James Corden reveals bizarre creative process behind the Gavin & Stacey Xmas Special – with chocolate buttons & post-its
JAMES Corden has shared details about the bizarre creative process behind this year’s Gavin and Stacey Christmas special.
The actor and his co-stars will be back on screen for one final time for Gavin and Stacey: The Finale on BBC One.
The show has been 18 months in the planning with James now confessing that he and his fellow writer, Ruth Jones, spend many days trapped in hotels attempting to write the script for the hotly-anticipated special.
James and Ruth chatted to Jordan North, Chris Stark and Sian Welby on the Capital FM Breakfast Show about how bags of chocolate buttons fuelled the writing sessions in a Heathrow Airport hote;.
The actor told the radio hosting trio: “There’s a lot of hotel rooms we’ve written in.”
Ruth then continued: “One of the particularly exotic ones was I was up in Scotland last year and we only had kind of like a day that we could both write, and we had to make the most of any time that we had so I flew down to Heathrow from Inverness.”
James added: “I got the Heathrow Express out and we wrote for a day in a hotel next to the runway and it wasn’t our most productive day, was it?
“Looking back now it feels like a mistake but at the time we were so close to getting it done we were just like let’s just try and get it there.
“We often try and write between like six and ten pages a day when we write and that day, I think we wrote a page and a half.”
Presenter Chris went on to question if they used “post-it notes” in order to draft up scripts.
Ruth told him: “We do have post-it notes but they’re not very detailed.
“I find them every now and again and they literally have like two words on them.
“We’re not very grown-up in that regard.”
Confessing that the scene of their hotel writing rooms resembled a “disaster”, James said: “I often say if somebody walked past the window and looked in at Ruth and I, what they would see is two people more than likely having a nap, two open bags of like chocolate buttons, randomly placed post-its on a wall and you would look in an you would never ever think ‘oh they must be writing a successful hit show.’
“You’d be thinking ‘that looks like a disaster.’”
Gavin and Stacey: The Finale airs tonight at 9pm on BBC One.
Listen to Capital Breakfast with Jordan North, Chris Stark and Sian Welby weekdays from 6:00am – 10:00am across the UK on air, and on Global Player, the official Capital app.
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?