‘Gogglebox’ star Giles Wood confesses boyhood ‘beastliness’ led him to kill birds as a child

21 May 2023

Giles Wood says adolescent “beastliness” led him to kill birds as a boy.

Giles Wood says adolescent ‘beastliness’ led him to kill birds as a boy

The ‘Gogglebox’ stalwart, who has been on the Channel 4 show for eight years with his wife Mary Killen, said he used to blast them from the sky for sport with an air rifle.

He admitted in his new book ‘Country Life: A Story of Peaks and Troughs’, which he wrote with wife Mary, about how he regretted it: “I did get an air rifle when I was about 12 and, having loved garden birds, I started shooting them.

“According to the old school, this behaviour would be a very natural feature of adolescence.

“It was considered a rite of passage that you would graduate from a catapult to an air rifle.

“I am not proud of my short-lived cruel streak. But at the time I wanted to show my skill in downing small birds – starlings, wood pigeons – and I even shot a blackbird in my garden.

“Almost as soon as I had done it, I regretted it. It is just a stage of beastliness that boys go through.”

Giles and Mary faced calls at the start of May last year to be axed from ‘Gogglebox’ over comments she made about former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The pair were seen watching ‘Good Morning Britain’s sit-down interview with Johnson, in which Susanna Reid grilled him on the cost of living crisis.

She asked him about a 77-year-old pensioner called Elsie who had been forced to cut down to one meal a day and ride the bus for heating in order to make ends meet – prompting Mary to say: “I am very sorry for Elsie but Susanna is making out it is Boris' fault and like he doesn't care.”

Artist Giles – who has said he was able to “retire at 21” due to his job selling his paintings – then asked her: “Whose fault is it?,” to which Mary replied: “Well it is the global situation.”

Fans of the show branded her “out of touch” and said Channel 4 bosses should “get rid” of her, while others defended her by saying they shouldn’t be axed from the show just because some viewers disagreed with her point of view, while others dismissed her remarks as being part of “light entertainment”.