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The girl who makes you giggle on Gogglebox: Her hilarious comments have made Scarlett Moffatt a TV star in her own right and in person she's as bonkers as any of her pithy one-liners

Published: 17:31 EST, 4 September 2015 | Updated: 19:41 EST, 4 September 2015

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Across the nation, sofas are being plumped, kettles boiled and wits sharpened as the Goggleboxers prepare to return for the sixth series of the popular Channel 4 reality show.

In Liverpool, Leon and June will settle into their flowery recliners; in south London Sandy and Sandra will be ordering in another banquet-strength takeaway; while in Kent posh Dom and Steph will be popping the cork on a fresh gallon of grog.

Meanwhile, in an unassuming house in County Durham, Scarlett Moffatt will be selecting one of her ten pairs of fluffy slippers, slipping onto the croissant-shaped armchair in the front room and getting ready for her close-up.

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Gogglebox returns to our screens this Friday and here Jan Moir meets the extrovert Scarlett Moffatt

As always her mam and dad will be alongside as the cameras roll and viewers prepare for another of Scarlett’s Gogglebox banter bombs. Like the time she was unimpressed by comedian Michael McIntyre’s new chat show. ‘I’m not being funny, but I’ve heard more gossip on the bus,’ she said in a cruel but accurate observation of his softly-softly interviewing technique.

With her fake tan, big mermaid hair and pithy one liners, 24-year-old Scarlett has become the latest breakout Gogglebox star. People love her! While she’d be the first to admit she is not exactly Oscar Wilde, Scarlett has a knack of zooming straight in on the real issue, then promptly deploying one of her picturesque aphorisms.

Watching Greg Wallace waltz with a wedgie on Strictly Come Dancing in 2014 she said, ‘He looks like he’s got five quid’s worth of those trousers up his a***.’ Her response to a survival show with Bear Grylls, where contestants had to live on 30 calories a day?

Dad Mark, 49, and mum Betty, 45, also take part in the show, although their other daughter Ava, nine, is too young

‘Bloody hell! That’s like licking a crisp.’ And when Take That’s Gary Barlow and his tax avoidance scheme was revealed on BBC News, she made the observation: ‘This is the only interesting thing I’ve ever heard about him. This is Gary’s idea of being a rebel.’

Scarlett’s ability to tell it like it is has led to a big surge in her personal popularity. She receives fan mail, offers of dates and advertising contracts – and now numbers BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg, comedian Alan Carr and SNP MP Mhairi Black among her 200,000 Twitter followers.

We meet in a photographer’s studio in London, where Scarlett says she knows the secret of her blossoming success as an armchair pundit. ‘I think it’s because I have no common sense. I just wasn’t born with any. I missed that gene and I don’t think before I speak,’ she says, laughing as she tosses a hank of her pre-bonded hair extensions over a darkly bronzed shoulder.

Crikey. Voluptuous Scarlett is a natural beauty, but that hair must weigh about a kilo and her fake tan hits the colour chart at somewhere between Totally Tropical Tiramisu and Mocha Midnight. However, she’s not the kind of girl who thinks that less is more.

‘Ewww, no. I wish I had my false eyelashes on now, ’cos me eyes are bald!’ she cries. It’s no surprise to learn that when she worked as a part-time Clinique salesgirl in a York department store when she was at university, she was always in trouble for putting too much make-up on customers.

‘Hmmm, I made people quite tanned, yes. Clinique like it au naturel, but I would ramp up the bronzer by a few shades to make everyone look sun-kissed,’ she says. I imagine dazed women reeling into the streets, looking like escaped tigers who had pressed their faces too close to a hot grill. ‘Jan, a bit of colour is nice,’ she insists, tapping an immaculately manicured fingernail on the table.

THE SHOW'S OTHER UNLIKELY HEROES

The Rev Kate Bottley

She doesn’t mince her words, giving a continuous commentary on the programmes while her patient husband Graham, father of their two children, sits quietly by her side. The couple’s trademark is drinking tea out of a pot and they’ve amassed a huge collection of colourful tea cosies sent by fans.

Baasit Siddiqui

Baasit 32, a teacher from Derby, is king of the dry comment (when Noel Edmonds appeared on Newsnight he said, ‘I bet he’ll have Mr Blobby with him’), but says his wife tells him off ‘if she thinks I’ve been a prat’ on the show, and his mother-in-law scolded him for not shaving before filming.

June Bernicoff

Spare a thought for June, 77, who has to put up with her husband Leon constantly saying, ‘Show us yer knicks, June!’ after 60 years together. She always rolls her eyes, but secretly enjoys his saucy banter.

Gigi the dog

Part of the appeal of posh couple Steph and Dom is their beloved sausage dog Gigi, who’s always playing with a squeaky toy as her master and mistress pop the bubbly – the couple are known for their well-stocked drinks cabinet!

Jay Makin

Nicknamed ‘Silent Jay’ because he rarely said a word on the Woerdenweber family sofa, he’s not only been dumped by girlfriend and co-star Eve, he’s out of the new series, too. Fans have demanded he get his own spin-off show.

Scarlett has also appeared in other television shows, including Beauty School Cop Outs on MTV. Now she harbours vague ambitions of leaving her post as a disability advisor for students (‘people are amazed to hear I have a sensible job’) to further a career in television.

‘I’ve developed a taste for it. It’s such fun, every day is different. I’m from a small town called Bishop Auckland; there’s not much going on. Stan Laurel went to school there about 100 years ago and that’s all that’s ever happened.’ Among the projects she has in mind is a documentary called Is Elvis Really Dead? ‘Well,’ she says. ‘Is he?’

When it launched in the spring of 2013, Gogglebox was greeted with a mixture of cynicism and disbelief. A TV show about other people watching TV? How low can you go? However, forget the telly reviews. It soon became clear that Gogglebox was really about something else.

About family and friendship, hearthside and camaraderie. Viewers responded to the simple pleasure of this collective experience; the Goggleboxers were talking about events and shows they’d watched themselves during the week, providing an entertaining barometer that mirrored their own opinions and experiences.

In the past two years Gogglebox has emerged as a hugely popular, BAFTA-winning concept. When series five returned earlier this year, it received its biggest ever audience ratings with over 5 million tuning in to hear their favourite couch potatoes give their tuppenceworth on the issues of the day.

Much of the success has been down to clever casting and to the charm of the Goggleboxers themselves, including the dry wit of the Siddiqui family from Derby, the mystery of Silent Jay and uproarious Chris and Stephen from Brighton. Not to mention posh Mary and Giles, who report from a cramped corner of their thatched cottage in Wiltshire. ‘It looks like they’re in a cupboard, doesn’t it?’ says Scarlett, once again putting her finger on the key issue.

She thinks her outspokenness stems from being bullied at school. ‘I had a monobrow, I was really ugly, I was really weird and I believed in aliens,’ she says. ‘No wonder I got picked on.’ However, having to move schools at the age of 14 was the making of her.

‘I knew I had to make friends at my new school. I used to really care what people thought, but being bullied made me realise that people will like you or not like you anyway, so you might as well be yourself and say exactly what you think.’

She also took solace in ballroom dancing, which she’s practised since she was six years old. At 13 she got her first spray tan and has won more than 600 trophies, Scarlett would love to appear as a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing, but knows she’s hopelessly overqualified. ‘If they ask me, I’m going to play dumb,’ she jokes.

While she doesn’t dance anymore, Scarlett can’t give up the habit of tan, estimating that she’s spent at least £5,000 on products and treatments, probably more. Her father had skin cancer so she’s ‘really anti-sunbed’ although there seems to be no option of going without colour.

‘I did that once. My skin was starting to stain a bit, so I stopped using it. Then people kept asking me; “Are are you OK? You look dreadful.” Sometimes it does look like I have leprosy and sometimes I have to run the bath three times to scrub it off but I’m never going to stop using it. Even when I’m old and in a nursing home I’ll be saying, “Oi, Doris, do my back for me.”’

The Moffatts have only appeared on Gogglebox since series three, and even then only by happy accident. Scarlett had gone to college with one of the show’s researchers, who asked her early last year to help him find a suitable family from the north-east. She thought, ‘Why not us?’ Three days later the cameras were in the Moffatt living room, recording their telly bon mots for posterity.

Dad Mark, 49, and mum Betty, 45, also take part in the show, although their other daughter Ava, nine, is too young. However, the poor little mite is kept busy, frequently dragooned into spray-tanning her sister’s back or drying her hair extensions, for a fiver a time.

The sisters are both named after Hollywood icons; the real life Ava Gardner and the fictional Scarlett O Hara. ‘But I’m not a hussy like Scarlett. And I can’t make clothes out of curtains,’ says Scarlett.

It’s been noted before that while appearing on Gogglebox itself is not a huge money-spinner – one castmate has said that £15 a week is ‘not far off’ the fee that participants receive – there are other benefits. The three Moffatt-eers are here for a round of media interviews and to advertise a brand of cheese they’re helping promote.

They’re a warm and welcoming family, who take pleasure in each other’s company and have lilting accents they like to describe as ‘soft Geordie’. They’re also a hard-working bunch – by 7am every morning, the Moffatts have all left home to get to work; Mark to his job as a welder making JCBs; Betty to the high street store Burton where she’s a deputy manager, and Scarlett to her medical assessment position. She worked at her local newsagents, Asda, TopShop and for Clinique to fund herself through university.

At home, there are the usual areas of conflict. Scarlett never tidies up (‘because you do it for me, Mam’), Betty makes an annoying noise when she swallows her tea (‘I do not!’) and Mark apparently has narcolepsy – diagnosed by Scarlett because he frequently falls asleep ‘when I’m talking to him, like’.

So in many ways, the Moffatts are an ordinary nuclear family from the north-east – except for one thing. It’s not just Scarlett who believes in aliens – they all do. Mark even stores tins of food in the loft just in case Bishop Auckland is taken over by intelligent life forms. ‘There are only a few tins,’ he says sheepishly.

The Moffatts have also memorised special code words to alert each other – should the occasion arise – to the fact that they have been abducted by creatures from outer space. For a long time, the secret code word was ‘pasta’ but the family have recently changed it to ‘spaghetti’. Are all their code words pasta-based? ‘Yes, because it’s my favourite food,’ says Betty.

A few weeks ago, Scarlett went on holiday to Palma and had to text her mother upon her arrival. ‘So I sent, “OK. I’m here safely. Spaghetti.” That way Mum knew it was really me.’ ‘Otherwise it could have been anyone,’ says Betty.

Mother and daughter have attended séances, but without father who does not believe that spirits should be ‘disturbed’. Scarlett doesn’t believe in hell or that heaven is ‘up in the clouds like, with a guy with a beard at the gate’. However, she does believe in something. ‘You know when you get a gut feeling? That part of you is important. That’s the part that cannot die, it can never die and that’s it.’ She says that now. She might think differently when she’s a prisoner on Mars, in the next cell to Elvis.

In this bright and shiny new media world, Betty and Scarlett seem confident and relaxed whereas Mark – who probably gets teased at work – is perhaps less so. He winces affectionately at some of his daughter’s outspoken comments and is aghast at being thought of as anyone special. ‘I’m no celebrity, I never think of myself like that,’ he cries, although all the Moffatts do get asked for their autographs.

At the moment it’s all still a rather marvellous adventure for the Moffatts and their castmates – even if one day Gogglebox will inevitably become the show that ate itself. It’s unavoidable that with each new series the Goggleboxers can’t help but become more knowing; increasingly aware of their duty to entertain rather than just dwelling in the glorious innocence of being themselves.

Yet there is plenty of petrol left in the Gogglebox engine, and a whole heap of pretty dresses for Scarlett to try on today. ‘I’m not a dress person,’ she says. ‘I probably dress like a smart 40-year-old. A lot of my friends say I dress like a sexy mum, even though I don’t have a kid.’

Scarlett can’t remember the last time she had a boyfriend and her single serious relationship ended two years ago. She’s not anti-boyfriend, she just hasn’t met someone who makes her laugh.

‘Sometimes strangers contact me on social networks and say, “I recognise you, can I take you out?” But they’re only saying that because I’m on the telly. When I meet boys and chat to them there’s no banter there at all and I think, “Oh God!” But I’m not bothered.’

‘Well,’ says Betty, with the nimbleness of a mother whose tea slurping has just been outed to the nation, ‘she does quite like to talk about her conspiracy theories and her aliens, and not every lad is into that.’ ‘Mum!’ says Scarlett, ‘sometimes you are like an alien to me.’

Gogglebox returns on Friday at 9pm on Channel 4.