I’m going to burn in hell, aren’t I?’ So I went back in and said, ‘Don’t worry. God is very forgiving (me not so much).’ And he put, ‘Keep up the good work #sorry.’ And I put, ‘Don’t worry, my feet really are a bit whiffy.’ And then he followed me. So did Gaby Roslin. She wanted to know about Buster’s willy.

  GRAHAM: It did get a bit dodgy, though, didn’t it, with the gay marriage issue?

  KATE: Yeah, yeah. But I expected it. The Archdeacon phoned up and he said, ‘Kate, we’ve had a letter in.’ And I went, just one ? Well, that’s not bad, is it? I expected far more than one. And he said, ‘The person was very concerned about you saying that you’re pro equal marriage. Now, I watched the show on Friday, Kate, and I didn’t hear you say that you’re pro equal marriage.’ At which point I said to him, 'Oh, I’m so sorry, Archdeacon, did I not make it clear?'

  I said, don’t worry, I know I’m not allowed to do them and I won’t do them until I am allowed to do them, so I’m not going to break the law, because organisations are far better with people like me in them than being sacked from them. So I won’t break the law. Of course I won’t. And I won’t enter into a same sex marriage myself, because that’s what the rules say. I’m not divorcing you to marry a woman, Graham.

  GRAHAM: Oh. All right.

  The downstairs loo at Rev. Kate and Graham’s

  WHAT TV DON’T YOU AGREE ON?

  KATE: I don’t like Kevin McCloud. Graham loves Kevin McCloud. He’s got a bromance boy crush on Kevin McCloud.

  GRAHAM: He’s my hero.

  KATE: Graham would leave me for Kevin McCloud and his over-budgetness. He buys Grand Designs magazine every month. He’s got all the DVDs.

  GRAHAM: I haven’t got all the DVDs. Only the first few.

  KATE: I feel like I’ve lost my husband when there’s a new series of Grand Designs on. I have a little Grand Designs bingo card. You get extra points if Kevin speaks in a foreign language. It’s the only way I can get through the show. Unless I did a Kevin McCloud drinking game. Graham’s got this idea …

  GRAHAM: Grand Designs: The Opera. There’s so many little stories you could go down. Two houses being built on stage, and stuff.

  KATE: This: this is his vision.

  GRAHAM: Kevin McCloud trained as an operatic tenor, you know.

  KATE: It’s the same show every week! All they do is change the names to protect the innocent. It always goes over budget; they’ve always got pretentious names; she’s always the bloody project manager and is crap at it; the glass never arrives on time; and she always ends up pregnant. More money than bloody sense, the lot of them. And then Kevin thinks it’s a triumph. Every single time. ‘It’s a triumph.’ Oh, shut up, you smug arse.

  DO YOU HAVE A PARTY TRICK?

  KATE: I can get my whole fist in my mouth. I found that out when I used to play rugby. You find out all sorts of things about yourself when you play ladies’ rugby. I also found out that I could down a pint in about three and a half seconds. Not really useful. (Except when you’re finishing off the wine at communion. Because the rule is that once you’ve blessed the wine, you have to finish the wine.)

  I do three services on a Sunday morning: eight o’clock, half nine, eleven. Once, I did the three services, everything’s fine. Went to finish the wine and it hit my stomach. And I don’t know what it was, but I suddenly felt that’s not stopping there
. So I said to the person assisting me, if you just announce the next hymn, round things off, I’ll be back in a minute. Went to the loo, threw up like a good 'un, felt so much better. Don’t know what it was. Came back, everything was good. Until I realised that I’d still got my microphone on. But because the congregation had been singing ‘Bread Of Heaven’, it was OK, because it just gets louder and louder in the chorus.

  And we’re both jugglers. He taught me to juggle. One of my cunning ways to get him to put his arms round me.

  WHAT DOES TV MEAN TO YOU?

  KATE: There’s a slight sniffiness about TV. Middle-class people going, ‘Oh, well we don’t watch much television,’ like it’s something to be proud of. And I just think that’s ridiculous. It’s our culture. It’s our medium. It’s how we communicate. It’s what we do. So to go, ‘Oh, well, actually we just spend all our time listening to Radio 4 and reading Nietzsche,’ you know … get a life, for goodness’ sake. Everybody else is doing it.

  SANDY & SANDRA, BRIXTON