Roman Kemp has been appearing on Celebrity Gogglebox alongside his dad, EastEnders icon Martin, for the past three years and has now ‘ruined’ the secrets of the hit Channel 4 show
Roman Kemp has spilled the beans on Gogglebox’s behind-the-scenes setup, revealing the show’s “tiny TVs” and the guidance stars receive from producers. The One Show‘s Roman, 32, has been appearing on Celebrity Gogglebox alongside his dad, EastEnders legend Martin Kemp, 63, since 2019.
Initially, the duo began filming in Roman’s flat, but a dispute with a neighbour led to interruptions during recordings. This hiccup forced them to film in a show home temporarily before settling into an annexe on the property where soap star Martin lives with his wife Shirlie.
On his podcast You About? with musician Tom Grennan, Roman revealed that they spend roughly “four hours” each week filming for Gogglebox. He warned Gogglebox fans he was about to “ruin” some of the show’s mystique.
Roman remarked: “With Gogglebox, and they’ve done it for so many years, I don’t think they mind me saying—you’re not watching the entire show. By the way, if you like Gogglebox and don’t want to know this, don’t listen, because it will ruin the show a little bit,” he said, as reported by the Manchester Evening News.
He continued: “You watch on a smaller telly—the TV is so tiny. It’s a small, tiny little monitor that you have to watch it on. And you’re watching TV there with about three cameras in the room with you. They don’t have people behind them—they’re electronic.
“There’s a little voice, and the producer will talk to you and so on. You probably watch, out of an hour-long show or movie, 12 minutes. Usually, a cut-down is around 12 minutes; a lot of the time it’s six or seven.
“If you’re watching a quiz show, you’re only watching six minutes of that quiz show—the best bit. So that’s when we were like, ‘Okay, you’ve got to play this.'”
Tom, who also appeared on Celebrity Gogglebox with his father, explained that celebrities “don’t get TV time” if they misjudge what viewers want. This prompted Roman to explain that he and Martin quickly figured out what works for them.
He added: “You have to figure out what people like watching from you. We found out quite quickly that literally the only parts of me and my dad being in it are when one of us is farting, one of us is falling over… What I will say, though, is that that is our relationship.”
While Roman and Martin eventually settled on using the former Spandau Ballet bassist’s house as their filming base, Martin had a series of conditions for crew members. He told them they had to “sit outside in a van” and couldn’t come in for lunch.
Source: Mirror
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