Jon Richardson and Lucy Beaumont on their Christmas sleepover

Jon Richardson and Lucy Beaumont are hosting a Christmas getaway with comedian friends Roisin Conaty, Romesh Ranganathan and Rob Beckett for a Channel 4 special next week. Here the couple tell us about their comedians’ office party, who’s better at gift buying and having advocaat for lunch.

Tell us about the Christmas Sleepover…

Jon: I think Channel 4 wanted a hard-hitting, topical review of the year but because we haven’t seen anyone, we wanted to have a few drinks with friends. It’s ended up being a sort of hostage situation where we’ve taken Channel 4’s money and locked our friends in a cottage and made them drink with us.

I hope people will get a warmth from it, it is almost like watching a family reunion – there’s some tension, some people who are late, people who are angry about the food, people who want to play games and people who don’t. There’s a real traditional family Christmas vibe.

Lucy: That’s a dig at me when he says people who don’t want to play games. His family are like The Waltons, it’s not about presents or whatnot, it’s about them just playing board games with each other. Whereas I want to sit and watch telly on my own.

I find it hard how nice they are to each other, that’s not what Christmas is about, you’re meant to be stressed and anxious and drink a lot on Christmas Eve then have a hangover and an argument.

Like Jon says, you very rarely get to do stuff with your mates, so it was like a love-in. We’ve all known each other for a long time, Jon and Roisin used to gig together when they started out and me, Rob and Romesh did. With comedians, you don’t get a works night out, so this was like an office party.

Are all the comedians well-behaved guests?

Lucy: No, not really. Rob Beckett is naughty and always wanted to lower the tone.

Jon: Rob Beckett was like the naughty toddler who’d clearly got really excited when he arrived, didn’t want to eat his veg and only wanted to play with his toys. Romesh was sort of the grumpy dad who was trying to keep it all together.

Lucy: Roisin was like the auntie that’s treating it like a night out and wants to let her hair down.

Jon: I feel like I was the stereotype of the mother who’s running around trying to get everyone’s food ready but everyone was ungrateful so I started having a strop and threw my pinny on the floor.

Lucy: I was a bit like the distant father who was thinking about being somewhere else. 

What sort of hosts are you? This wasn’t in your own home so did that pile on the pressure to keep things orderly?

Jon: I think it’s worse when you’re not in your own house because you’re more paranoid about breaking things. I’m more relaxed in my own house because when guests come round, I only give them cheap crockery or glasses. You can tell how much I respect you by what glass you get given.

If certain people ask for a whiskey, they’ll get a cut-glass tumbler and certain people might get an old, plastic Batman mug. In someone else’s house, if someone breaks something it goes on your deposit.

I’m very paranoid about my Airbnb reviews, I have to get a good review for being a good guest. I was fairly tense all the way through to be honest.

So you were having his big reunion with your mates, but on camera. Did that change anything?

Lucy: You totally forgot about the cameras, which is not necessarily a good thing.

Jon: We deliberately didn’t plan a lot as well. There was a comfy lounge and a kitchen and we did just mill about and chat, it has a very natural feel. I kept trying to get people to talk about the news from the year and they didn’t want to.

What has this year been like for you both?

Jon: We’ve been luckier than most, we managed to film our sitcom through the summer when things were a bit more relaxed. Our daughter’s been able to go to school as normal, she’s in reception, we’ve certainly been luckier than most.

It is that social side of it you miss, the thing we haven’t done is go for meals with each other or have mates over. I think we’ve all got used to a new system where you don’t do those things and suddenly it feels like quite a big step to have people round for drinks.

Lucy: We’ve done all right, we’ve worked a lot.

Jon: You can split Covid and lockdowns into people who are lucky enough to have a spare room where the partner who snores and has got on everyone’s tits that day can go and people who don’t have that. We’ve got that and there’s a TV and we’ve got separate Netflix accounts which I would really recommend at this time of the year.

The show is airing on December 27, what is that sort of dead time between Christmas and New Year usually like for you?

Jon: That’s the bit I’m looking forward to this year. We’re visiting my family before Christmas, we’ve got a few people coming here for Christmas Day then we’re going to Lucy’s family on Boxing Day. So the 27^th will be the first day we’re at home.

I love that bit when you’ve got to eat all the food. It goes from not opening things and saving it for Christmas to suddenly on the 27^th having to eat it all before everyone goes back to work, so you start having stilton and sausages on toast for breakfast. That’s when I really come to life, when there’s a deadline. I’ll be having eight advocaats with my lunch.

Do you ever argue over what to watch on TV at Christmas?

Lucy: It’s the only thing we don’t argue over, we’ve got the same tastes. Anything that’s working class we like. We like Bargain Brits in Blackpool and Bargain Brits Abroad, Gogglebox because it reminds us of people we know.

Jon: We don’t argue but we don’t watch the things we want to watch. It was up to me I’d watch sport every night and Lucy would watch Selling Sunset is it called? You would watch exclusively property and lifestyle programmes and I would watch sport - it’s the true meaning of marriage. We watch a lot of Gogglebox and First Dates.

We’re expecting to see a bit of piss-up with your mates in the Christmas Sleepover. Does it get messy?

Lucy: It does get messy, I’m drunk from the beginning. They all catch up. Roisin doesn’t drink but you’d probably think she’s the most drunk out of everybody, she doesn’t really need to drink. I properly treated it as my end of year…

Jon: Roisin doesn’t drink and everyone else has young kids so there became a kind of mania to it quite early one. Romesh made some cocktails when we arrived and that combination of booze and sugar and tired parents is lethal. We have a sugar high, then a booze high, then we have some food and by then it’s sort of madness.

• Jon & Lucy’s Christmas Sleepover in on Channel 4 and All4 at 9pm on Monday December 27.

Published: 21 Dec 2021