The Malone family are renowned for their cake tray on Gogglebox.
Whether it’s sticky buns, jam tarts or chocolate biscuits, Julie Malone always ensures she has a fully-stocked plate of treats perfectly placed on her pouf when filming the hit Channel 4 show.
But now her son Tom has revealed he and his dad, Tom Sr, have been doing something rude with them to see if any eagle-eyed viewers would spot.
In a TikTok Q&A, he admitted to often placing them in NSFW shapes, explaining: “We have, me and my dad before, put the cakes in different positions and different shapes to see if any eagle-eyed viewers would actually notice, so keep an eye out for that,” he said.
And in case it wasn’t quite clear enough what Tom meant, he added the caption, “Sometimes quite rude shapes,” along with an aubergine emoji.
Tom was responding to a question from a fan who asked him to put something obscure on the pouf to throw people off.
He explained that had actually already happened, revealing some viewers had a lot to say when Julie put out a plate of toast.
He said: “We were watching The Andrew Marr Show when we were filming and obviously we film quite late at night but The Andrew Marr show is actually on TV quite early in the morning.
“So we thought it’d be weird to have cakes in the middle, and we know people always talk about the cakes, people always notice the cakes.
“So we decided to put out a plate of toast, so we had a big plate of toast in front of us filming The Andrew Marr Show and Twitter went nuts.
“It was like ToastGate - everyone was getting on at us like: ‘Why do you have toast? Where’s the cake?’ It’s literally because we were filming a show that’s on early in the morning.”
Another fan asked why the family never eat the stuff in front of them, to which Tom posted a video of him tucking into a jam tart.
“We do, but they don’t often show it,” he added.
Tom revealed that the crew also treat the families to a takeaway of their choosing each time they film with them, which is usually twice a week, calling it “one of the best perks” of being on the show.
In a different video, Tom also explained how the filming schedule works, telling of how many of the shows the families watch, they get to see in advance of them airing on TV.
He said: “Our last filming day for a Gogglebox is normally Tuesday, so on that Tuesday, we could be watching shows that could be on TV up until the Thursday and then the show will go out on the Friday. But obviously we can’t watch live TV beforehand, so most of the live TV on Gogglebox is from the news up until the Tuesday, or it’s from the weekend, like Strictly or The X factor.
“So for drama, series and films we see it in advance, but depending on which days which families film.”
Gogglebox is expected to return to Channel 4 later this year.