He spent plenty of time keeping the nation entertained on Gogglebox, but Chris Ashby-Steed has since left the show and gotten married.
Chris and his new husband, Tony, are now documenting their life on Instagram - which includes showing fans around their new home. The pair have recently relocated from Brighton to Newcastle Emlyn, in rural west Wales.
Their Insta feed is full of home renovation snaps and the couple are enjoying doing up their new home. With all the exuberance that fans have come to expect, the couple announced their relocation by saying that "the gays have arrived", announcing their presence in rural Wales to the world.
Read more: Rule every Gogglebox star must follow to stay on the show
What followed was a house tour and plenty of photos of the house, garden and the new locale. In one snap, the couple can be seen enjoying themselves at the beach.
The couple are avid gardeners and this meant that, when they moved their lives nearly 270 miles they also had 400 plants to transport. The plants filled a whopping four moving vans, WalesOnline reports.
But what also filled the moving vans was a sense of hope and new beginnings, for a couple that so desperately needed some. The seeds were sown in 2018, just six months after Chris and Tony's marriage.
Tony's mum, to whom he was very close, sadly suffered a stroke and moved in with them during her rehabilitation. But it did not take long before the couple realised that the house was not suitable for them and Tony's mum, so they had two choices: move or extend.
They opted to remortgage and build an extension, which would encompass a new part of the home especially for Tony's mum. But disaster struck on just the second day of building when she fell into the ditch that had been dug for the foundations.
Tony's mum was now dealing with recovering from a stroke and being newly injured, so had to spend more time in hospital. When she was released from hospital, she spent time in a care home to recover but fell again a number of times.
It later emerged that she had a double bleed on her brain which was impacting her personality, Tony said that she was "changing" and "becoming mean". He said: "That wasn't my mum."
She spent the next four-and-half months in hospital and three times he was told to go in and say his goodbyes. Incredibly, she pulled through but needed the use of a wheelchair.
"We didn't know if she was going to be able to walk again and thankfully we made sure everything was wheelchair accessible and had a wet room and that kind of thing, and she came home and as well as working full time and being a husband and a daddy to the dogs I had to nurse mum full time as well," Tony told WalesOnline.
Chris added: "Our lives have been put on hold for three years, but also just little things but they were all sacrifices that we made. We sacrificed a lot in that three years."
Two years on, in late 2020, Tony's mum got a chest infection and had to go back to hospital. After leaving hospital she caught Covid and was readmitted. And then, at the start of 2021, Tony was told there was nothing that could be done and she was given palliative care.
Tony said: "Thankfully, it wasn't like the previous summer and I was allowed to go in. So for mum's last three days I spent all day every day at the bedside and with all my PPE, holding her hand, and talking to her talking any old rubbish, remembering lots of things and making sure I wasn't saying anything that indicated that she was dying."
On one occasion, despite the medication, she took him by his neck and pulled him close and looked at him, a memory Tony treasures. She died shortly afterwards.
But for grieving Tony, There was no respite. He himself caught Covid and had to distance himself from Chris, holed up in his mum's old room.
But, from these trials, tribulations and heartbreaks, the couple emerged stronger. Tony said: "We call ourselves either 'hinge and bracket' or 'George and Mildred' because we are like an old married couple. We do banter a lot. We've got these cushions and mine says 'He's never wrong' and his says 'I'm never wrong' and that's right.
"This man is my best friend and, I tell you something, we'd only been married for six months and without a second thought he said 'of course, your mum has to move in'".
New beginnings
Before long, Chris was suggesting that the couple move and start a new life elsewhere. He attributes some of this to his being a Gemini and craving "new challenges" in his life. But the old house - and Brighton - also harboured some memories that he was keen to let go of.
Chris said: "I was getting married and doing the work on the house and then it was like we were trapped. I describe it as being trapped in a gilded cage. You can't go out. There was the financial side of it as well, because I wasn't able to work and it was just one thing after another and I just felt like I was a trapped bird, I needed to get out. I'm 45 and he's 52 and I just felt it was at a point in our lives we needed a new challenge."
Between 2013 and 2018, Chris appeared on Gogglebox with his ex-boyfriend, Stephen Webb. Chris said that he wanted to "eliminate" the memories of Gogglebox and move forward with his life.
The decision was not as hard to come to for Tony as he had thought it might be, either. Even though he had never dreamed of giving up the house that he was sharing with his husband.
He said: "We'd put our heart, our soul and every penny we had, and didn't have, into that house and the garden and I couldn't imagine leaving it. Then part-way through the year I completely flipped on my head. It's been 16 months since I lost mum and I haven't really grieved and I was so close to her.
"I have type 2 bipolar disorder and I've done so much cognitive behavioural therapy that my brain automatically blocks triggers. I think that's what's been happening but then I realised staying in that house was toxic because everywhere I went was mum, everywhere in Brighton was mum. It was hard."
Tony said that leaving the house and leaving Brighton behind, means that the pair feel like they've "broken free".
But before their freedom could materialise, they had to actually find a house to move to. So, they spent hours on Rightmove looking at options.
For Tony, the reality of the last few years hit and he just didn't feel able to do another big project, especially as builder friends spelt out the reality of rising prices and what that would mean for their budget. They knew they wanted somewhere with some land in a more rural location but kept saying they couldn't just up and move to somewhere new.
Eventually, in a call with a friend, they said they had decided they would move to Wales "in a couple of years". It took her saying "Why wait?" for them to realise and decide to take the plunge.
Though the couple have no ties to Wales, they have happily settled on Newcastle Emlyn and are now both making the most of their new life in the rural spot. Tony works for Legal and General and spoke to them about a transfer, and they said yes, if he was happy to transfer to the Cardiff office.
Before deciding on Newcastle Emlyn, Tony drew up a shortlist of 20 homes. He said: "We didn't know any areas and we had an idea that we might discover an area that we like through looking at houses, or we might find a house that we completely fall in love with and then we need to check out the area that is it."
They put their home on the market on the Wednesday, came to Wales that Friday and on Monday phoned the estate agent to put in an offer. They'd spent all day Saturday in Newcastle Emlyn, speaking to people in the town and a number of "signs" made them take the plunge: "We went into one of the pubs in the village and every single person in the pub said hello to us and literally seconds after we walked in Dancing Queen came on — it was a sign!"
And as soon as they stepped onto the doorstep of what would become their new home, the couple looked at each other and immediately knew it was the one for them before they'd seen any more. What was a family home is now being painstakingly restored by the couple.
They have only been in the house for three-and-a-half months, but Tony and Chris have wasted no time in sanding the floors, painting the rooms and converting the bathrooms.
And it has all been helped along by Chris being a sucker for a bargain, meaning plenty of items in the house add some lovely charm for a fraction of their original price. The beautiful original lights which hang on the outside of what will become Chris' hairdressing salon, for example, were picked up for £45 at a car boot sale.
The couple will let their four designated guest rooms out through AirBnB and have set aside one of the reception rooms as a guest lounge. So they will also be bringing in some extra cash.
And Tony and Chris are adamant that they want to be part of the community. All guests will be given recommendations of where to go in the village, and the pair want to join local committees and groups.
Tony wants to paint the bus stop and they want to join the local Rotary and amateur dramatics group. The AirBnB earnings will help fund their continued plans for the house.
Chris also wants to work on interiors. He has past form for informally helping friends improve their homes before selling them, and his eye for design gives him a natural desire to work with others.
Chris' shed is his very own Repair Shop. He loves stripping items back to their original condition and bringing them back to life.
Under the brand name The Furniture Fairy he wants a business where people can come and bring their items and treat it as therapy for both the person (who is emotionally attached to the item) and the item (which needs a new lease of life). Chris also wants to continue with his hairdressing.
The couple moved from the gay capital of the UK to a small village and admit it was a concern. Tony said: "It was a concern because obviously, we don't know people here and we didn't know if we were going to be accepted or not. But we thought 'Sod it, it's the 21st century. The UK is not like it was in the 1980s when we were kids, it's a different place. We're going to give the people of Wales and Newcastle Emlyn the benefit of the doubt'. And you know, whatever age, people have been just so lovely."
The village is yet to see them in full flow, Chris says: "Most of the time I'm walking around to just my scruffs but the village hasn't experienced my fashion yet. It's quite bright, I wear a lot of two pieces and big hats and big sunglasses."
Being recognised
It is five years since Chris left the Channel 4 show Gogglebox and it still amuses him that he's recognised for being on the show. Part of his reason for moving from Brighton was to escape the aftermath, but he is still recognised in his new home.
Someone working in the local Chinese told him to remove his mask and then told him "One of my friends in the village told me one of the guys from Gogglebox is moving up here and he's going to have an AirBnB, so I knew it must be you". On another occasion in a pub, Tony momentarily worried their dancing had caught someone's eye and trouble was brewing, until the man sat at the bar asked Chris for a selfie.
Chris has anxiety and said during his time on, and after, the show he really struggled.
"I felt like I was pretending and it was just this real angst, and I got this real anxiety about different places because it'd be like people would stare at me and be like, 'Oh my God, they're staring at me, what are they going to say?'.
"I felt like I was a phoney. In Brighton people would more than likely expect me to be there so being here is quite nice. It doesn't bother me as much. I still have that bit inside where people ask and I go a bit shy."
Their spare time is all spent working on the house and making plans for the pots and pots of plants and trees they have brought with them, but they want to learn more about where they live.
Tony said: "We've found already some amazing places and we describe here as the best of Devon and the best of Cornwall, right on our doorstep but in a much more compact area. We've gone to Cardigan and we turned right so we know the beaches are there.
"We haven't turned left yet but we know there's the Pembrokeshire national park down there. For us, it feels like we've both gone to sleep, that we're in a dream that we're sharing and it's the best dream you've ever had and we're never going to wake up from."
Chris said: "Before we moved we didn't feel like we had a good life work balance. Whereas here, even though there's still lots to do, it's still a lifestyle thing. We're doing this because it's going to reward us later in life. You know, we want to stay here for the next 20 years.
"We're a lot calmer, we don't have that the stresses and the strains. We have lots of friends in Brighton and the ones that matter will come and visit.
"It was scary moving here. I did have my doubts about it and I thought 'I can't do it' but I thought to myself 'Twenty years ago I lived in Buckinghamshire and if I hadn't left and moved to Brighton, not knowing anyone I would never have met all these amazing people'. So I had to put myself in that situation again, and by leaving somewhere else I realised I was going to meet so many other wonderful people."
Read more:
