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Stephen & Chris

BRIGHTON

Stephen, 43, and Chris, 38, are hairdressers

and first met eleven years ago. Stephen spends

a lot of time at Chris’s bungalow near Brighton,

where they love a takeaway in front of the telly.

Chris shares his home (and often his sofa)

with his enormous cat, Ginge.

HOW DID YOU MEET?

STEPHEN: We were working in the same salon as each other about eleven or twelve years ago. Then he left and went somewhere else, and I left, and when I came back to Brighton about three years ago, we met up with each other again.

CHRIS: You started chatting to me on Grindr, didn’t you?

STEPHEN: Yeah. And we started seeing each other. But it didn’t really work out. It finished just after the first series. It was only four episodes, but it fucking ruined it.

I do take the piss out of him a lot and I think, when we were together, you took it to heart a bit, didn’t you?

CHRIS: Yeah. Because the thing is, if you’re supposed to love someone, why would you rip the piss out of them the whole time?

STEPHEN: Entertainment, dear.

CHRIS: For you. Not for me.

STEPHEN: There’s twenty-four hours in a day: I get bored. But it did make me feel bad because I felt like a bully.

CHRIS: We’re much better as friends, anyway.

STEPHEN: I still take the piss as much, but you just say, ‘Shut up.’

HOW DID YOU GET ON GOGGLEBOX?

CHRIS: This woman walked into the salon and said she was looking for someone to take part in a TV programme, so I went running over and went, ‘Oh my God! Tell me about it! Tell me about it!’

STEPHEN: Fame-hungry bitch. I wasn’t interested at first. I just thought, it will sink without trace. And then he said, ‘They’re paying us,’ and I went, ‘All right, I’ll do it.’

Chris and Ginge, the big pussy

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOURSELVES ON SCREEN?

CHRIS: It was a bit strange at first, because I think people had said, ‘You’ve got to be careful what you say, because you’re going to be on TV, it’s going to be out there,’ so in the first one I was really quiet. And people were, like, ‘That’s not you.’ But you overanalyse things in your head and you think, I can’t say that because you know, it might go on TV and I don’t want people to think that I’m nasty or I’m rude or …

STEPHEN: I didn’t give a fuck.

CHRIS: Yeah, but you don’t give a fuck anyway.

WHAT WAS YOUR

FAMILY’S REACTION?

CHRIS: My sisters absolutely love it. Tune in every single week.

STEPHEN: All my family watch it, and I’ll say something and they’ll go, ‘Oh, that’s something your nan used to say,’ or, ‘Oh my God, you looked like your brother when you said that.’ So they’ve said it’s like watching them, because we’re all pretty much the same character, our family.

CHRIS: Oh God, yeah. A bit inbred. You all look the same.

BEING RECOGNISED

STEPHEN: When we did the first series, I didn’t have a Twitter account, nor did Chris. And someone said to us, ‘Why don’t you get a Twitter account?’ So we opened it up, and I think within two days it was, like, 7,000 followers – and it’s just gone up and up and up. I think we’re up to about 60,000 now.

CHRIS: Well, you are. I’m up to about 47,000.

STEPHEN: And out of all the Tweets I’ve had, I’ve only ever got two crap ones. One was a bit weird and said she wanted to fuck me mum. My mum was, like, ‘Does she? Get her round here. I’ll fuck her up.’ That one, she got chucked out of Iceland’s. There’s a picture of her, on her Twitter page, being carried out of Iceland’s.

In real life, people are brilliant. I don’t suppose I’ve ever been so popular. You know, you walk into a bar and everyone’s really nice. Everyone. Not one person has said … Oh, actually, the other day I was in Hurstpierpoint and this car went past, it slowed down and the window went down. And the bloke went, ‘Oi, mate! Are you the geezer off the telly?’ And I went, ‘Yeah.’ And he went, ‘You’re a wanker!’ I really started laughing, and I went, ‘I know!’ And he laughed and drove off.

CHRIS: I’ve had all really good responses as well. But I was out a couple of weeks ago, and this woman came running over to me, waving at me, and she was, like, ‘Oh my God! I love you on the TV. Can I have my picture taken with you?’ And I was, like, ‘Yeah, course.’ I sat down with her and one of her friends was trying to take the picture. Then, all of a sudden, this guy came over and tapped me on the shoulder and went, ‘Someone’s sitting there.’ And I said, ‘I’m just having a picture done with her.’ And he was, like, ‘Yeah, but you don’t get what I’m saying: someone’s sitting there.’ And I went ‘Yeah, I know. I’m going to be moving in a minute. She wanted to talk to me.’

And then I got another tap on my other shoulder – and it was her husband. And he went, ‘That’s my fucking missus.’ And I went, ‘She’s called me over here because she likes me on Gogglebox. I’m only having a picture taken with her, then I’m going …’

STEPHEN: ‘And I’m as bent as a nine-bob note …’

CHRIS: Why would I be interested in her? We were in a gay bar. But the thing was, the rest of the night all they did was just throw me the evils.

STEPHEN: But I love it. On a Saturday night, when you’re out and you’ve had a load of drink, it’s brilliant. Sunday morning, when you’ve got a hangover – stranger danger and beer fear – that’s when I start getting paranoid, thinking that someone’s going to be horrible or something.

There’s a woman who works on the road I work on, and she said to me, ‘You really do look better in the flesh.’ I thought, you cheeky cow.

CHRIS: You see, I get the opposite. Some of my really close friends are, like, ‘Oh my God, Chris, you look so good on TV.’ And I’m, like – I don’t in real life? ‘Well, yeah, you look nice in real life, but on TV you look really hot.’

WHOSE HAIR WOULD YOU CHANGE ON TV?

STEPHEN: Beeny’s. Frizzy bleached chunk slices.

CHRIS: We’ve always said that we’d like to do her hair.

STEPHEN: And she’s nice, we love her. But the hair’s got to go. And the three box leather jackets: one’s purple, one’s black and one’s green. It’s all she’s ever got on. And she’s always up the fucking duff.

CHRIS: And Simon Cowell. What’s going on with that? It’s a flat top with a centre parting.

STEPHEN: He’s a pillock, isn’t he? All the money he’s got – why hasn’t he got a stylist? He wears his trousers up here, his tits are down here …

CHRIS: And he wears the same clothes all the time, doesn’t he?

STEPHEN: George Lamb’s got great hair.

CHRIS: Beautiful hair. I’ve always really liked Drew Barrymore’s hair.

STEPHEN: Pat Butcher. Can’t go wrong with a blonde crop, can you? That’s my kind of hairdressing: shit. Fuck knows how I get away with it. I used to lay tarmac before I hairdressed.

CHRIS: I’m liking Cheryl Cole’s hair at the moment. Sort of rooty and blonde and all that. But how much of that’s really hers? Mind you, I had implants.

STEPHEN: They took hair off his arsehole.

CHRIS: No, they didn’t.

STEPHEN: You can, though. You can take hair off your arsehole and put it in your head. As long as it’s yours.

CHRIS: They can take your beard hair, they can take your chest hair, or armpit hair. Anywhere. And then insert it. I don’t know if, when they pull it into your head, it adapts. I mean, just imagine if someone actually had their pubes removed and put on their head.

STEPHEN: Yeah, but you could have straighteners put on it.

WOULD YOU NORMALLY WATCH TV TOGETHER?

CHRIS: When we were dating, we used to sit in and watch TV.

STEPHEN: Tsk. Fucking brilliant, it was.

CHRIS: Because you never wanted to go out on a Saturday night.

WHAT DO YOU DISAGREE ON?

CHRIS: I love Millionaire Matchmaker.

STEPHEN: I can’t stand that woman.

CHRIS: She’s a bitch. But she knows her stuff. I love the fact that she really puts the millionaires in their place, because they think they’re bloody God’s gift. And she slaps them down, so I love her. She’s great.

STEPHEN: It’s a load of old drivel. I love the History Channel. And I like anything to do with World War II.

CHRIS: Oh God. Boring.

STEPHEN: Come on, you’ve got to love all that.

CHRIS: There’s so many other things that I quite like in history, like Pompeii – anything like that is cool. Spartacus: Blood and Sand was very homoerotic. You’re watching it literally peering through your fingers, but then you get all these full frontal naked men and you’re just, like, oh my God! So you have to watch it just for that.

GAY MEN ON TV WHEN YOU

WERE GROWING UP

STEPHEN: I remember seeing Jimmy Somerville on TV and thinking, I know I’m like that, and I really don’t want to be. You know, the bleached hair and the dancing like he did. It wasn’t until EastEnders, when there was a gay couple that didn’t seem stereotypical. One of them was a tall fella with grey hair.

But I didn’t come out until I was about twenty-five, because I was from a council estate, and you just kept your mouth shut.