Gogglebox's "token gay couple" review TV from their Brighton sofa

But Gogglebox, the TV show that watches ordinary people watching TV, has split them up. The country’s favourite gay couple ended their relationship after the first series ended in April.

“We’d spent too much time together watching telly for the programme,” said Stephen, 42, with an ironic laugh. “We were lovers but we’re still really good friends and we still watch telly together but we’re not together.”

Stephen and Chris first met nine years ago but lost touch when Stephen moved to London. After a chance meeting, they started dating.

Five-and-a-half months later, researchers from Studio Lambert, the production company that makes the show for Channel 4, popped in to Toni & Guy in Brighton, where Chris works, and asked him to sign up for the show.

He had jumped at the chance, and as Stephen was spending most of his time at Chris’s bungalow in Brighton, the scene was set for their twice-weekly on-camera capers.

But it was the weeks of forced togetherness on the sofa at Chris’s home, famously fuelled by their regular takeaways, that put paid to their romance.

The revelation will be a shock for the Channel 4 progamme’s two million viewers laughing as they watch the bearded pair’s eyebrows rise and their mouths drop open before coming out with gems such as this on Boris Johnson’s parents as they watch Boris Johnson: The Irresistible Rise – Chris: She’s been cutting her own fringe, I reckon. That’s a bowl on the head job, wasn’t it?”

Stephen: “That’s his dad. They’re all the same, aren’t they? They’re like little clones of each other.”

And Chris on Stephen if he were to appear on Embarrassing Bodies: “Then everyone would know you’ve got a small willy.”

“Do you know,” laughed Stephen, “my friends have created a Gogglebox drinking game: every time I say ‘f***’, they down a drink. Believe you me, they get very drunk very quickly!”

His post-watershed language is often a result of his own hangover. “I’ve watched stuff when I’m hungover,” he said. “This week, we watched something about cathedrals – OMG! I felt my brain melt! I haven’t got a clue what it was about.”

Stephen, who works at Anna Emilia Hairdressing in Hurstpierpoint, only set up his Twitter account after he first appeared on Gogglebox but he has already racked up 11,000 followers.

But he’s not tempted into a celebrity lifestyle. “Once we become celebrities, we stop being ordinary people, and it’s us being ordinary that makes the show so entertaining,” he said. “I’ve already done loads of things in my life – I’ve been to Base Camp on Mount Everest on my own – and in 30 years’ time I’ll look back on this as one of my life experiences and have a giggle about it.”

He can’t resist the temptation to grab the remote and watch the show every Wednesday night, though. “Oh, of course I watch it! I love it! I wouldn’t miss it for the world!

“I haven’t met any of the others on the show – but my favourites are Sandy and Sandra, the best friends from London. I love them! And the posh couple – he always seems sozzled by end of the evening, doesn’t he?”

Of course, all Gogglebox fans will know exactly who he’s talking about, his fellow telly addicts caught on camera as they enjoy an evening or two in front of the TV.

The show films a series of opinionated people in their own living rooms as they watch popular TV shows and breaking news stories, with two cameras placed either side of each household’s television. One camera is focussed on wider angles to capture shots of everyone on the sofa, while the other films close-ups of people’s faces. Filmed over the previous seven days, it’s edited in time for its weekly broadcast. And it’s narrated by Craig Cash, from TV’s The Royle Family, the show that inspired Gogglebox.

Sandra, aka Queen B, and Sandy, who live in Brixton, have been friends for more than 40 years and spend hours in front of the telly as they’re both unemployed. Best lines? On a Very British Wedding – Sandra: “When I got married to my last husband, we never had nothing.”

Sandy: “You’ve never had a cake or like...?”

Sandra: “Nope, straight down KFC.”

And Sandra on Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS in a Day: “When my mum, when my mum, erm, was in hospital getting ready to die, I ate all her dinners . . . she gave them to me. She weren’t hungry.”

The “posh couple” are Steph and Dom, who run a B&B from their Grade I-listed home in Kent, which has hosted royalty and celebrities. She used to work for NATO and the European Commission and Dom once ran the family steel business. Their cut glass accents match the cut glasses they clutch as they tenderly hold hands across the sofa. Classic conversations include this one on Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway – Dom: “Nice up panty shot there.”

Steph: “Oh, I missed that.”

Dom: “I didn’t!”

Legion of fans Leon and June, the retired teachers from Liverpool who’ve been married for 52 years, have amassed a legion of fans with their strong views on, well, just about everything. Here’s Leon on David Cameron and immigration: “He’s toadying to the Conservative right wing. He’s a weak man with his woman’s mouth. Oh, he’s a horror.”

And the couple on 16 Kids and Counting – June: “I’m amazed how youthful she looks after 16 children.”

Leon: “She does, she looks very well. Our Julie looked terrible after one.”

While Nikki and Jonathan Tapper and their children, Amy, 13, and 15-year-old Josh, and best friends Steven and Michael from Liverpool continue to entertain the nation, there are plenty of priceless moments, such as this from Gemma, one of the three Allen sisters from Essex, on Supersize vs Superskinny – “Watching fat people makes me want to eat chocolate. Is that wrong?”

And from the Siddiqui family in Derby on Crufts 2013 – Umar: “The British do love their dogs, like no other nation. I mean, the Chinese like dogs as well, but not in the same way.”

Baasit: “For different reasons.”

Raza: “Yeah, what’s Crufts like in China? It’s a cookery programme!”

And then there’s the Michael family, from Brighton. There’s retired hotelier Andrew, 53, who used to own hotels in Eastbourne and Bournemouth, and his 52-year-old wife Carolyne, currently studying at the University of Chichester to be a sound therapist.

Joining them regularly on the sofa are son and daughter Louis, 16, and Alex, 22, who’s looking for a job after studying for her Masters degree in computer science, while making occasional appearances are their other children, 24-year-old Katie, who recently returned from six months in Australia, and son Pascal, 21, studying neuroscience at Aberdeen University.

Here are Carolyne and Louis on Boris Johnson: The Irresistible Rise – Carolyne: “He’s a toff, he’s a fool and he is a buffoon and it’s obviously a fake, but I still like him.”

Louis: “Yeah but it’s his thing. He’s the playful idiot with the shaggy hair.”

Carolyne: “Yeah but you have to beware the fool, because in all Shakespeare plays the fool is actually the clever one.”

As Carolyne points out, it’s their nuggets of wisdom that endear the Goggleboxers to the nation.

“Everyone says to me that we all say exactly what they’re thinking,” she said. “It’s kind of unifying and that’s why it’s so popular. I get recognised everywhere, you know, all the time. We even got spotted on holiday in Cyprus! And people are so lovely – they say, ‘Oh my god, we saw you on Gogglebox’ and they say it’s so funny and how much they enjoy it. I really like being spotted because none of the attention has ever been negative.”

The family signed up for the show after TV researchers called in at Hollisters, the fashion shop in Brighton’s Churchill shopping centre, where Katie was working.

“She volunteered us for it and they came down and interviewed us. When they told me what the programme was about, we said we couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to watch a programme that watched people watching television. It seemed like a dire idea!

“But when we saw what they did with it, we realised the skill is all in the editing. We just didn’t think it would be so amusing – but then they’ve got rich pickings, haven’t they?

“I’m very relaxed about the programmes we’re asked to watch but Andy’s more discerning. He’s refused to watch some of them and has walked out.”

Camera shy While Carolyne admits she was nervous about the constant presence of cameras in their living room, it didn’t take long to get used to it.

“It’s just cameras, there are no people, no camera crew, so it’s a bit like making a home movie,” she said. “You forget they’re there.”

Son Louis, a former pupil at Cardinal Newman School in Hove and now studying English and drama at Sixth Form college BHASVIC, caused a bit of a stir when he slouched on the sofa in a onesie a couple of weeks ago. “It was Hallowe’en,” he protested with a laugh. “I was desperate to go out with my friends but they made me sit down and watch telly first!

“Seriously, it’s a brilliant and awesome experience, being on Gogglebox, even though watching One Born Every Minute was actually mentally scarring . . .!”

For sister Alex, life has changed thanks to Gogglebox. “It has made my life a lot better and far more exciting,” she said. “At the moment, I’m job hunting, which is not exciting, as I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do. But I still find it weird seeing myself on TV. And I’d love to meet the two gay guys from Brighton.”

Gogglebox is on Channel 4 at 10pm on Wednesdays.