Gogglebox favourites Jenny Newby and Lee Riley have declared they will never leave the show, have no desire to do any other TV programmes and insist that, after more than 30 years, their friendship is definitely real.
Speaking to the Mirror, they also laughed over how Jenny, 70, might just be becoming a gay icon.
Friendship and filming
Lee, and his long-term partner Steve Mail, live in Cyprus most of the time and he returns for a few months each year to make the programme and film from his caravan in Patrington Haven, Hull. He says he has stayed on the show for so long because he loves the banter with Jenny.
“When I’m not doing the show, I miss her. I don’t see as much of her as I should do. Gogglebox keeps me in the UK for 16 weeks,” he said.
“I’ve known Jenny since I was 27 and I’m 58 now. She was our pub landlady and she took me and my partner under her wing. She’s one in a million. Over the years, people have said, ‘You two remind me of me and my mate when we watch telly’. That’s nice to hear. Some people ask if we’re really friends. I’m like, ‘What?’”
Jenny, whose husband of more than 50 years, Ray, has no desire to take part in the show, says spending time with Lee makes her feel happy.
“I love doing it with Lee. He just makes me laugh. Sometimes, if I’m on a downer and then I go to film, I come away and I’m up there. It takes me up,” she said.
“It’s a brilliant friendship. I love every minute of it. I can’t wait to see Lee for the new series.”
Gay icon status and fan reactions
On Jenny perhaps being a gay icon, Lee chuckles that she “didn’t even know who RuPaul was” for a long time. But she says she’s very happy with the idea and has a serious point to make about how being a part of the LGBTQ community makes her feel.
“I love going in the gay bars. They treat me as me,” she explains. “They don’t treat me as an older woman. When I go, I’m just as young as they are. I love the gay community because they accept me for who I am. That’s all that matters.”
She also loves chatting to anyone who recognises her on the streets of Hull, where they are both from.
“When people talk to me, it’s so lovely. They say, ‘You don’t know me’. But I tell them, ‘I do know you because I come to your house every Friday night at 9pm.’ That’s how I get to talk to people,” she said.
Sometimes they go a bit overboard with their comments, however. “They go, ‘Ooh, Jenny, you don’t look as fat as you do on TV. Have you lost weight?’ I say, ‘Thank you very much, I’ll take that as a compliment’.”
No plans to leave
In terms of what they know is coming up, after 12 years on the programme (they joined in series 4 which aired in 2014) they have a good idea. Lee says: “I’ll think, ‘Ooh, good, we’ll get to watch a bit of Strictly. When there’s a celebrity on it and they’re really sh*t, it’s great TV.”
But now they are famous they must get asked to do other reality shows themselves? “We just want to do Gogglebox,” Lee insists. “We don’t want to do any other shows. We’re just happy to do what we’re doing. Why change something that isn’t broken?
“As long as Gogglebox will have us, we’ll carry on. We do enjoy it.”
Jenny says she sometimes gets embarrassed when they have to watch sex scenes together for the Channel 4 hit, but most of it goes over her head. “I must admit, I do enjoy watching them,” she laughs. “But I do get embarrassed. Half the stuff they put on, I’ve never heard of. I think, ‘Where have I been?’. I’ve had a sheltered life. Doing Gogglebox hasn’t made me more worldly. I still don’t understand half of it.”
And as for her husband, he’s happy to stay in the background. “He does his own thing. He watches sports and politics. He’s very into those. He’s be boring to watch television with.”
Pranks and awards
The mum-of-three, who is also a grandmother and great-grandmother, says she doesn’t mind when Lee plays pranks on her. “People tell me off,” he admits. “They say, ‘You’re horrible to her!’
“When Jenny comes in for filming, if she’s tired I know I can get away with murder. But sometimes she’s had a good night’s sleep and she’s alert and she’ll say, ‘I know what you’re doing’. Quite a few have gone wrong. It depends on how she’s feeling.”
Jenny says there’s no bad blood between them - even when his jokes go a bit wrong. “After Lee did one with suncream I didn’t go out for two days because I couldn’t get it off. I just love Lee. He never upsets me. He doesn’t mean it with malice.”
They are excited to be up for a gong at next week’s NTAs. “After all these years, we’re still doing something good for the show to be nominated,” Lee says. “It’s like, ‘Wow’. It’s amazing. It makes you feel good.”
They love running into famous people at events, but Jenny says Lee was “absolutely fuming” when she got a photo with Pete Wicks. Insisting he had one too, Lee says Pete was a bit vain. “He said to me, ‘you couldn’t just crouch down a bit could you so we’re the same height?’
Sometimes they run into people who they’ve “slagged off” on telly - like the time they saw Sara Davies at an awards ceremony. “I had said on Gogglebox, ‘Oh she’s made her money from making dishcloths into flowers’, or something like that, and she saw me,” Lee says. “She came over and she went: ‘You!’
Luckily, when he told her “it’s just for TV” and he didn’t mean it, she believed him. “She gave me some love and we had a selfie together,” he recalls. “I thought I was in big trouble, because you do have to remember what you say on TV.”
Gogglebox returns on Channel 4, Friday, at 9pm.
