Gogglebox's Mary: ‘My friends’ husbands are even more annoying than Giles’

Gogglebox. What’s there not to love about the ultimate reality show? Could there be anything more compelling than watching the great British public in all its glorious diversity lounging on the nation’s sofas with a plate of fancies and telling it like it is?

Except not everyone lounges. And not everyone has snacks. Some, like Mary and Giles, sit so straight-backed, upright and marvellously uptight they could be auditioning for a job share (whisper it) as the new heads of rivals the BBC.

With his mop of hair and owlish glasses, professional artist Giles Wood fidgets with schoolboyish energy.

Ensconced in an old armchair upholstered with a William Morris print that memorably (weirdly) matches the wallpaper, his wife, Spectator agony aunt Mary Killen, bristles at him with a mix of fond exasperation and school ma’amish disapproval. He is fabulously impervious to both.

Mary is an etiquette expert and stubbornly old school; she cries at Dame Vera Lynn, won’t tolerate swearing and is convinced modern Britain is a quagmire of “skunk and pornography”.

Needless to say, she is a royalist. So much so she has just written an entertaining, if slim, volume titled What Would HM The Queen Do?

It is a follow-up to her 2012 publication How the Queen Can Make You Happy and aims to nudge us all into behaving with grace and decorum, regardless of our own pedigree.

Free of scandal or gossipy revelation, it contains nothing that might frighten the horse guards and makes for entirely pleasant if featherlight reading.

But when I refer to it as the perfect loo book, Mary visibly shudders on our Zoom call.

“Absolutely not, that would be entirely inappropriate!” she cries. “It is for the bedside table, a little study of the ultimate role model who has pursued a life of duty and dignity and can still walk four miles a day at 94.

“We take her for granted because she’s always been there but what would we do without her as a symbol of national unity? I think we would all be happier if we adopted and adapted some of the principles she lives by.”

I’m not entirely convinced that reviewing random telly shows on Channel 4 would warrant the royal seal of approval but Mary, a self-styled child of the Sixties, credits Gogglebox for saving her marriage.

“Giles and I were like ships that pass in the night; I got up early, he went to bed late and we rarely even ate together. Sitting down and watching television reminded us how much we enjoyed the same jokes,” she says.

“Lockdown wasn’t a great hardship for us; more like an open prison with comfortable beds, but I know a few couples who have split up because they have decided they can’t stand one another.”

Like a great many relationships, Mary and Giles’s marriage is a union of opposites. There may be tensions – he has selective deafness when repeatedly called in from the garden, she gets cross when he “lurks” in doorways. But somehow it hangs together despite – possibly because of – the gentle bickering.

“You have to understand all men are really annoying one way or another,” she says emphatically. “Would you prefer one of your friends’ husbands? I’ve thought about each one in turn and concluded their habits are even more irritating than Giles’s.”

She and Giles, who have two adult daughters, met more than three decades ago at Wimbledon College of Art, where he was a student.

“I was a costume model,” explains Mary. “You got £4.50 an hour and 25p extra for being nude, but I certainly wasn’t interested in doing all the squatting and crawling that was expected.”

Here, as in her “skunk and pornography” remark, Mary’s elaborate way of conveying exquisite disdain ends up sounding more titillating than anything.

But words are her forte – aside from the Queen books she has written two more on etiquette and co-wrote the amusingly Pooterish The Diary of Two Nobodies with Giles to (discreetly and briefly) ride on the coattails of their fame.

Incidentally, Gogglebox viewers who have long wondered why she and her husband refer to one another as “Nutty” will be interested to learn it is a reference to The Nutty Professor cartoon strip.

“We call each other ‘Nutty’ because we both consider the other to be a bit mad. Certainly Giles has multiple-personality disorder, so he’s all sorts of people and one of them is a bit of a genius,” she confirms.

“The truth is, we’re both neurotic. I have a low tolerance for things like whistling. He hates it when the phone rings and just sits there demanding ‘who on earth IS that?’ instead of answering it.”

Mary is on a roll. Unfortunately Giles – who by his own admission is an amalgam of Mr Bean and Basil Fawlty - is downstairs talking the hindlegs off a family friend, so he is not here to defend himself.

Then again, having witnessed their often screamingly funny dynamic on-screen, there is no reason to disbelieve her. She is pretty much an Everywife – one those of us in for the long haul can identify with.

“Giles also has a lot of minor accidents,” Mary continues. “Stubbing his toe, banging his head, burning or cutting himself; when he grazed the roof of his mouth with a crisp he made a tremendous fuss...”

Returning to the subject of Her Majesty, she ruefully concedes that we too would be well-advised to keep our own counsel and refuse to engage in demeaning public spats of any sort.

“When there’s carping about her family, the Queen never rises to the bait,” gushes Mary. “She’s not swayed by mass opinion, she doesn’t crave social media ticks or likes.

“We live in an egotistical ‘me’ age in which people are obsessed with themselves and are entirely self-centred; Her Majesty is without ego and all the more admirable for it; service to others is what brings lasting happiness.”

I wonder aloud whether Meghan Markle would not have been better served channelling the Queen’s gracious detachment rather than taking every perceived slight personally?

“I think that all royals have to grapple with the difficulty of balancing personal principle with public duty,” responds Mary with careful tact. “Obviously different generations come to different conclusions about how best to do this.”

In What Would HM The Queen Do? we learn how Her Majesty adheres to routine, embraces continuity and chews every mouthful of food to a patrician paste before swallowing.

She is frugal – as attested by those infamous Tupperware boxes full of cereal at her breakfast table – understands that saving money, unlike spending it, bestows a satisfying sense of achievement, and “exhibits gold-standard authenticity” on her walkabouts, Mary writes.

It’s a shame she’s never actually met the monarch, but perhaps one day she will. And when she does I sincerely trust she will be on her very best behaviour. Queen Elizabeth II that is.

What Would HM The Queen Do? by Mary Killen. Buy now for £9.99 at books.telegraph.co.uk or call 0844 871 1514