Val Lewis
Valerie "Val" Lewis, is Jackie's best friend in Friday Night Dinner. She often dresses in a very similar way to Jackie, which occasionally causes confusion for Martin and Jim, who mistook her for being Jackie's sister. Despite not being related to Jackie, Adam and Jonny still refer to her as "Auntie". Val is otherwise known by Martin as ‘Bloody Val’.
She is married to Larry Lewis, the pair were in the process of divorcing in "The Tin of Meat", much to the annoyance of Martin; as Val had moved into the Goodmans' house due to her own husband throwing her out their own home. Val tried to tidy out Martin‘s shed, where she found his tin of rotten meat, which expired in September 1996. Martin believed it would bring them good luck, as he found it in the shed when the family first moved in. Jackie was horrified to learn her husband had been keeping rotten meat, where Martin then opened the tin after a big argument over keeping or throwing it out, and ate a spoonful to the horror of everyone else. "Perfectly fine!" he said, before collapsing and being taken away in an ambulance. Martin awakens in the hospital but when Val walks in he moans, ‘Oh, shit. She’s here.’ A few minutes later, he eats a handful of meat from the tin and says, ‘You better call the nurse.’
After these events in the series; she continues to find another partner. This is most prominent in series 6 where she is looking after the house and making dinner for the family while Jackie was at the hospital all day for a "procedure". While she is at the house she is glued to her phone; more specifically, a dating app which the boys refer to as a site to find "sex robots". She soon finds a match on the app however he arranged to pick her up from the Goodmans' house in 40 minutes time. She then goes on a rushing rampage and forces everyone, much to Jackie's pleading that she calm down, to sit down and eat dinner. After everyone had forced "half a kilogram of meat in 3 seconds" Martin said to her she gets an alert from her date "Colin" that he is going to pick her up later. "Panic over" she nervously says to the family. The episode ends with her getting trapped in Jim's new dog cage which he assembled in the Goodmans' living room. Colin then arrives and is greeted with Martin holding a saw as he attempts to get Val out of the cage. Val then gives up trying to get out of the cage and suggests to Jackie that she and the family should leave her and Colin in the living room and they can have the date in there.
Val is portrayed by Tracy-Ann Oberman.
