Gavin and Stacey’s original name revealed as James Corden admits show was almost ditched five years before final episode
GAVIN and Stacey’s original name has been revealed – as James Corden admitted the show was almost ditched five years before the final episode.
Fans of the BBC comedy were treated to an epic festive episode on Christmas Day, which saw Smithy and Nessa finally get together and tie the knot before it officially came to an end.
Tonight, viewers got the chance to spend one final evening with their favourite characters – and the actors who played them – in a special documentary called Gavin & Stacey: A Fond Farewell.
It featured archive footage right from the beginning of the show in May 2007, right up until the last episode, as well as contributions from the cast.
Creators Ruth Jones and James Corden spoke about how they came up with the original idea after James attended a wedding in Wales, but with a different name.
Ruth recalled: “I said let’s write this treatment so we can send it off, it was called It’s My Day, it literally was just about the wedding with lots of these little vignettes.
James added: “We also wrote, really just for us, a backstory for of who they were.”
Ruth then said: “And we sent it to Stuart Murphy who was the controller of BBC Three and he really liked it but he said ‘there’s no place, there’s no slot for a one hour comedy drama on BBC Three, but why can’t you serialise the backstory?'”
The rest, as they say, was history and Gavin and Stacey went on to be a huge success on the channel before moving to BBC One for its Christmas Special when it returned in 2019.
However, James and Ruth revealed in the documentary that the festive episode almost never happened after they struggled to write the script for it initially.
James recalled: “The 2019 special, I don’t know if people know this, but we gave up on it at one point.
“We’d written maybe half way through and we read it and we were like ‘this is rubbish, this is awful, it’s terrible’.
“Like it’s extraordinary how close we were to just…I actually remember saying to each other ‘well thank god we didn’t call the BBC’.”
He continued: “So we ate dinner in my kitchen and I said ‘Look, I think we probably owe it to the show to go back in and talk about why it’s bad and say goodbye to it really.’
“We were like two hours from saying goodbye to it and we can never do it again because it isn’t very good.”
Ruth added: “But then we realised – which is true for every episode of Gavin and Stacey – that the reason these people are together is because of Gavin and Stacey, so we realised that the reason it wasn’t working is because there wasn’t anything substantial for them.”
James concluded: “And then that night at 11pm is when we came up with the scene of Stacey keeping hold of the matches and it changed everything.”
Gavin and Stacey's Best Moments
With the news that the show is set to make an exciting return to screens, let's take a look at some of the comedy programme's biggest and best moments...
- Smithy and Rudi’s American Boy rap – No one will ever forget when James Corden and Sheridan Smith rapped perfectly word for word the Kanye West and Estelle hit American Boy as they walked across the car park on the phone to Gavin.
- Pam’s Vegetarian faux pas – Despite loving a cheesburger, Pam found herself caught up in a web of unexpected lies when she claimed to be Vegetarian. She is forced to keep up the secret throughout the entire show and uses hubby Mick to help her scoff meat. She is later rumbled when Stacey catches her in the act as she scoffs ham in the kitchen. Stacey says to her: “Is that ham, Pam!?… “I’ve seen you, Pam. A scotch egg here, a bit of bacon there, putting those regular sausages into the Linda McCartney box”.
- THAT fishing trip – It remains one of the biggest mysteries in Gavin and Stacey history as to just exactly what did happen on the ill-fated fishing trip. Bryn appears to be hiding a secret as to an occurance between him and his nephew Jason which has left relations fractures. Ness’ on-off boyfriend, Dave, is the only other person to know the whole truth. Bryn did appear to allude to him and Jason lying together naked to keep warm as he said to Dave: “We’re going to have this out, once and for all, man to man, you may know what happened, David, but you don’t know why it happened! It was freezing cold, it was! And when you are that cold…”
- Islands in the Stream – No one can ever forget the classic Karaoke performance of Islands in the Stream. Nessa and Bryn performed the track in front of all their nearest and dearest. It saw the whole pub burst into some line-dancing as they enjoyed a boozy night out.
- The Xmas special proposal – In 2019, fans were left overjoyed when the show made a comeback but it ended on the ultimate cliffhanger. Nessa asked Smithy if she would marry him as she finally laid bare her feelings for him. Fans were gutted as the show then cut straight to the credits as they never found out just how Smithy answered. Will all be revealed in the brand new episode?
Gavin and Stacey: A Fond Farewell is available on BBC iPlayer.