As part of Channel 4’s Stand Up to Cancer night on Friday, a celebrity edition of Gogglebox featured three of the UK’s most infamous hedonists of the last 25 years revealing a softer side of themselves.
Sitting in a front room straight out of an old Ikea catalogue, sharing crisps, chatting about their children and Andrea Faustini from X Factor, Kate Moss, Noel Gallagher and Naomi Campbell gave us rubberneckers a tantalising glimpse into their dynamic. Which was surprisingly sweet.
We saw Moss attempt to snuggle up to Campbell and they held hands as they watched some harrowing footage of a young cancer sufferer. Moss even pushed Campbell at one point. In an affectionate way though – there’s no sign of flying BlackBerrys.
Meanwhile, Gallagher and Moss we learned, “lived together for months” and in typically eye-rolling flatmate style, Moss used to liberally dip into Gallagher’s family-sized bags of Monster Munch. “You never share your crisps, do you Noel?” she tuts at one point. But just as we think we are watching Man About the House: The Primrose Set Edition, Gallagher reminds Moss, as they’re commenting on a dance routine on Strictly: “We’ve done that at Jagger’s house.” Well of course they have.
All in all it’s was a rather odd sensation observing the two iconic models who have lived in our collective imaginations for so long, up close and personal, swaying out of time to Chloe Jasmine. I couldn’t help but feel a bit like David Attenborough finally feasting his eyes on two lesser-spotted animals after having hidden behind a deserted bush for most of the summer in anticipation. Or at least like George Michael on the set of the Freedom 90 video.
For his part, Gallagher slipped into the grumpy-old-dad role effortlessly, cracking the whip on reality show judges (“do you think Louis Walsh knows where he is half the time?”, calling Strictly “more ridiculous than Downton Abbey” and describing Mark Wright’s pasodoble as both “a piece of piss” and “fucking psychedelic”, before insisting “I can do that” to every complicated dance move like some charmingly irritating Harry Enfield character.
Gallagher, Moss and Campbell fare better than Miranda Hart and her luvvie co-stars who are disappointingly similar to their sitcom personas, although Sarah Hadland has a brilliant line about Wright’s Superman getup on Strictly: “he looks like he works for Kwik Fit and someone has shrunk his outfit”.
Happily, the Gogglebox regulars are still the real stars of the show: pensioner Leon calling Jeremy Paxman “an ugly bastard” and Chris doing an impression of Mel B in full Bo’ Selecta mode. Sandra lapsing into her own utterly unique versions of Toxic, Happy and Earth Song is a particular joy.
It seems probable that Celebrity Gogglebox will become a regular, possibly like Big Brother, providing ever diminishing returns on the ‘celebrity’ part. But for the moment we are happy just to have learned that Naomi Campbell eats actual crisps.
