The Gavin & Stacey finale aired last night (25 December)
Following the final ever episode of Gavin & Stacey, it feels like there is a touching story behind every little part of the show.
The finale episode revolves largely around Smithy (James Corden) holding a stag do and wedding.
Whether it be the extras in the wedding scene improvising standing up for Smithy, the fact that Baby Neil’s actor was actually one of the actors who played him as a baby, the episode is littered with adorable details.
James Corden discusses Gavin and Stacey ending
Credit: TikTok/@virginradiouk
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One lesser known one is about Smithy’s mates who appear in the show, and then reappear for his stag in last night’s episode.
Whilst the opening to the episode made viewers think that, after Nessa’s proposal in the 2019 Christmas special, they were finally getting the two together, however, they were sorely mistaken.
Instead, the wedding is with Sonia, Smithy’s girlfriend from around the time Nessa proposed.
On the stag do, all of Smithy and Gavin’s old friends appear, including the notable members of the friend group Budgie (Russell Tovey), Dirtbox (Andrew Knott), Fingers (Samuel Anderson), and, of course, Chinese Alan (Dominic Gaskell).
Budgie (Russell Tovey) and Dirtbox (Andrew Knott) (BBC)
Chinese Alan is probably the character given the most to do after it is revealed he went on a date with a recently divorced Dawn.
The other three, however, all have a secret link to Corden, which explains why they appear in the TV show.
Of Smithy’s friend group, several are made up of long time collaborators of the star, who created the show alongside Ruth Jones, who plays Nessa in Gavin & Stacey.
Deano, who appeared in the show three times, is played by Matthew Baynton, who would later co-create the show The Wrong Mans with Corden.
The characters of Budgie, Dirtbox, and Fingers were all played by actors who appeared in one of Corden’s breakout roles, The History Boys.
Corden and three other members of The History Boys appear in Gavin & Stacey (Searchlight Pictures)
The iconic 2006 film is based on a play by Alan Bennett, and features a group of school boys dealing with two teachers competing to get them into Oxford and Cambridge respectively.
Though Dominic Cooper starred in the film, and Corden was the breakout star, Smithy’s mates are made up of three other members of The History Boys.
Tovey was the one of the three to arguably go on to be the most successful, as the actor played Rudge in The History Boys, played Budgie in Gavin & Stacey, and went on to star in shows such as Doctor Who, Torchwood, and Being Human.
Meanwile Knott also was in both, playing Lockwood in The History Boys and Dirtbox in Gavin & Stacey.
Add to that Samuel Anderson, who played Crowther in The History Boys and Fingers in Gavin & Stacey and you have a full History Boys reunion amongst the friends of Gavin & Stacey.
The four History Boys alumni plus Matthew Horne (Russell Tovey via Instagram)
Celebrating the finale, Tovey posted a picture on Instagram of the four of them alongside Gavin actor Matthew Horne.
His heartwarming caption read: “Love my boys – so proud to have been part of this magic from the very beginning – what a privilege – Gavin and Stacey forever.”
Too right.Featured Image Credit: BBC
Topics: Gavin And Stacey, TV and Film, BBC, Christmas, James Corden
Michael Slavin
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Updated 10:05 26 Dec 2024 GMTPublished 09:59 26 Dec 2024 GMT
Reason why details of Gavin and Stacey fishing trip have never been revealed following final ever episode
Did we really think we would ever find out?
After 17 years, Christmas day brought many of us the gift of closure.
Saying goodbye to our favourite show with James Corden and Ruth Jones wrapping it all up in a bow for us so we got the perfect ending.
Although, not every Gavin and Stacey fan is over the moon with what went down in the final ever episode last night (25 December).
Gavin and Stacey The Finale
Credit: BBC
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That’s because, while Gwen (Melanie Walters) might have finally found love and while Nessa (Jones) and Smithy (Corden) finally ended up together, one thing in particular was left wide open. The mystery of the fishing trip, obviously.
This long-running joke has been going since the early days of the show, and we’ve never known what really went down between Jason (Robert Wilfort) and Uncle Bryn (Rob Brydon).
And plenty of us were naive enough to think we might have actually got an answer in the finale. Wrong.
So, the cast have explained the reason as to just why the details of that fishing trip have never been revealed.
Did we really think we were going to find out? (BBC)
They did really tease us though, as a scene during that Dave Coaches’ (Steffan Rhodri) surprise made out like we might actually find out.
We did get a few new titbits of information, however, as Bryn told Dave he would have to be the one to explain the fishing trip in order to prove he truly loved Gwen.
“From what I was told, it was cold. The tent was up and the sun was down. The fire was blazing,” he began to explain. “And the soup was bubbling in the billy can…”
But in true Gavin and Stacey fashion, he was interrupted by the smoke alarm going off over a burning omelette.
And so, plenty of fans spent the end of their Christmas day fuming they were still in the dark.
It was left to Dave to explain. (BBC)
Wilfort explained at a cast Q&A that’s exactly the way it should be.
“I’d like to say now and forever: the joke has always been you don’t find out what happens on the fishing trip!” he said.
“I’m sorry, everybody, but that has always been the joke, and it always will be because it’s funny. It’s funnier that way. And I was so pleased that we didn’t reveal it, because we’ve never known what it is.”
Well, may the theories over Jason and Uncle Bryn’s mysterious fishing trips live on, even if there’s no more Gavin and Stacey ever again.Featured Image Credit: BBC
Topics: Gavin And Stacey, James Corden, TV and Film
Jess Battison
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Published 11:06 26 Dec 2024 GMT
All behind-the-scenes details you didn’t know from Gavin and Stacey’s finale episode
The last ever episode of Gavin and Stacey was perfect
Warning: This article contains spoilers
The Gavin and Stacey finale, and thankfully, it was just as good as we had all hoped. But, there are some things that went down behind-the-scenes that you probably don’t know about and it makes it even better.
Long live Smithy and Nessa!
After 17 years, we now have the closure that they’re out there living out their days together after they got hitched and ditched Sonia.
It all began when Smithy dropped to one knee and returned the favour of the 2019 Christmas Special, except, his proposal was something like a dream.
He told the Barry native: “Five years ago on Christmas Day, you asked me a question and I didn’t answer you.
“And I thought about it every day. And I’m sorry I left you hanging.
“I know it’s been messy and not perfect. But that’s because we’re messy and not perfect. But I love you, Nessa. I always have. Will you marry me?”
The whole episode was perfect, from start to finish and it was made even better by the behind-the-scenes details that have only just been revealed in a Q and A, as per tv critic and broadcaster, Scott Bryan.
Take a peek.
Sonia came back (BBC)
Laura Aikman went to great lengths to hide her reprisal of Sonia
Ugh, Sonia.
Her comeback no doubt made a lot of people seethe with anger when it turned out that she was the bride-to-be and not Nessa right at the start of the episode.
However, Aikman really did try to keep it all a secret at any cost and ended up staying in a separate hotel and refusing to breathe a word of her role, even to her family so that it would stay a surprise for last night.
Corden orchestrated her return (BBC)
James Corden came up with Sonia’s return to trick people
Corden, who wrote the episode alongside Ruth Jones (Nessa) shared that he was in America at the time and he had ‘this idea at three o’clock in the morning’.
He shared: “I called Ruth and said, ‘I wonder if we could trick everybody into thinking for the first six or seven minutes that they’re just going to watch a wedding between Nessa and Smithy?’.
“Because after the 2019 special, all people would say to us was, ‘What does he say?’. They would never say, ‘Who did he choose?’. I just wanted it to feel satisfying.
“At the premiere, it was lovely to hear a collective gasp when she was revealed.”
The return of Dave Coaches (BBC)
Gwen’s love affair with Dave Coaches
Poor Gwen had never had a love interest since Stacey and Jason’s father died, so fans were made up to see that she finally found love.
However, nobody expected it to be Nessa’s ex.
Melanie Walters, who plays Gwen, said: “I had a coffee with Chris, our amazing director. And she said, ‘I will tell you something’. She said, ‘There’ll be a moment that I think you might shriek a little’.
“And true enough, I did when I read the script and it was Dave Coaches.
“Part of me sort of hoped Gwen will have a little love in her life, but not in a million years would it be Dave Coaches. I thought it would be one of Doris’ cast-offs.”
Joanna Page (Stacey) shared that she screamed when she read the script’s reveal.
Bum smackingly good (BBC)
Stacey and Gavin change identities
When Stacey and Gavin decided to spice up their sex life, they chose to change their names to Stephanie and Ross.
Well, Stacey did most of the work on the fantasy.
While it might have shocked everyone, it’s not exactly out of character as Page said: “Stacey was what she was like in the first series. She was a little bit dirty, and it was fun to play.
“I was so excited when I read the script — just the scene where I’m spinning Mathew Horne (Gavin) around, bending him over and slapping him on the backside.
“We’ve been playing husband and wife now for so long that it just felt natural.”
Did we really think we were going to find out? (BBC)
The fishing trip
It has been years of waiting to finally be told the answer to what went on between Bryn and Jason on a fishing trip, and the finale left us all hanging.
A plot twist was handed to us when it turned out that Dave Coaches knew all along what went down as Bryn told him, and just as he was getting into the start of the story, it all went wrong thanks to a burn omelette.
He said in the scene: “From what I was told, it was cold. The tent was up and the sun was down. The fire was blazing.
“And the soup was bubbling in the billy can . . . ”
Devastating.
Robert Wilfort who plays Jason said: “I’d like to say now and forever, the joke has always been you don’t find out what happens on the fishing trip.
“I’m sorry everybody, but that has always been the joke and it always will be because it’s funny.
“It’s funnier that way.
“And I was so pleased that we didn’t reveal it . . . because we’ve never known what it is.”
The two extras improvised (BBC)
Smithy ditched Sonia and extra’s decided to improvise
Oh,oh, OH! What a scene.
When Smithy was told by Gavin that nobody wanted him to marry Sonia, it was a fantastic moment.
Particularly because it led to a massively romantic proposal.
At the premiere, Jones said: “It was a lovely moment when everybody cheered when Smithy left the wedding. It was just so rewarding to hear that!”
Larry Lamb (Mick Shipman) added: “I’ll never forget it. There must have been 40, 50 extras there, who all sort of knew the story because they’re all fans.
“And the looks on their faces — the shock — it was just absolutely brilliant.”
Well, two of those fans decided to stand up in protest of Smithy’s nuptials after they were seated on Sonia’s side.
Corden revealed: “Essentially, we didn’t really tell anybody what to do other than our cast, who would all stand up at their various points.
“When Anna said, ‘Please stand’, there’s two ladies at the back on Stacey’s side who stood up! We didn’t tell them to.
“They were just real fans of the show who were so in it, that they just stood up and were like, ‘I just thought he shouldn’t be marrying her!’.”
The proposal (BBC)
The proposal of a century
When Smithy finally popped the question, originally it was meant to be at an airport, however the show couldn’t get permission to shoot at Cardiff’s airport.
That’s when Corden noted: “Production designer Dave Ferris had been saying every day, ‘I don’t think we’ll ever be able to make an airport secure enough, should it not be the ships?’.
“Then we remembered that there was a reference to Nessa working on the ships years ago, and so that immediately became that.”
Due to it being such a hush hush scene, they ended up hiring a load of security as not to allow paparazzi in on what was going to happen at the end of the episode.
Jones said: “We were always on the lookout for cameras, because that was like the most important thing that didn’t get out — the image of James down on one knee in front of me.”
The schedule was changed (BBC)
The final scene was rearranged to say a proper farewell
Apparently, the last day of filming was supposed to end with Smithy in a car, but to really end it on a proper goodbye for the cast and crew, they swapped the filming schedule around so that the last scene shot was the final scene of the episode.
According to Bryan, the sound department played the theme tune of the series which brought everyone to tears.
Neil the baby has pipes (BBC)
Neil the baby sang at the wedding
Wondered why Neil the baby (Oscar Hartland) took out his guitar and sang for his dad and for Sonia before their vows?
According to Bryan, he was on The Voice, and as a nod to that, he was set up to use his talent for the show.
However, Jones was on set that day and cried as she watched his performance.Featured Image Credit: BBC
Topics: Gavin And Stacey, TV, BBC, James Corden
Britt Jones
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Updated 13:10 26 Dec 2024 GMTPublished 13:04 26 Dec 2024 GMT
Gavin and Stacey fans left in stitches after spotting ‘hidden’ detail in finale episode
It was so simple, yet it added a whole new layer to the scene
Christmas is over, and so is Gavin and Stacey, but that doesn’t mean that fans have stopped spotting hilarious details from the final episode.
It’s been five whole years since the 2019 Christmas special and we have been impatiently waiting to find out whether Smithy accepted Nessa’s proposal or not.
But when it was announced by writers and actors James Corden (Smithy) and Ruth Jones (Nessa) that last night’s Gavin and Stacey episode was planned to go ahead and was also the final ever instalment, we believed that the couple would obviously be walking down the aisle within the first few minutes.
Well, we were wrong.
Gavin and Stacey The Finale
Credit: BBC
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What a night last night’s episode was.
We had Smithy and Nessa finally getting together, Neil the baby (Oscar Hartland) singing at his dad’s first wedding as well as the revelation that Gwen (Melanie Walters) and Dave Coaches (Steffan Rhodri) had been getting it on for six months in secret.
So much good stuff.
But let’s take it back to the stag do.
As more than 12 million people watched Smithy’s belated stag, which he was incredibly late to, eagled-eyed fans noticed a hilarious detail that most people completely missed.
It was when the boys turned up to celebrate with him that they all revealed that they were wearing West Ham footy shirts, with Bryn (Robert Brydon) even donning the shorts and socks too.
The stag was in full swing (BBC)
However, what you probably didn’t see was that among them all, one person refused to wear the signature badge as part of his shirt.
It was none other than Gavin.
As a Tottenham Hotspur fan, there was no way that Gav was going to betray his team for anyone, not even Smithy.
So, as you look around the group of men, you’ll see that he’s the only person who didn’t wear it.
Fans have since taken to TikTok to talk about the detail (which I’m ashamed to say that I also missed), and commented on Gavin and Stacey Clips channel, who pointed out the badge.
One person said: “I didn’t even spot that.”
Another praised: “It’s the details like this that make the show.”
But there is so much more that you probably didn’t know about the show.
A Q and A with the cast brought to light numerous behind-the-scenes moments which made the episode so much better.
Apparently, two extras went off-script during the wedding scene with Smithy and Sonia (Laura Aikman), which was seen when they stood up to object to the couple’s nuptials, even though they were seated on Sonia’s side.
Look closer at Gavin (BBC)
For the scene, there were about ‘40 to 50 extras’ in the room as guests while Neil the Baby sang his cover of ‘Blackbird’.
Larry Lamb (Mick) explained that they all ‘sort of knew the story’ because they were all Gavin and Stacey fans, but nobody expected them to take charge of the scene.
“And the looks on their faces – the shock – it was just absolutely brilliant,” Lamb said.
When the officiant (Anna Maxwell Martin) asked if anyone else felt the same as Gavin and didn’t want the pair to get married, members of the Essex and Welsh families slowly began to stand, as did the extras.
“When Anna said, ‘Please stand’, there’s two ladies at the back on Stacey’s side who stood up! We didn’t tell them to,” Corden said.
He continued: “They were just real fans of the show who were so in it [the plot], that they just stood up and were like, ‘I just thought he shouldn’t be marrying her!’”Featured Image Credit: BBC
Topics: Gavin And Stacey, TV and Film, BBC, UK News, Football
Britt Jones
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Published 09:49 26 Dec 2024 GMT
Gavin and Stacey fans only just realising where they’ve seen Smithy’s mum before
You’ll kick yourself once you realise the character Smithy’s mum played
Warning: This article contains spoilers
The final episode ever of Gavin and Stacey aired last night in which it brought back a famous guest who people have only just realised played another well-known character years ago.
OH! And what an end to an era it was.
After the 2019 Christmas special, fans have been waiting for five long years to see the Barry and Essex gangs come back together for one final time, and once writers James Corden and Ruth Jones finally revealed that the 2024 episode would be the last ever episode, people were both equally heartbroken and excited.
The worst event, but an event that made people realise who Smithy’s mum is (BBC)
With so much left unanswered in the last episode, surely 2024’s would clear everything up?
Like, did Smithy say yes to Nessa’s proposal?
What happened on that fishing trip?
Alas, while Smithy ultimately made the choice we were all hoping for and binned off that annoying Sonia, we never did get the full story between Bryn and Jason.
While we have been left hanging for the rest of our lives, there’s at least one mystery which has been solved and that’s: Who is Smithy’s mum?
Now, we had the return of the other Smithy during last night’s episode, and it was amazing to see Sheridan Smith as Rudy again one last time, but when she came accompanied by Cath Smith- his mum, immediately I recognised her.
So did a lot of people.
Played by Pam Ferris, it’s about time that everyone recognised the range that she can play.
Do you recognise Cath? (BBC)
Not only did she play a brilliant character in the murder mystery show Rosemary & Thyme, but she’s also fantastic in Call The Midwife and also features in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban as Uncle Vernon’s awful sister, Aunt Marge.
However, what she’s most remembered for is playing the character of Miss Trunchbull in Matilda.
That’s right, fans have figured it out and they’ve been left shocked.
A viewer wrote: “MISS TRUNCHBALL IS SMITHYS MUM?”
She is!
Another stated while pairing a load of exclamation marks: “PAM FERRIS IS SMITHYS MUM!!!!!!”
Lastly, a person nodded: “I’ll never get over Smithy’s Mum being Mrs Trunchbull.”
It seems like other viewers also realised her face was that of the scariest headmistress in history after re-watching the show following the 2019 special too, as some took to social media to rave about their discovery.
She was Miss Trunchbull (TriStar Pictures)
One person wrote: “Just seen on TikTok that Smithy’s mum in Gavin and Stacey also played Miss Trunchbull in Matilda?!?! I’m literally SHOOK.”
Another commented: “The fact that the same actress plays both Miss Trunchbull in Matilda and Smithy’s mum in Gavin & Stacey will forever blow my mind.”
Someone else shared: “It still blows my mind that Miss Trunchbull from Matilda, Smithy’s Mum from Gavin & Stacey and Vernon Dursley’s sister from Harry Potter (the aunt he blew up) are all the same person.”
Ferris is an absolute gem on the silver screen, and her credits in film are just as impressive.
Did you know that she was even in a slew of Christmas films, such as Nativity! and Saving Santa and also Luther.
Tidy.