Joanna Page

Joanna Page's husband 'confused her with TV character'

Gavin and Stacey star Joanna Page's husband confused her with her TV character as he lay in shock after a car accident.

Joanna Page: 'I loved stripper scenes'

Joanna Page has revealed that her favourite scenes from Gavin & Stacey involved a stripper.

My perfect weekend: Joanna Page

Actress Joanna Page loves roller skating, playing Monopoly and reading thrillers.

If you missed season three of this ever-wonderful family sitcom, you can catch the entire run tonight. Some of the dynamics of the show are changing: Nessa (Ruth Jones) seems less amenable, Mick (Larry Lamb) a little spikier (shades of his EastEnders character?) and Bryn (Rob Brydon) even stranger, but it remains sweet-natured. As the final series opens, Gavin (Mathew Horne) has started a new job in Cardiff so Stacey (Joanna Page) is back at home in Barry and a christening is being planned for baby Neil, but there's a shock in store for his father, Smithy (James Corden).

As Stacey (Joanna Page) frets over her efforts to get pregnant, Gavin (Mathew Horne) plays host to his Essex chums on a boys' night out in Cardiff, in the sublime comedy series about the eponymous Anglo-Welsh couple. Uncle Bryn (the incomparable Rob Brydon) turns his house into a "bachelors' paradise" for Gavin's friends, and grows dizzy with excitement at being surrounded by a whole gang of Essex scamps. "I feel like Fagin," he quivers.

I can see why people like Gavin & Stacey, I really can. It's warm. It's cuddly. It's the celluloid equivalent of on a mug of tea and a slab of Dairy Milk. And it really is all of those things - Joanna Page, who plays Stacey is cute as a button, just Bridget-Jonesy enough for us empathise with, the type of lass any well-brought-up young girl would want to be friends with. And Mat Horne (Gavin) is, for want of a better word, fit. In a safe way. And well dressed, with the not-at-all-bad-looking Page as his girlfriend, so mothers like him and men have a degree of grudging respect for him. And then there's James Corden, who plays Gavin's best mate, Smithy, and everyone knows that James Corden's lovely. So yes: as Bob Hope would say, what's not to like?

Except, erm, I'm afraid I don't. Like it, that is. I like Ruth Jones, aka the indomitable Nessa, fag-smoking, drink-swilling best friend of - inexplicably - Stacey. But that's all. At least Nessa's funny, a quality which, it's worth pointing out, is rather useful when it comes to a comedy show. But apart from her, I can't fathom one of them. Not even Bryn, played with aplomb by Rob Brydon. He's too nice. Far, far too nice. They all are. The whole thing is. It's so nice, you cease to care. It becomes... elevator music.

But anyway, what do I know? Clearly, nothing. Seven million people watched the Christmas special last year, and seven million can't be wrong. Can they? Anyway, last night was the start of the third (and last) series, which saw Gavin settling into his new job in Barry, while the Essex crowd geared up for the christening of Smithy and Nessa's baby, named - wait for it - Neil Noel Edmond Smith. One of the few laugh-out loud jokes of the episode. Any Gavin & Stacey fan would have been thrilled, I'm sure. All the usual bumf was there: Stacey freaking out over an article she's read in Psychologies magazine, Bryn popping his head through Gavin's office window, Smithy ordering enough food for an entire army. Me? Well, like I said. Elevator music. Pleasant enough, no plans to buy the album.

Where Little Britain produced bizarre, gross-out comedy, Gavin & Stacey is a very traditional sitcom. It works in the manner of Dad's Army or Birds of a Feather - the eponymous leads, played by Mathew Horne and Joanna Page, provide a focus in front of a background populated by slightly grotesque caricatures, such as Rob Brydon's camp and simple-minded Uncle Bryn. Now for this third and final series, James Corden's Smithy is still living in Essex while Gavin (his best friend) and Stacey (Gavin's wife) have moved to Stacey's home town of Barry Island in South Wales. As the familiar characters reunite for the christening of Smithy and Nessa's son Neil, viewers who are new to the series (which has previously won two Baftas) may find that this opening instalment is not as immediately likeable or accessible as they might wish. Who, after all, would choose to spend time in the company of Gavin's shouty mother Pam (Alison Steadman) or Stacey's offensive best friend Nessa (Corden's co-writer Ruth Jones)? But as this first episode continues (next week's second is much funnier), it becomes obvious that these weirdly dysfunctional families makes a kind of sense - and that their ludicrous travails are no more ludicrous than most family's. So it's all very sweet, even if there's none of the innovation or edginess you'd find in The Office or The Thick of It.

Joanna Page: 'They said I was rubbish'

She made it through ten years of bit parts to play Stacey in the hit comedy, but the actress says that she is ready to be a housewife.

I'll Stace 20 Years

Actress Joanna Page says she'd be happy to do Gavin & Stacey for another 20 years.

The series about how a nice boy from Essex and a sweet girl from Barry in south Wales fell in love and married has been an astounding success and won a stash of prestigious awards for writers James Corden and Ruth Jones, who also star in the show as Smithy and Nessa.

Following its BBC3 airing this year, BBC1 is giving fans and those who missed this comedy gem first time around the opportunity to view the second series in which newlyweds Gavin and Stacey (Mathew Horne and Joanna Page) return from honeymoon to a big welcome from both families and adjust to married life.