PRIDE OF THE TIDE
Gavin and Stacey star to read Radio 4 Shipping Forecast on New Year’s Day
The announcement has prompted speculation star may use some of their best-known catchphrases
GAVIN & Stacey star Ruth Jones will tell the country what’s occurring on the high seas this New Year’s Day – as she presents the Shipping Forecast.
The actress will play her character Nessa one final time to deliver a historic maritime weather report from the archives on BBC Radio 4.
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It has prompted speculation she may use some of her best-known show catchphrases, including “tidy” — which would be a first for the forecast — as well as her popular line, “What’s occurring?”
Ruth, who wrote Gavin & Stacey with co-star James Corden, said: “Nessa has got quite a colourful history and one of her jobs was on the high seas.
“The Shipping Forecast was always very important and useful to her.”
Some 12million fans tuned in to the final episode of Gavin & Stacey, which aired on Christmas Day and attracted the highest festive ratings since 2008.
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In it, Neil “Smithy” Smith stopped Nessa from going back to work on the ships by racing to Southampton Docks and proposing to her.
Meanwhile, the man who wrote the show’s theme tune has revealed he never wanted it to be used.
Stephen Fretwell, from Scunthorpe, said he wasn’t interested when James Corden first approached his publisher about his track, Run.
The lyrics, “Tell me tomorrow I’ll wait by the window for you” have since become synonymous with the hit series and the tune has seen a surge on streaming platforms, including Spotify.
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Ruth has also revealed that, when it was played as they called “cut” on the final scene of the Christmas Day episode, the cast became very emotional on hearing it.
Yet, incredibly, it very nearly didn’t happen.
In an interview, Stephen revealed: “My publisher called me up and said, ‘There’s this new show. It’s got James Corden and Ruth Jones in, and it’s coming out on BBC Three.
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"We don’t know anything else about it, but apparently James has picked all the music and he’s a big music head and he wants to use Run as the theme song’.
“I said, ‘Certainly not. No way. I’m not having a f***ing theme song on some f***ing show we’ve never heard of’.”
However, Stephen revealed his publisher ignored him and signed off on the deal anyway.
Following the success of Gavin & Stacey, the songwriter said that the royalties he was paid were similar to the earnings from a part-time job.
He added: “I used to think they were like cheques from God — four times a year, a couple of thousand quid.”
Ruth is one of a series of celebs who will appear throughout the day on January 1 to share historic shipping forecasts along with their personal memories from that day.
‘National treasure’
Actors Julie Hesmondhalgh, Stephen Fry and Line Of Duty’s Adrian Dunbar, along with sailor Dame Ellen MacArthur, are among those marking the first BBC broadcast of the Met Office’s forecast in October 1925.
Dame Ellen is reading the report from June 1, 1995 — the day she set off on her round-Britain trip and her first solo adventure.
The retired sailor later broke the world record in 2005 for the fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe.
Radio 4 boss Mohit Bakaya said: “The Shipping Forecast is one of our national treasures, so I’m delighted we are cracking a bottle against the hull to launch 100 years on the BBC with a special schedule of programming on New Year’s Day.
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"It is also a moment for those great, unsung Radio 4 heroes and heroines — the continuity announcers — to shine.”
Referencing some of the areas featured in the forecast, he added: “On January 1, we will celebrate our “national poem” with a day of fascinating programmes for listeners, from Bailey to Viking, Biscay to Utsire, and everywhere in between.”
It hasn't all been plain sailing
1. THE forecast has been referenced in pop, including in The Prodigy’s song Weather Experience, Jethro Tull’s North Sea Oil, right, Blur’s This Is A Low and In Limbo by Radiohead.
2. BRIAN Perkins, a former newsreader on Radio 4, rapped the forecast for BBC comedy show Dead Ringers.
3. ON three occasions – once in 2009 and twice in 2010 – the presenters accidentally read out the previous day’s shipping forecast at 5.20am.
4. ON May 30, 2014, the BBC World Service was aired in the forecast’s 5.20am slot instead, leading listeners to warn of “impending armageddon” – but it was just a technical glitch.
5. NOTHING interrupts the forecast – including the 2011 Ashes cricket commentary, which was interrupted so it could go ahead on schedule.
6. AT the 2012 London Olympics, the shipping forecast was played alongside Elgar’s classical piece Nimrod to illustrate our maritime heritage.
7. IT inspired Irish poet Seamus Heaney, whose Glanmore Sonnets VII opens by reeling off the names of several of the forecast areas.
8. THE only famous face granted the privilege of reading out the real forecast live on air was former deputy prime minister John Prescott – who insisted on dropping the H from his native Humber region.
9. DURING the Covid pandemic, the forecast was reduced to three times per day from the usual four.
10. IN December 2016, then BBC radio weatherman Tomasz Schafernaker, made a series of gulps on air and had to abandon the broadcast due to sickness, leaving newsreader Chris Aldridge to finish the job.
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