Ruth Jones: Nessa’s favourite carol? It has to be ‘OH, Holy Night’!

30 December 2024, 16:38

‘OH! Holy Night’ – Nessa and Smithy’s favourite Christmas carols | Classic FM

By Classic FM

@ClassicFM

James Corden and Ruth Jones, co-creators and much-loved stars of hit TV show Gavin and Stacey, chose their favourite Christmas carols in a special Christmas Eve programme on Classic FM.

Christmas Eve at Gavin and Stacey’s, which aired at 7pm on Classic FM, is available to listen to in full here on Global Player.

Ahead of the TV finale of Gavin and Stacey on Christmas Day, which was viewed by a live TV audience of 12 million, James Corden and Ruth Jones spoke exclusively to Classic FM’s Joanna Gosling, choosing the Christmas carols that mean the most to them.

James Corden, who spent many childhood Christmases singing with his Salvation Army family, chose the ever-popular ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’.

“Carolling was always a big part of my life,” the actor and writer said. “I grew up in a Salvation Army family, so every Saturday in Marlowe Town Centre, for the month of December we used to go and play Christmas carols with the Salvation Army Band.

“And then when I hit about 15 or 16, I started Christmas carolling on my own to try and raise money. And I loved it so much – I used to make a fortune.

“Back in the days when people carried cash, you’d make a pound a house. Sometimes I’d hit 30, 40, or 50 houses a night, and that’s how I’d buy all my Christmas presents. And if anybody asked if it was for charity, I’d always say ‘it’s for the self-preservation fund’.

“And so, the song I’ve chosen is a song that in the High Wycombe area 35 years ago, you’d have heard me ringing a doorbell and singing ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’.”

Read more: What are the lyrics to ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’ and what’s the story?

Joanna asked if the actor’s early experiences of singing spawned the Christmas carolling storyline in the 2019 Gavin and Stacey Christmas special.

“It did,” Ruth Jones said, recalling, “In the last Christmas special, Nessa and Neil the baby went carol singing together, but Nessa dresses as a Victorian carol singer with the sideburns, the cape and the hat and the staff. And Neil the baby just had a tea towel round his head like a shepherd.”

James Corden added: “What I also loved is seeing you that day, because that Christmas special we shot in the summer. So when we shot anything at night, we’d have to wait until maybe 1011, 12. You know, 1am 2am until it got really, really dark.

“So that night, you shot that slightly earlier than when we shot the scene when everybody arrives on the road. And we had this running joke that Ruth looked like Harry Secombe in Oliver, and so she’d just randomly walk up to people and go, ‘More?!’.”

Joanna asked how important music is to the two actors.

“I think anyone who writes a show or a film or anything, music can play such an incredible role,” James Corden replied. “I mean, just now, like listeners of Classic FM, I’m certain that the incredible music you play on this just it can’t help but bleed into your life. Whether you’re in the car, you’re in the kitchen, it creates a backdrop.

“For us as writers, what it can do is really help us to move momentum between scenes, especially with a show that goes from Barry Island to Billericay and the distance and the journeys and the motorways.

“The [Series Finale] is one of the few times we’ve written some very specific music where we’ve known from a long way out that we’re going to write this piece of this special, for this piece of music. As it gets to the sort of the last third of the show, there is a very definite piece of music that really starts to inform a sort of tonal shift in the episode.”

Joanna asked Ruth, who stars as Stacey’s oldest and closest friend Nessa, what carol she thinks her character would like to hear next.

“Well,” Ruth said with a smile, “The great thing about Nessa is that whenever there’s anything with a letter ‘O’ in it, in a script, it always gives the opportunity to just go, ‘OH!’.

“You know, we had, ‘Oh, Oh, Oh, Merry Christmas’. And I think a suitable song for Nessa would be, ‘Oh! Holy Night’.”

Listen back to ‘Christmas Eve at Gavin and Stacey’s’ on Global Player.