For years, the loveable Emmie has made Gogglebox viewers laugh with her cheeky comments.
This season, Emmie’s chair is empty, as she’s moved into an aged-care facility due to her dementia.
But she’s still making her daughter Kerry Milligan and granddaughter Isabelle Silbery laugh.
”Yesterday Isabelle and I were visiting her and we were asking her about her boyfriend,” Kerry tells TV WEEK.
”She said, ‘Which one?’ and we said, ‘The one you sit opposite at the dinner table,’ and she said, ‘Oh yes. What’s his name again?’ And I said, ‘I think it might be Nick, Mum,’ and she said, ‘No, no, no, I think it’s Joe. Or is it Bob?”’
”She’s just funny in a different way,” Isabelle adds.
”Mum and I have embraced the humorous side of what is such a cruel disease.”
Emmie has been a favourite with Gogglebox fans.
(IMAGE: Supplied)Emmie, who turns 94 this month, can no longer watch full episodes of Gogglebox. Her eyesight is deteriorating, and she can’t concentrate for an hour.
”We just show her the best bits online and read her lots of comments about her,” Isabelle says.
”She loves it. It’s so heart-warming to see how many people love her.”
Emmie hasn’t been forgotten by the rest of the Gogglebox cast either.
”Lee and Keith have come to see her, and Anastasia and Faye.”
Goggleboxers unite!
(IMAGE: Supplied)The Silberys have been fan favourites since they joined Gogglebox back in 2016, with Emmie especially popular. Kerry says her mother didn’t always talk so openly about sex.
”Not until my father left her for a 25-year-old barmaid,” she remembers with a laugh.
”That seemed to release her!”
Isabelle says her grandmother found freedom as a newly single woman with grown-up children.
”She really found her voice and found herself and her sexuality. As a young woman, to have that role model is very liberating.”
The family all together.
(IMAGE: Instagram)Thirty-eight-year-old Isabelle, who has an eight-year-old son from her first marriage, is now happily married to her second husband, Alex Richards.
”I’m very lucky to have him in my life,” she says.
Alex watches Gogglebox on the couch alongside Isabelle, even though she admits she does ”ogle over men a little bit too much.”
”It’s a bit awkward when you’re sitting and watching it with your husband and he’s like, ‘Oh, OK, so you find him hot too, and him?”’ she laughs.
Meanwhile, 69-year-old Kerry has a ”fancy man” she got to know through online dating.
”When I met him, he’d never watched Gogglebox,” she explains.
”He’s an ex-journo – he’s very intellectual – and it was date number three when people started to look at me and come up. I had to say to him, ‘Look, I’ve got something I need to tell you.’
He thought I was going to tell him I had terminal cancer and I said, ‘I’m famous!”’
Isabelle married her partner Alex in 2022.
(IMAGE: Supplied)Even though Emmie is no longer on Gogglebox, the bond between the three generations of women remains strong. Following last year’s release of Out Of The Box, the book that the three of them wrote together, Isabelle is now developing a script with a production company.
”We’re working on a miniseries drama that’s based on three generations of women,” she says.
”Hopefully that gets born into the world soon!”
And, of course, Kerry and Isabelle will keep giving updates on Emmie on Gogglebox.
”We’ll always talk about her,” Isabelle says.
”She hasn’t died – she’s still very much with us.”
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