Much-loved Gavin & Stacey stars reunite for new TV show amid talk of reunion
With their low-level affectionate mockery, in-jokes and obvious love for each other, it’s easy to see how Alison Steadman and Larry Lamb have remained firm friends for 25 years.
The nation fell in love with the pair as bickering Essex husband and wife Pam and Mick Shipman in Gavin & Stacey, and it turns out the British actors have just the same chemistry in real life. And 16 years on from the very first episode of the classic sitcom in 2007 – penned by James Corden and Ruth Jones – Alison, 76, and Larry, 75, are finally visiting their onscreen hometown, Billericay, for a new documentary series. This is because the scenes from Essex on the show were actually filmed in Wales.
The actors first met on the set of 1990s BBC comedy The Missing Postman, in which Larry played a lawyer and Alison his wife. And it was only thanks to Alison that Mick and Pam were created: having worked with James and Ruth on Fat Friends, she was a shoo-in for flirtatious Pam, but the producers still didn’t have Mick.
“I remember coming to stay with you in France and you saying to me, ‘What is this Gavin & Stacey then?’,” she recalls to Larry as they drive down to Essex for their travel adventure. “They were looking for a Mick, and they found you.” Alison’s first big break came with Mike Leigh’s 1977 televised play Abigail’s Party, while Larry found fame with Superman in 1978, and later would become known as supervillain Archie Mitchell in EastEnders. But despite their lists of TV, thea-tre and film credits, it’s Pam and Mick for which they are most recognised.
Actors take a tour for new TV show (Photography by Aled Llywelyn Owned by UKTV)For the best part of two decades, fans have been quoting Pam’s flustered lines “Oh my Christ!”, her love of gossip and her ability to grasp precisely the wrong end of the stick in any moment of drama. Larry’s Mick, meanwhile, was the put-upon golfing husband who smoothed things over and pandered to Pam’s demands with exasperated affection.
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As soon as they read the script for the first episode, both of them knew Gavin & Stacey was going to be a hit. Alison says: “Pam’s first scene, when she’s lying with cucumbers on her eyes, and Gavin comes in and goes, ‘all right Mum?’, and she says, ‘well no I’m not actually’... It was one of the best [shows].”
The 2019 Christmas special was watched by 17.1 million viewers – making it the UK’s most-watched scripted TV programme of the 2010s. There has been talk of another reunion. James , back in England after hosting The Late Late Show, in America, teased that he had met up with Ruth last year. Meanwhile, Joanna Page, who plays Stacey and provides the voiceover for their new UKTV show Alison & Larry: Billericay to Barry, said the cast are “constantly in touch”. “I’d love to do another Christmas special,” Alison tells Larry, as he grins in response.
Alison and Larry, centre, in Gavin & Stacey (BABY COW)Unlike Mick, who could always be counted on to have a bottle of fizz in the fridge, Larry no longer drinks. Decades of partying caught up with him and the hangovers were no longer worth the fun. He reminds Alison on the show: “It was somewhere around 2010 I stopped. What I can do now is if someone’s serving some really lovely wine, I can get just a little teardrop in the bottom of the glass and smell it and appreciate it, and not think I have to drink three bottles of it.
“I’m fine with that gone out of my life. I suppose I could say I miss it, but I don’t. As a memory I loved it, but that’s it. And I love to serve what I used to drink to people, especially when I’ve got someone like you who can drink industrial quantities!” It was down to luck that Larry even started acting in the first place.
“I was 25 living in Canada – I’d been working in the oil business, I was a very keen amateur actor, and a guy I knew said to me, ‘I read in the paper they’re looking for locally employable bit part actors’,” he says. “I phoned the theatre and told them I’d been thinking about it, the woman said ‘Can you get here in five minutes?’”
Comedy stars have a laugh filming their new show for Gold (Photography by Aled Llywelyn Owned by UKTV)After running down the road, Larry was ushered into a rehearsal room and asked to perform some prepared pieces to the theatre directors. “I can sing a couple of songs my nan taught me?” he offered. “After 10 minutes they stopped me and said, ‘we think you should do this’, so just like that, I got the break.”
Liverpudlian Alison, meanwhile, nearly failed her audition to get into drama school. “I had some terrible pieces,” she jokes. “I did some Greek tragedy and I didn’t know what I was doing. In the end, Margaret Bury, head of the drama school, said ‘Stop stop, let’s do some improvisation instead’.”
Her attempts at being Muhammad Ali and a stately home guide luckily bagged her a spot. During the first episode of Billericay to Barry, Larry and Alison meet up with Russell Tovey, 41, who plays Gavin and Smithy’s friend Budgie on the sitcom. His deadpan one-liners propelled him to fame on both sides of the pond – he’s since starred as George Sands in Being Human.
Pair together in The Missing Postman in 1997It was, he claims, down to him that the comedy is set in his own hometown. He and James were starring in The History Boys on Broadway when Gavin & Stacey was green-lit by the BBC, and as he’d spoken so much about Billericay, James decided to locate the show there. Russell jokes: “I still don’t think he’s ever been there.”
In the three-part series, the pair also meet Rob Wilfort, who plays Stacey’s brother Jason, and Melanie Walters (Stacey’s mum Gwen) travels down to make them Welsh cakes using a treasured recipe from the late Margaret John, who played the sexually inappropriate elderly neighbour Doris and died in 2011.
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“On YouTube you can watch Maggie baking Welsh cakes, and she’s brilliant and hilarious,” says Alison. The whole cast are clearly still adored by audiences all these years on, although they rarely get to meet up due to geography and work commitments. They still get a thrill from being recognised in the street.
“With the popularity of Gavin & Stacey, you’re a part of so many people’s lives,” points out Larry. Alison agrees. “It’s lovely to be walking along the street and to have smiling people come up and say, ‘I love your show. We watch it as a family’. They’re so full of joy and you think, ‘That’s what we need in life!’”
* Alison & Larry: Billericay to Barry airs on Monday at 8pm on Gold.
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