My family, the Tappers, were on the first Gogglebox – the show transformed our lives but there is a problem with it now
GOING into the Tapper family home is like walking into the telly.
Dad Jonathan, 55, mum Nikki, 50, and their children, Josh, 25 and Amy, 23, burst on to our screens ten years ago as a loud, opinionated and hilarious foursome on Gogglebox.
And though the kids are now grown up and the sofa is different, not much else has changed in the five years since they left the Channel 4 show.
As I sit down with them in their lounge (in front of the telly, of course), Amy and Nikki talk over poor Jonathan.
Josh, Amy and their dad take the mick out of Mum and the siblings squabble over how many times a week they were filmed.
It was all down to Nikki’s mum that the Tappers became one of the first Gogglebox families.
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She put her daughter forward for a Channel 4 show but she didn’t make the cut.
Then Nikki was called “out of the blue” by a Channel 4 casting director looking for a nuclear family to sit down and be filmed watching TV for a TV show — Gogglebox.
She recalls: “I said, ‘There is no way that my husband would even entertain something like this. He’s really cynical’.
“But they persuaded us to let them come to chat to us about it.
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“We agreed to do the first series, which was just four weeks, and Jonathan said, ‘If we don’t like the first episode, I won’t be filming next week’, and they agreed.”
The show was launched on March 7, 2013, and became an unlikely hit.
Following the initial four episodes a second, longer series was immediately commissioned. It began in September 2013.
The family had to sit in their designated spots
The following year the show got a Bafta, and it went on to scoop gongs at the National Television Awards.
Nikki says of its appeal: “It was real.
“What you saw was what you got. No one came and told us what to do.
“Jonathan would walk in, we’d come home from work, we’d be having normal conversations and the cameras just rolled.”
Since Gogglebox, Amy has starred in reality shows Celebs Go Dating and Celebrity Coach Trip, alongside Jonathan.
She insists Gogglebox is “the realest” of all.
Nikki adds: “You’re sat on a couch, they will turn on the TV and that is it.
“You’re in your own house, you’re not on a set, and you’re with your family, with the people that you’re most open and comfortable with.”
The family were told they couldn’t watch certain shows, such as Love Island or Britain’s Got Talent, until they were being filmed.
They weren’t allowed to redecorate or change their sofa, for continuity purposes, and Nikki remembers an “old, dusty, blue rug” from their garage which producers would put on their living room floor every night before filming.
The family always had to sit in their designated spots on the sofa, too.
The Tappers would film two to three nights a week, for four to five hours at a time, and sometimes had to watch the news three times over.
It got to a point where producers had keys to the house and “became family”, Nikki says.
Gogglebox contributors are paid varying sums.
While the Tappers’ payment has afforded them a lovely new extension on their home in North West London, Nikki, a nursery manager, adds: “It wasn’t enough to give up our jobs, put it that way.”
For this reason, despite their newfound fame, Nikki and Jonathan, a private hire driver, were still going to work as normal and the children were going to school every day.
Josh, who is now in politics and communicaitons, says: “It was like we were living two different lives. And it was exciting for me and Amy because we were at school at the time.
“It was a weird combination, because this wasn’t our job.
“It was all very surreal. You’d go to an award ceremony and then, the day after, we’d be back at school.”
Nikki adds: “Sometimes we’d film for so long that we said, ‘You know what? The kids have got school, we’re not filming past 11 o’clock, we need to have a ballpark’.”
Differences in salaries and contracts between Gogglebox families mean producers have done their best to ensure none of them interact.
Jonathan says: “After every series it was the crew that had a wrap party, but not the cast.”
The family did use to speak to adorable elderly couple June and Leon Bernicoff from Liverpool on the phone regularly. But they have now passed away.
Nikki says: “They were always in contact with us. She always wanted to know how the kids were.
“She’d send me a message if Josh had exams, asking how they went. It was so sweet.”
As the show got bigger, the Tappers — as well as the likes of Steph and Dom and Sandi and Sandra — were becoming household names, going to award ceremonies and mingling with the likes of celebrities Michelle Keegan, Mark Wright and Dermot O’Leary.
One of the Tappers’ favourite moments was presenting the Best Judge award at the NTAs, live from their sofa, and chatting with Dermot beforehand.
Amy recalls: “He was connected to our ears and we heard him before he thought we could, and he was like, ‘I’m so excited for this. It’s the Tappers!’”
Nikki adds: “We saw him a couple of years later at the NTAs in person and he looked at us and was just like, ‘Sorry, excuse me, it’s the Tappers’, to whoever he was speaking to.
“That was amazing.”
She continues: “Jonathan is quite obsessed with Michelle Keegan and he disappeared at one of these award shows, going to the toilet, and I was like, ‘Where is he?’
“I look over and he’s chatting to Michelle Keegan and I was like, ‘Oh my God! Where’s Mark Wright?’ They were so lovely.”
Gogglebox is still on TV ten years after it launched, and getting huge viewing figures.
It is now into its 21st series, not counting the celebrity versions.
The only original cast members are hairdresser Stephen Webb and the Siddiqui family from Derby.
Yet the Tappers believe the modern Gogglebox is missing the “innocence” of the original cast.
Jonathan explains: “The people who started on it didn’t know what it was all about, but the people who came into it afterwards had already seen the programme.”
Amy adds: “It was more natural, but, with any show, it’s better because it’s fresh.
“I think the OGs of every programme are always best.
“It’s like Love Island, there’s no smoking area now — and that’s better because so many young people watch it — but the best parts happened at the smoking area.
“That was where all the beef and gossiping happened.”
The Tappers left Gogglebox in 2018 as Josh and Amy grew up and became less available to film, what with work and university getting in the way.
Nikki says: “Our circumstances changed. It was a shame but it just wasn’t possible for us to film the show any more.
“The best thing about doing Gogglebox, for all of us, is that we got to spend so much time together as a family, which we would never ever have otherwise.
“Who sits for that amount of time with their teenage kids on a Friday or Saturday night?
“I do miss it, especially in times like this, where we’re all together.”
But would they go back? “Never say never.”
On these pages find out what happened to the other original stars of the show.
Sandi and Sandra
SANDRA MARTIN spent years on benefits before she and best friend Sandi Bogle saw Gogglebox fame.
It was their loud laughs when the pair, from South London, were out drinking for Sandra’s 50th birthday that alerted TV scouts.
“It was right place, right time,” Sandi, 58, tells us.
Sandra, 61, adds: “They said, ‘All you’ve got to do is sit down, order a big pizza and watch TV’.”
Sandi left in 2016 and Sandra is now back on benefits, having quit in 2018.
Stephen and Chris
HAIRDRESSERS Chris Ashby-Steed and Stephen Webb, from Brighton, were one of the best-loved pairs.
Yet Chris stepped down in 2018, claiming that Stephen had “bullied him out”.
Since then, Chris has said: “There have been times where I’ve felt so low that I think, ‘How can I kill myself?’”
He now lives in Hove with partner Tony.
Stephen did the show with his mum Pat and is still on it today with husband Daniel Lustig.
Leon and June
THE Bernicoffs, from Liverpool, were like the nation’s grandparents.
Fans delighted in their loving relationship, the twinkle in Leon’s eye and June playfully telling him off.
Leon sadly passed away in December 2017 at the age of 82.
Two months after his death there was a special tribute show in his honour.
The following year June wrote a memoir about their 60-year love story.
June died, aged 82, in May 2020 following a short illness.
Kate and Graham
AFTER leaving the show in 2016, Church of England minister Kate Bottley – known for her no-nonsense comments and love of tea – became a journalist, TV presenter and radio pundit.
The 48-year-old, from Notts, regularly presents the Pause For Thought segment on the Radio 2 Breakfast Show, has fronted Prayer For The Day on Radio 4 and is a regular on Channel 4’s Steph’s Packed Lunch.
Husband Graham stays out of the limelight.
The Michaels
THE Michaels were the witty family from Brighton made up of Andy and committed knitter Carolyne plus their children Louis and daughter Alex.
They announced in 2014 they were leaving because Andy was running for Ukip in the 2015 General Election.
After he failed to get elected they became regulars on the show again.
They left for good after Andy sadly died, aged 61, in 2021 following a short illness.
Steph and Dom
BOOZE-loving Steph and Dom Parker starred on the show for four years before leaving to continue running their bed-and- breakfast business.
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The posh married couple from Sandwich, Kent, best known for their witty one-liners, went on to star in reality TV shows such as Celebrity MasterChef and The Jump.
In March 2020 they revealed that they were shutting the doors to their £5million hotel after it went bust.