The World According to Gogglebox Read online

  SANDY: Alien.

  SANDRA: Yeah. Alien. Because I dream a lot, you know. If I watch anything too tough, I dream about it in another version.

  SANDY: Yeah, she takes it to the extreme. Like you’ll get it at one stage on the TV, like somebody will be biting their neck. But in her sleep, they’ll be biting it and chopping off her head. She takes it to the next level.

  LEON & JUNE, LIVERPOOL

  JUNE: I don’t like anything where it’s very, very dark and enclosed, because I’m claustrophobic. I have had terrible nightmares over things.

  THE WOERDENWEBERS, THE WIRRAL

  VIV: Eve wanted to watch A Clockwork Orange. And I wouldn’t let her so she went somewhere and watched it. She was too young for it. And The Exorcist.

  EVE: You let me watch that on my fourteenth birthday, and you came in and I was laughing at it. You thought I’d be under the bed. When her head was spinning round, I was howling, it was so funny.

  VIV: It’s a really weird thing, but before Eve was born, I used to watch horror films. And I didn’t mind how horrible, because I used to be a veterinary nurse, so I wasn’t bothered about blood and guts and cutting things up. But after she was born, I just didn’t want to watch horror films. I think when you become a mother, you become more protective and you think, ‘Oh my God, people do these kinds of things.’

  THE TAPPERS, NORTH LONDON

  JOSH: You tried to stop me watching The Bill. Mum was like, ‘If you’re getting nightmares, Josh, you should stop watching The Bill.’ But I couldn’t help it. It was so addictive. I had to watch it every week.

  JONATHAN: The thing that I watched that terrified me was The Exorcist.

  AMY: Oh my God, we watched it the other day. I could not stop laughing. I think it’s the most hilarious thing. If I had to categorise it, I would say it was a comedy.

  JONATHAN: Hold on. I was nine when I saw it.

  JOSH: The Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

  NIKKI: That used to petrify me. And the witches in The Wizard of Oz.

  AMY: Dad used to be scared of tractors.

  STEPHEN & CHRIS, BRIGHTON

  STEPHEN: Crimewatch can be a bit scary, especially if you watch it and you’ve got to get all the lights out and then run upstairs and get in bed.

  THE MOFFATTS, COUNTY DURHAM

  SCARLETT: Crimewatch. I love horrors, but it’s Crimewatch. Like, honest to God, I go to my room and push me bed up against the door because I’ve watched Crimewatch. Every noise that I hear, it’s like, ‘Oh my God!’

  BETTY: So, if somebody breaks in, it’s all right if they slaughter the rest of your family, as long as you’re OK?

  THE SIDDIQUIS, DERBY

  BAASIT: The Ring. When the girl crawls out of the TV. It’s because everything looks like it’s ending in that show. And I was just sitting there, going, ‘It’s just like X-Files, this, just a bit of a mystery, they’ve solved it.’ And then that bit happens. And it just messed me up so much. Because I thought, what’s she going to do? She’s going to get up near the TV, show her scary face … And then she starts walking through the TV! Ugh, God! Because you trust TVs, don’t you? I had a TV in my bedroom, and after that film, it always looked a little bit brighter when it was off. And I was like, ‘Shit! Something’s going to happen.’

  UMAR: I remember a while ago, the BBC did this documentary called Ghost Watch. I think I was at school, maybe twelve years old. That really upset me, watching that, because it was the way that it was done. And they called the ghost Pipes, because he made the pipes rattle, but we used to live in a house where the central heating used to make noises.

  BAASIT: Dad did this dodgy central heating.

  SID: Don’t bring me into this.

  BAASIT: I was on the phone to the exorcist. ‘Our house is haunted!’

  STEPH & DOM, SANDWICH

  DOM: When I was about twelve, I saw this film, Dracula AD 1972. I was really sucked in. It was so real and so modern that I believed it was all really going on. That really frightened me. I didn’t sleep for two or three nights after that.

  STEPH: I love being scared, because I quite like extreme emotions. I was watching The Conjuring the other night. It freaked me out. I was on my own. The girl in it is lying in her bed and then something pulls her by her leg – and that’s my childhood fear, right there: that something under my bed will come up and grab me. I had to turn it off. Went downstairs for a smoke. Came back up, panting. I was alone in the house. And hearing every noise: every sound. Everything. I absolutely shat myself. And then the next night: bang, on it goes. More! I wanted more!

  BILL & JOSEF, CAMBRIDGE

  JOSEF: I was watching a film on television late at night, and there was a big storm outside. I’ve forgotten what the film was, but it was about this couple who bought a house which was haunted, and there’s a big storm, and the lights flicker three or four times, and eventually the ghost forces them out the house and they sell it on to someone else, and you see the new owners going in and the lights flicker and flash like mad, and that’s the end of the film. And this storm was raging outside. And I thought, ‘Cor – that was quite a good film.’ And the lights all flickered and flashed, and the lightning started, and I thought, ‘Shit …’

  BILL: When I was about seven or eight, there was a serial of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde being shown on ITV. I was alone in the house watching the first episode, and it got to the moment when Jekyll had taken the potion, and then it broke for the adverts. And the last advert was for Potter’s Catarrh pastilles and it ended with a ditty that went, ‘Stop that cold before it starts/ Act without delay/Pop a Potter’s in your mouth/And drive the germs away … germs away … germs away …’ And then, as the ‘germs away’ was fading, Mr Hyde came and flashed up on the screen going ‘Aaarrrggghhh!’ And I was absolutely terrified. Totally jumped. I had a phobia of Potter’s Catarrh pastilles for ages after that.

  THE MICHAELS, BRIGHTON

  LOUIS: Jeopardy. It was a CBBC drama about this group of kids that got lost on a school trip in the outback, and they all got separated. And then it turned out that they were all getting abducted. If your eyes turned red then you were going to get abducted. Everyone was talking about it. If you didn’t watch the last week’s episode you were not worth being friends with. It was so good. And that was terrifying.

  ALEX: I didn’t find it scary.

  CAROLYNE: Was there anything scarier than the Power Rangers when you were younger? The monsters were horrific.

  LOUIS: God. The budget was so low, the scariest thing was the attempt at CGI.

  LINDA, PETE & GEORGE, CLACTON-ON-SEA

  PETE: When I was about three, I’ve never forgot it. It was The Genie and the Lamp. I can remember hiding behind me mother’s armchair.

  GEORGE: The scariest thing that I’ve ever seen is when, on I’m a Celebrity, someone got put in a fucking bowl of eels. Like a snake thing. Water snakes. I can’t stand them. I can’t remember who it was, but I don’t think he came out. You know, Pete’d be fine on that. I can see him, standing at the top, scooping them out, putting them in jelly.

  The Woerdenwebers

  THE WIRRAL

  The Woerdenwebers are self-declared rock god

  and rock chick Ralf and Viv, 51 and 52. They live

  with Viv’s drama student daughter Eve, 20, who is

  going out with Jay, 21. They live in The Wirral in

  Cheshire. Ralf is the drummer in the band Civilian

  Zen and works for Bosch. Viv runs a new age and

  alternative shop. Eve is about to start her own

  tattooing business, while Jay helps out in Viv’s shop.

  HOW DID YOU MEET?

  RALF: We met in a really drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk…

  VIV: He always says this and it makes me look in a really bad light.

  RALF: We were both drunk.

  VIV: My friend and I used to go to a place called the Hotel California, in Birkenhead. It’s a really big old pub, and they can have live
music all night because there’s no houses around. It was 22 December and we weren’t going to go because it was Yule and we’re pagan, and we usually have a party with the Yule log burning and everything, and all our friends round. But we were having such a good time in the Hotel Cali, and we were dancing to ‘Du Hast’ by Rammstein, and drinking Jägerbombs. And my friend came back from the loo and she shouts, ‘He’s German! Him down there!’ And he was standing with his friend. So I went to him and I said, ‘What does “Du Hast” mean? Does it mean “you hate”? Or what?’ He said, ‘Well, you can say it two different ways.’

  RALF: It has two different meanings.

  VIV: And then we started talking.

  RALF: I was in Hotel California with my friend from my band. We had done a CD and it was finished, so we get out to celebrate it, because it’s months and months of work. I’d come to see a Who tribute band, but it was absolute rubbish. But the interesting part of it is, when you start a CD you look for a name. And my band didn’t know that we were going on the show Gogglebox. And you know what the CD is called? Tell Lie Vision.

  HOW DID YOU GET ON GOGGLEBOX?

  EVE: Basically, my mum owns a shop in Birkenhead Market, so we were just doing our thing in there and a woman walked in from Channel 4. ‘One of your friends has said you’d be good on this thing where you watch telly, and give your opinions on it.’ And we were like, ‘Yeah, OK then.’

  VIV: You wanted to do it, didn’t you? Because Eve’s at university, doing drama. So she wanted to see the other side, and she said, ‘Oh, can we do it? Can we do it?’

  EVE: I didn’t jump right at it. I spoke to me mum, and Jay was there as well. So we had a bit of a discussion about it and then we were like, ‘Yeah, all right then.’

  WOULD YOU NORMALLY

  WATCH TV TOGETHER?

  VIV: We do sit round together and watch the telly.

  RALF: So when the meal is done, Vivien calls and says, ‘The meal is ready.’ The other two come down and then we watch TV all together, for an hour or two. Sometimes only an hour because Eve has stress from the uni, and she has to do work.

  EVE: We do all love NCIS.

  VIV: We’ve got really into it because we watched it from the beginning. The characters have really progressed, they’re really different, but they’re all like a family. That’s what I like about it, that they all look after each other.

  EVE: Ralf is definitely Gibbs.

  VIV: Yeah, Ralf is Gibbs. Jay’s McGee. Eve, you’d be Abby.

  HAD YOU BEEN ON TV BEFORE?

  RALF: I was on TV in Germany with my band, people running around my drum kit with cameras, you know? I was on television when I was a kid. In the Karl May Festspiele Elspe. I played, like, a little Indian boy. We did all the stunts. We had a stuntman, and he’d come and teach us. I jumped from fifty metres into water at the end of the show, with a big bomb going up, and everything explodes. I started when I was six years old, and did it for seven years.

  WHAT DO YOU THINK

  OF YOURSELVES ON SCREEN?

  EVE: I can tell you how she felt: ‘Oh, oh, I look awful, oh!’

  VIV: ‘She’ is the cat’s mother, thank you very much. No, I get mortified. I hate watching myself.

  EVE: Close-up of you eating a YumYum.

  VIV: But that’s what you do, isn’t it? In real life, I’d sit here eating a YumYum.

  EVE: Not as polite though. We eat very polite on camera. I’m like … knife, fork, napkin.

  VIV: I always drop it down my top.

  EVE: And Ralf has it round his face.

  RALF: If I sit here and eat how I eat in a restaurant, it would not be real.

  EVE: Can I point out, though: we don’t eat takeaway all the time. But because the crew is set up in the kitchen, there’s no way for us to cook anything. Mum and Ralf are chefs, so we don’t eat shite.

  VIV: I’ve put a stone and a half on since we started filming. I weighed myself and was like ‘Oh my God!’

  EVE: I looked at a photo of myself after we’d finished filming last December, and I look like I’ve stuffed food into my cheeks. I’m a hamster.

  BEING RECOGNISED

  RALF: Like last night on the airport, on the border, I give my passport. She looks and says, ‘You’re on Gogglebox.’ And I say, ‘Is it a crime?’ People see us as Ozzy Osbourne’s family.

  VIV: I used to watch The Osbournes all the time; it was a really funny show.

  There was some review in a magazine, and it called us ‘the goth family’, and it said ‘they look as if they’ve spent all their life listening to Black Sabbath tribute bands over a pub in Wolverhampton’. And I was thinking, ‘We’re from The Wirral'.

  RALF: Maybe there is one thing we can get clear in the book …

  VIV: That you’re German?

  RALF: No. That I don’t go in to the pub to watch cover bands. I am in the band. I see it this way. I play in a rock band, so when I play gigs, after the song, the audience clap their hands. So here you’re doing really dry stuff, and you don’t see your audience, do you? So the ‘clap your hands’ for me, it’s when people are saying, ‘Oh, that’s Ralf. Can we make a photo? I really like the show. I really like you.’

  EVE: It’s a nice feeling.

  RALF: Sometimes.

  EVE: I’ve not been really one for attention. I’m not that into it. I don’t think that we let it go to our heads, do we? I’m not like, ‘Oh, yes, I’m on TV. Look at me … ’ Jay likes it.

  RALF: I’ve never had someone say shit. You?

  EVE: No.

  VIV: The end of the market is a service road, and a lot of people drive past and they shout ‘Gogglebox!’ out of the car window. I’m like, ‘Yeah, OK,’ and I wave.

  RALF: When viewers are making pictures with me, if they say, ‘Is it scripted?’, I make a joke. I say, ‘No. Because I can only speak English. I can’t read.’

  SILENT JAY

  VIV: People say he’s not allowed to speak, and he looks as if he’s being held hostage or something.

  RALF: Some people were saying that he’s my son, and he can’t speak English, and this is why he doesn’t talk.

  VIV: I know some people have said that they think he’s a mass murderer or a serial killer because of some of the looks he gives us. They said, ‘You’re going to see him there one day with a dripping knife or something and them all lying there.’

  EVE: That or incest. We had a couple of girls the other week, they saw us holding hands, and they were going ‘urgh’ at us because they think that we’re brother and sister. You know, because it’s a family show. But we’re boyfriend and girlfriend.

  RALF: Because he is this character now who doesn’t speak, I can tell you, when he speaks, Twitter will explode. But it makes it interesting.

  If you’ve seen EastEnders or Coronation Street or series like this, they end always in a drama, so you want to see the next one. And now, with his character, that he has created for himself. You know, people are watching the next show, going on Twitter, before the show starts, ‘Will he speak tonight?’ But I think when the time does come, Jay, you will have to go absolutely berserk about something. You know, standing up, and hitting the hand on the front of the telly, screaming at the telly and saying, ‘You absolute dickhead!’ or something. ‘I have had enough now!’

  EVE: It’s obvious he’s not a murderer. The Gogglebox people do CRB checks and everything.

  RALF: They check if you have paid your TV licence.

  FLEET STREET FOX: Best things about #Gogglebox: 1) the vicar’s dog 2) Silent Jay. One day, one of them will pass comment. It’s the only reason I watch. Frankly my money’s on the dog speaking first. #Gogglebox

  TIM LOVEJOY: With a touch of the hair Jay says so much #Gogglebox

  THE MICHAELS, BRIGHTON

  Andrew and Carolyne used to be hoteliers.

  ANDREW: Fawlty Towers was touching a raw nerve.

  CAROLYNE: There were a lot of similarities.

  ANDREW: Like, one bloke we had, he had a
room overlooking Bournemouth Bay and he had a big double door to the balcony. He was complaining because there wasn’t enough fresh air coming into the room. I said, well, you’ve got double doors you can open to the maximum. You get plenty of air in. And he said, ‘No, no, I want more.’ And I said, well, you know, the only way we can do it is if we open the two other windows at the side: if you really want, I’ll get the maintenance guy to open them right up. I thought this was bound to be a solution to get even more air into the room, because it was a hot day.

  And he said, ‘No, no, no, that’s totally unacceptable.’ At this point I was a bit pissed off. I said, well, why is that unacceptable? He said, ‘Because the seagulls will come in and frighten my wife.’

  And you remember Nobo boards, with the little individual plastic letters? Well, every night we had a different film we’d advertise on the board. And there was one time there was a very old lady celebrating at the hotel.

  So I got to put up…

  THE TAPPERS, NORTH LONDON

  Jonathan used to be a restaurateur. Nikki works in a nursery school.

  JONATHAN: I love Gordon Ramsay.

  JOSH: Gordon Ramsay’s Effing Kitchen Nightmares.

  JONATHAN: I can relate. I did run a restaurant. Originally it was a family business, which was started by my great grandparents in 1920, called Bloom’s. A kosher restaurant. There was one in Aldgate, one in the East End and one in Golders Green. My place wasn’t Gordon Ramsay’s type of dining, where you have a group of chefs. What we had were cooks as opposed to chefs. There weren’t really any new dishes. It was just the traditional dishes that have been going for years and year and years. It was passed down.