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Comedy preview: What's The Story

Ruth Jones will be one of the guest panellists when topical radio comedy What's The Story? returns for a second series this weekend.

Charity gigs come in all shapes and sizes, from a bunch of stand-ups passing the hat round in a room above a pub to this, a Channel 4-backed night to benefit Great Ormond Street which features one of the most celeb-heavy lineups you're likely to see anywhere this year. As Peep Show is unequivocally the network's biggest comedy hit in recent years, it's all the more fitting to have David Mitchell as one of the main attractions, doing a relatively rare live turn. Among those joining him at the O2 are Channel 4 regulars like Sean Lock, Jack Whitehall and the Fonejacker, but the net's also been spread wide enough to include the likes of Jonathan Ross and Gavin & Stacey stars Ruth Jones and James Corden. And given the charity involved, you can't rule out a last-minute cameo from Sir Alan Sugar. If you can't get a ticket, you'll be able to see the whole thing on TV next month.

Ps and Qs: Ruth Jones

Ruth Jones goes from telly to radio in a newsy quiz show, What's The Story? She reveals why it's a real Tidy production.

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).

According to co-writers Ruth Jones and James Corden, this is the show's last ever episode, and the series ends, as all self-respecting feelgood comedy dramas should, with a wedding, a big revelation and a semi-ironic blast of Angry Anderson's Suddenly. Controversially, the BBC has already released the DVD of this third series, so you may already know that John Prescott makes a brief cameo, and that Nessa (Jones) is towed to the church in a trailer attached to the back of her father's brown Mini Metro. But if not: enjoy.

It's Nessa and Dave's wedding, an event every fan will be wishing doesn't happen. We all know she's supposed to end up with Smithy. So does he. The moment he meets Nessa to collect baby Neil and just can't bring himself to reveal his feelings is heart breaking. As she heads up back the motorway for her big day you want to shout at the telly: "Go after her, you big buffoon!"

But leave it a bit, alright? We've got to see TV's most unlikely bride do the walking down the aisle bit first. Nessa wants her big day to be done in style - but this is Nessa's style, so she looks more like Boudicca than a meringue.

The episode, in case you've been living under a rock, is the last-ever one (unless I get my wish and the careers of Ruth Jones and James Corden go belly up and they're so desperate they're forced to write more).

And it's faultless, with the superb choice of music including the same tearjerker that Scott and Charlene walked down the aisle to in Neighbours and You've Got The Love, used in the Sex & The City finale. So will Nessa get Gavin & Stacey's answer to Mr Big? Or, heaven forbid, will she clap eyes on ex-lover John Prescott (who cameos) and run off with him instead?

After seeing Ruth Jones play Nessa in Gavin & Stacey on BBC1, switch channels to catch her in this charming comedy about a child's Christmases during the 1980s.

She plays a mum so houseproud she stacks her towels in order, measures sliced carrots and washes the soap. Back then her OCD was better known as housekeeping.

Michael Sheen narrates as her now grown-up son, Owen. He looks back at three Christmases, when his mum fussed, his dad vegged out on the sofa, his competitive uncle Huw bragged about his latest success, and his other uncle, Gorwel, lived up to a waste-of-space reputation.

For anyone who grew up in the 80s, it's a nostalgic reminder, especially when Huw gives Maurice a state-of-the-art Sinclair ZX Spectrum then spends the day trying to load a game from temperamental and nerve-shredding shrieking tapes.

Ruth Jones of Gavin & Stacey fame is the obvious draw in this adaptation of Dylan Thomas's look back at Christmases past, but perhaps just as interesting is that it is written by Mark Watson, the stand-up comedian who's also popped up as host on Never Mind the Buzzcocks and been something of a regular on Mock the Week. Thomas's nostalgic take on Christmas has been refashioned by Watson for 1980s south Wales, creating a comedic tale about ways in which Yuletide brings out the best and worst in a family.

Inspired by Dylan Thomas's nostalgic anecdotal tale, Mark Watson's observant comedy is set in the household of young Owen Rhys (Oliver Bunyan/Mark Williams) over a series of Christmases in 1980s South Wales. Every year, the peace of the family home, where Owen lives with his gloomy father (Mark Lewis Jones) and obsessive mother (Ruth Jones), is disturbed by the yuletide arrival of Owen's two uncles (Steve Speirs and Paul Kaye) and nephew (Jamie Burch/Rhys McLellan). In a glimpse of three of these gatherings, while Owen and Maurice are seen maturing into young men, their male elders merely engage in ever-more puerile bouts of sibling rivalry.

Ruth Jones on A Child's Christmases in Wales

Gavin & Stacey's Ruth Jones salutes Dylan Thomas, Wales - and inoffensive comedy.