How Gogglebox fans warmed to Giles and Mary
Move over, Steph and Dom… fans of ‘Gogglebox’ have a new favourite ‘funny posh couple’.
It is after lunch on a clement, sun-streaked February afternoon in Wiltshire. Giles and Mary, Gogglebox’s second posh couple (the first being Steph and Dom from Sandwich in Kent), are settling down to extra-strong tea and dates. Later, Giles will show me a pair of £13 Lidl outdoor shoes with all the pride of a new father, attempt to feed me an uncooked Christmas pudding, tell a story about a holiday they spent in Scotland with Boris Johnson (“his head was so buried in a book about ancient Rome that we couldn’t make any headway with him”), and mention that Lord Mandelson, a neighbour in Pewsey Vale, has been over for drinks.
Their cottage – known affectionately by their Wiltshire set as “the grottage” – has paint peeling from the ceilings, war-torn linoleum flooring and no central heating. Gas heaters dot the main rooms. Once, Giles used bubblewrap from a recycling yard as makeshift double glazing. The kitchen, they admit, looks “worse than Benefits Street”, and, says Mary, “our eldest daughter says she is allergic to the cottage as there is mould and damp growing in it because of the cold”.
To say these fiftysomethings are eccentric is a little like saying the Queen is well-off. Unconventional, yes, but boring? Absolutely not. Yet that was what they were charged with by thousands of viewers last March, following their inaugural appearance on Channel 4’s Bafta-winning reality series in which ordinary members of the public watch TV – an arrangement that feels a bit like the medium eating itself.
Online commentators were quick to judge the dishevelled pair: “the dullest people on earth”, “Giles and Mary can jog on”. They were deemed self-conscious and affected. Their taste in furnishings was poo-pooed – they have a matching chair and wallpaper (the curtains, just out of the Gogglebox cameras’ sightline, are made from the same William Morris fabric).
For a while, it looked as though Giles and Mary were destined for the Gogglebox scrapheap, like other less popular families (the Da Silvas, anyone?). Until one deadpan comment from Giles changed everything.
During a Neighbours anniversary episode, he said, poker-faced: “Aussies can do no wrong in my eyes… obviously with the exception of Rolf.”
The quip won over a legion of fans to the couple’s dry musing on topics from the sauciness of Poldark and how much chicken feed they could have bought with their Grand National winnings if they had placed a bet (they didn’t, and they don’t have chickens, either), to Mary’s declaration that she wants her ashes scattered at Waitrose. They were rechristened on social media as comedic geniuses, and a new favourite household was born to the show, which is watched by seven million and returns for its seventh series tonight.
“They were quick to adopt us,” says Giles, deadpan, about the public’s reaction. “Opinion was divided as to whether we were the biggest crashing bores that had ever lived. I looked at Twitter and was fascinated by the hostility. I was like a moth to a light. Then my daughter explained that most Twitter users are maladjusted 13-year-olds.”
“Nutty!” interjects Mary (she does this a lot). Nutty is their nickname for each other, although neither can remember why.
Giles now asks his sister to send him six positive comments and one negative after the weekly show, so he can keep abreast of public feeling.
“Some people are not going to like you, full stop. You have to accept that. Get over it. Grow a pair,” he says.
Now they are recognised wherever they go. There was a recent incident at Stansted Airport where they were almost swamped by a baying mob keen for autographs and selfies.
Bake Off’s Sue Perkins has been in touch to tell them she’s a fan.
But neither seems particularly keen on their new-found fame, and Giles says all they want to do is “blend in” and “not be breakout characters”. So why take part in the first place? Giles says: “One thing I have always said is that we have to make our marriage pay. There is an expression in the north, ‘Where there’s muck, there’s brass’. It means you can make money out of waste products.” “Nutty!” says Mary. If cast members get £15 per night’s filming – a figure previously reported – they can’t be collecting that much brass. The couple won’t confirm their fee, but concede it is “not a lot”.
Mary never wanted to be on television, but the two were approached to take part by a friend in the production team, who knew they’d be a recipe for telly gold. The original plan was for Giles to appear with his younger daughter (the couple has two, one a kindergarten teacher, the other an artist, both in their twenties), but she turned him down, so Mary took pity and agreed to sign up instead.
Giles Wood is an artist and occasional writer for The Oldie, and Mary Killen (the two are married but Mary keeps her maiden name for work) is better known as The
Spectator’s agony aunt and self-styled queen of etiquette. Her career began in 1984 at Tatler, and she is the author of a book called How the Queen Can
Make You Happy. Her family hail from Northern Ireland, where her father ran a surgery from home; his from Stokeon-Trent, and he comes from artistic stock – his great-great-grandfather was a potter.
Giles and Mary have lived in their ramshackle Wiltshire home for 28 years, but met in London aged 21. Mary was a model and working as a hospital secretary, and Giles was studying at Wimbledon Art School. Both lived in “rat-infested” Chelsea basements off the Kings Road at the time. He went to Italy to learn mosaic techniques, she followed, and they’ve rolled along happily since. Now they’ve committed to
Gogglebox and the trappings of fame, they have no plans to retire.
“Gogglebox seems to bring out the best in people,” says Mary. “I think people like it because they feel they are not going mad, as everyone thinks the same things as them.”
“It is like being one of Christ’s apostles,” says Giles. “You just smile and say, ‘I am so glad that you enjoy the programme.’ We are just bearers of happiness and good news.”
The new series of Gogglebox begins tonight on Channel 4 at 9pm
‘I looked at Twitter and was fascinated by the hostility. I was like a moth to a light’ ‘Some people are not going to like you, full stop. You have to get over it. Grow a pair’