The World According to Gogglebox Page 9

  AMY: Apart from Spaghetti Bolognese.

  JOSH: That was my idea. To put that on the menu.

  JONATHAN: But Ramsay’s programme was always far-fetched. The thing about those programmes is they’re very predictable. They always start the same way, and pretty much always end the same way, with a happy ending: it’s the last night and he gets it really, really busy. There was a couple where he walked off, and gave up on them because they were impossible.

  NIKKI: I’m a nursery teacher, so I love watching those Supernanny-type programmes. There’s nothing the parents don’t know. It’s just taking control of the situation and making your mind up. And you see these kids having these tantrums. I mean, it’s not rocket science, is it?

  LINDA, PETE & GEORGE, CLACTON-ON-SEA

  Linda and Pete used to run a pub.

  PETE: You see people running pubs on TV, and you think, ‘Yeah, that’s right, he’s got it right.’ And, ‘No, he ain’t got it.’ I tell you, Al Murray: he can run a pub.

  LINDA: You need characters in a pub.

  PETE: I tried to do bleeding rolls once. Great big things, they were. Like logs. The pensioners used to wait there all night ’til we give them away. But we had this bench and all the old boys used to sit round the Public Bar. We called it ‘Death Row’. And they’d be all sitting there. And you’d say, ‘Old Decker’s died, you’d better move along the seat, then, hadn’t you? Your turn next.’

  GEORGE: We grew up in pubs. I was forty-one when I was eight, you know what I mean? I still go into the pub and drink J2O, and I sit there. Because that’s my living room.

  LEON & JUNE, LIVERPOOL

  Leon and June used to be teachers.

  LEON: We liked Educating Yorkshire, didn’t we? When the blonde girl turned and said, ‘Cheeky bitch,’ that was brilliant.

  JUNE: What shows in Educating Yorkshire is the dedication of a lot of teachers, and particularly the one with the boy with the stammer. I did teach a boy with a stammer once and I know you have to be patient and you have to deal with the others in the class. Because there’s always somebody ready to be silly. ‘I’ll be the class clown this afternoon. Who can I pick on? Oh, I’ll pick on him because he can’t answer back quickly.’ Teachers are having a terrible time at the moment. Sanctions have been taken away; there’s more and more pressure on them. It’s sixteen years now since I taught, and the last stint I did was because somebody was off sick. Leon came down at ten past one in the morning and said to me, ‘What on earth are you doing? Are you marking?’ And I said, no, I’ve finished the marking and now I’m doing the check lists of their achievements and so on. And I thought, in the old days, I’d have finished my marking and I would have been preparing. I just wonder how teachers do it all these days, I really do.

  Educating Yorkshire does show the positive side: how children can change and how they’re all individual and they’re not all going to get As. These targets and league tables really make me angry. League tables… Anybody would think it was the football pools.

  LEON: I don’t like … what’s the one on BBC1?

  JUNE: Waterloo Road.

  LEON: Waterloo Road. I don’t like that. Improbable situations.

  JUNE: And too much going on in the staff room for my liking.

  THE SIDDIQUIS, DERBY

  Baasit is a teacher. Umar works in a lab. Sid is an engineer.

  BAASIT: As a teacher, I think that Jack Whitehall’s show gets it really wrong. I can’t believe they make something like that. The relationship he has with the pupils. I know that it’s a comedy and they’re trying to blow it out of all proportion, but it’s just ridiculous. It was just trying to get laughs through shock value and inappropriateness. There wasn’t anything clever about it really. But with Educating Yorkshire, I think that was a more real account of what a school is like. As opposed to Educating Essex. There were some teachers on there that just looked like they were playing up for the camera a bit too much. And Waterloo Road. You just sit there and you just shake your head and you go, ‘It’s nothing like that.’

  SID: My particular interest is in space and science and technology, because I do come from that background. I was watching something the other day, about how they created the flexible foundations for these tall buildings which are susceptible to earthquakes. And it was an amazing concept, a vacuum being used to hold two cups together and you can never take them apart. We’ve done that sort of thing on Gogglebox. When you suck a glass up to your face and you can’t dislodge it because of the vacuum in there. We turned Gogglebox into a science documentary. And we showed the planetary system, with food.

  BAASIT: You used an orange and I ate the moon mid-demonstration.

  UMAR: I find it funny, the misrepresentation of my job on TV, because I work in a lab. In any kind of hospital drama, it’s one lab doing all the tests for the entire hospital and you’ll have a doctor in there, running up and doing his own tests, which I know full well does not happen.

  BAASIT: Can you eat sandwiches in your lab as well? I’ve seen that. Where they’re just casually eating sandwiches in a microbiological lab.

  BILL & JOSEF, CAMBRIDGE

  Bill is a writer and Josef is an accountant.

  JOSEF: I watch the news, and when it comes to things which I know about, such as tax, I get quite incensed. I think to myself, you haven’t even given a tenth of the information. But I do understand: if they gave the whole information, the news would last about five days. And people still wouldn’t understand at the end of it.

  BILL: There’s this recent trend to have Professors for the Public Understanding of Science. I’ve often thought that, probably from the moment quantum theory was invented, there has been no hope for the public to understand science. What we want is a Professor for the Public Misunderstanding of Science. Brian Cox is a Professor for the Public Gross Oversimplification of Science. And he does it very well.

  REV. KATE & GRAHAM, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE

  Kate is a vicar. Graham is a violin teacher.

  KATE: TV vicars. Well, it’s Geraldine from The Vicar of Dibley, isn’t it? Hasn’t done us any harm as female clergy because people automatically think you’re going to be nice. They also automatically think you’re going to like chocolate, which is not my thing. (I prefer a good Stilton and a nice glass of port, to be fair.) But people already think you’re going to be nice because the only girl vicar they know is the Dibley one. And even though it’s been a long time since they did Dibley, it’s still very much in the public conscience. I thought it was just because I’m short and round that people go, ‘Oh, you’re just like the vicar of Dibley,’ but no, the tall skinny girl vicars get it as well.

  GRAHAM: There’s the bumbling vicar in Four Weddings and a Funeral. And that one in Gavin and Stacey who ends up shouting the Lord’s Prayer at everybody.

  KATE: But also vicars on things like EastEnders and Emmerdale aren’t always painted in the warmest and kindest of lights. I love Rev. I cry a lot at it. Especially when, say, he wants to chuck it all in, and then the next minute Colin walks in and lights a candle or something – all over the country there are vicars sobbing, going, that’s me, I’m such a bad person, I’m just trying my best. Graham, what do you think about the depiction of violin teachers on TV?

  GRAHAM: Absolutely shocking.

  EVE: Dogging Tales disgusted me. I was just, like, ‘No, you’re all dirty bastards.’

  RALF: So Eve walked out. To sit on the stairs.

  EVE: Ralf, he perked up when I left.

  VIV: I was shocked that Channel 4 made a programme like that.

  EVE: I’m glad I couldn’t hear it properly.

  THE MICHAELS, BRIGHTON

  ANDREW: The X Factor.

  CAROLYNE: The X Factor.

  LOUIS: Or, when Friends used to be on…

  ALEX: Friends! Oh my God. Friends.

  LOUIS: Whenever Friends would come on and the theme tune would play, Dad would come into the room and change it.

  CAROLYNE: ‘Not fuckin
g Friends again.’

  ANDREW: Probably once.

  LOUIS: Oh God, no –

  ALEX: Dad, you hated it.

  LOUIS: We weren’t allowed to watch it.

  ANDREW: That’s true in the early days, when you were very young…

  CAROLYNE: …because there’s a lot of sex in Friends.

  ANDREW: Constant references to casual sex.

  LOUIS: We would turn it over and you’d turn it back.

  ALEX: Mum watched it, and then got me into it, and I think I was obsessed with Friends from the ages of about twelve to eighteen.

  LINDA, PETE & GEORGE, CLACTON-ON-SEA

  LINDA: Jim Davidson.

  PETE: Oh yeah. I walked out of a theatre with him in it. I don’t mind effing and blinding, because I can match anybody, but I find him so personal with people. He’s a self-opinionated flash bastard. You do what you like, but I see these old girls getting offended, and I don’t particularly like you too much.

  Sandy & Sandra

  BRIXTON

  Sandy, 48, and Sandra, 52, have been best

  friends for more than forty years. They live

  in Brixton, the area which gave Sandra her

  nickname ‘Queen B’. Sandy has a background

  in bar management, and Sandra looks after her

  youngest grandchild five days a week.

  HOW DID YOU MEET?

  SANDRA: I’ve known Sandy forty-odd years. I knew her mother.

  SANDY: My mum used to own a club back in the old days. Everybody used to come to my mum’s place.

  SANDRA: She’s a club family woman, and I’m the one that goes and spends the money in the club.

  SANDY: Sandra is very well known in Brixton. So for promotion and anything, we just phone her up and say, ‘Get the peeps.’ I had two wine bars and one pub.

  SANDRA: My third child – I met the father at a party in her mum’s place. And that’s twenty-seven years ago. We’re close.

  SANDY: If she’s in a mood, nobody can talk to her. There’s only one person.

  SANDRA: If anyone pisses me off, yeah?

  SANDY: If anybody, yeah, gets on her nerves, and she’s on one, I give them a piece of my mind.

  SANDRA: And everyone’s got respect for both of us. But sometimes people want to take the piss, and they won’t take the piss when she’s around. She don’t put up with rubbish or shit. And let me tell you something about Sandy as well: the last year and a half of my life, I’m putting her in stitches of laughter. She’s my fan. And I’m her fan.

  SANDY: We don’t argue much, except I’m more of a person to be wild. I’ll go camping and stuff like that.

  SANDRA: She’ll say, ‘We’re going to the moon,’ or ‘We’ve got to go and live in the bushes,’ and I end up going, ‘No, I’m staying in Brixton.’

  SANDY: So when I say this, she’ll argue with me. She’ll say, ‘Why are you going there for? You don’t need to be going to these places.’

  SANDRA: I get scared of the news sometimes.

  SANDY: Like that plane going missing.

  SANDRA: Well, I’m not flying now. Because yesterday on the news, there’s another plane with the wing hanging off. I watch the news every morning. I’m up at six o’clock. And I’ve always got to be up early because I’ve got my kids. I’m a full-time babysitter from Tuesday to Friday, lying there with a two-year-old. I’m a full-time grandma and a celebrity.

  Like the Queen Mum. You get me? I’m fifty-two years old, I’ve got a routine. I watch Emmerdale, EastEnders. So my phone is locked off between seven and nine. Plus, I’ve got my eating hours, my boyfriend hours, my children hours. That’s how my life is. Also, in the future, I want to run seven boyfriends, if I get some money. But if they’re all on JSA, I might have to give them a fiver each. £35. One to rub my toes. One to rub my knee. My belly. My arm … you know what I mean? I’m going for it, you know? You think I’m doing this for the fun? I’m heading for Hollywood. On that road … I want to go to Hollywood.

  SANDY: You’d have to fly.

  SANDRA: Yeah, but someone said there’s a Chinaman’s trying to dig a tunnel there.

  HOW DID YOU GET ON GOGGLEBOX?

  SANDRA: It was my fifty-first birthday party. I was in my local pub where I’ve been drinking every week for the last ten years. Sandy did have her old pub at that time in Peckham – like, a private all-nighter that she’s got a licence for – but I was in my evening pub. So it’s me and Sandy, celebrating my birthday. She’s left her own pub to come and sit down in my Brixton pub, which she does regularly when she wants fun, because her pub’s kind of sophisticated.

  So anyway, I went to the bar. They all know me, because my name’s Queen B and the pub’s called ‘The Beehive’. So I came back with the drinks, and the next minute this man came over, a white guy with this piece of paper, and he says to me, ‘Is your name Queen B?’ Apparently they’ve decided to come in the pub to look for somebody in Brixton to go on this programme, and the barman’s said, ‘That woman over there, that’s Queen B, talk to her.’ So he came to me and goes, ‘Give me your number and we’ll get back to you.’ And days later, they rang me and said, ‘Would you like to come and do it?’ So I rang Sandy, and I go, ‘Sandy, they’re coming up. Get ready.’

  SANDY: I didn’t think about it. Because we’re doing exactly the same thing as this anyway on a normal day.

  SANDRA: And oh, we had a lovely time. Food! Payment! Luckily Sandy was leaving her pub, because she would have had to if she wasn’t. Because it turns out this is a full-time job that she never knew she was going to get. It was perfect timing, because if she’d never come, who else would I have got to do it? Because she’s my best friend.

  SWEARING

  SANDRA: When she lets off on Gogglebox, you can hear it, you know what I mean? We’re shocked sometimes when the producers let it go through. Because it’s not everything that goes through.

  SANDY: Especially sometimes because we’re Caribbean and our swearing is completely different from English. Someone not from Jamaica might say ‘fuck off’ or ‘piss off’, but we say ‘raasclaat’, ‘bumbaclaat’. It’s really swearing and I don’t swear like, ever.

  SANDRA: No, the Grand National, she does.

  SANDY: Yeah. I swear right through the Grand National.

  SANDRA: And that’s what black people do.

  SANDY: If you go to the bookie’s office that’s what they do.

  WHAT DO YOU THINK

  OF YOURSELVES ON SCREEN?

  SANDY: We cracked up, didn’t we? I love watching us.

  SANDRA: I’m so busy because I’m a full-time grandma, so I didn’t watch it ’til Wednesday in my daughter’s house. And I watched, and you know what? I’m proud of myself.

  SANDY: I was in stitches. I’d phone her or text her on the phone from my house. And I say, ‘Turn it on now. Turn it on now. Wait for that bit to come up.’

  SANDRA: They’re always up in her face. I’ve always got my long nails. I get them specially done in a shop. Two weeks ago, I had my nails done for watching TV, so it’s due today. But on my last week on Gogglebox, I was moving house, I didn’t need the nails. But you think I can go on national TV with no nails on? So I’m doing these stick-on ones, with glue.

  WHAT WAS YOUR FAMILY’S REACTION?

  SANDY: My family love it. I’ve got two kids, and my youngest one, she’s going to uni. She’s doing law, and she says in college and everywhere she goes, they’re proud of her. All her teachers: ‘That’s your mum?’

  BEING RECOGNISED

  SANDRA: Because I’m well known anyway, in Brixton, we’re not kind of fazed about being famous. And being the only black people on it, it kind of brings us out a bit more. Sandy got free tickets to go and see Thriller on stage. Cut the story short, we went there early, seven o’clock, they said, ‘Come back in half an hour.’ We thought we were going in the normal audience. When we came out of the toilets, security come over and say, ‘Hello … excuse me, ladies? Are you from Gogglebox? Can you
come this way, please?’ And they took us in the box! You know where the Queen sits, upstairs?

  SANDY: One of the royal boxes.

  SANDRA: And she’s, like, ‘We want champagne, send me some up.’ Because she’s used to all this. Sandy and me, we’re both two different people. I like a pub, she likes a club.

  SANDY: Wine bars.

  SANDRA: So we got into the box and we’re sitting there…

  SANDY: …and instead of them watching the show, they were pointing up to us.

  SANDRA: Fucking hell! Oh listen, you don’t know how it feels. I went all shy.

  SANDRA: So we were watching Thriller, and my heart’s beating because I get overwhelmed through anything. I kept on saying, ‘Sandy, where are we? What’s going on?’ Because I’m still in shock. And you know the monsters in the show? They come in, when I’m up there, in the dark. One of them comes in! Into the box!

  SANDY: Yeah, one came in to see you.

  SANDRA: So I was screaming over the balcony.

  SANDY: That was mad.

  SANDRA: I was screaming, and he was all in bandages.