Dylan Thomas has a special place in Ruth Jones’s heart, and it’s not just because of her love for his poetry or their shared origins in Wales. It was a part in a 1995 National Theatre production of Under Milk Wood that gave Jones her acting break, which led to parts on TV, which led to Fat Friends, which led to meeting James Corden, which led to writing and starring in the all-conquering sitcom Gavin & Stacey. But first there was Dylan Thomas.
‘I was living in London,’ says Jones. ‘I’d left my agent because I thought I wasn’t getting anywhere with acting and I was thinking maybe I’m going to go into something else. And then somebody told me they were doing Under Milk Wood at the National. I had a fax machine at home – gosh, remember fax machines! – and I sent a fax to the casting director which just said, “I hear you’re doing Under Milk Wood. I’m big, buxom and Welsh and you should see me.” And I got an audition and then a recall and then Bob’s your uncle.’
That production also starred Mark Lewis Jones (no relation) and Steve Spiers, and, in an apt reunion, all three of them appear this week in A Child’s Christmases in Wales, a television adaptation of a Dylan Thomas story. To be shown on BBC Four on Thursday evening, Mark Watson’s single comedy drama takes Thomas’s tale about a child reminiscing on Christmases past and gives it a modern makeover, showing a Welsh family in triptych across three Christmases in the Eighties through the eyes of a young boy. Jones plays the boy’s mother.
‘I was going to say it’s a modern setting but technically the Eighties make it a period piece, I guess,’ says Jones. ‘It’s a really lovely remake and it just captures the essence of the original story. It’s family viewing, it’s sweet and very funny and very Welsh.’
Jones is extremely proud of her Welshness. This year she set up a production company, Tidy Productions, with her husband, the producer David Peet. Its aim is to develop Welsh talent in Wales, and in under 12 months it has spawned a radio show for Jones (Ruth Jones’ Sunday Brunch on BBC Radio Wales), a forthcoming bilingual comedy drama for S4C (On the Tracks) and a pilot for a chat show, again with Jones at the helm.
She’s certainly busy. In the past 18 months we’ve seen her in Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Little Dorrit, an episode of Jimmy McGovern’s The Street and the final series of Gavin & Stacey (currently showing on Thursday nights on BBC One). So you can see why Christmas, for her, will mean a well-earned break. And unsurprisingly, it will be spent in Wales.
‘I was brought up in Porthcawl and I enjoy going back there,’ she says. ‘It’s nice after Christmas lunch to go and blow the cobwebs away with a nice walk down by the sea – seaside towns in the winter are very lovely and romantic.’
It’s hard to think of romance in Welsh seaside towns these days without picturing Barry Island, home to one half of the eponymous couple in Gavin & Stacey. Over the Christmas period we’ll see the final episode after three series that have taken it from a pleasing obscurity on BBC Three to a BBC One big-hitter, via a hatful of awards (including three Baftas). Now, Jones is ready for a backlash.
‘I’m expecting this series will not be liked by the press,’ she says, ‘just because they’ve liked the first two and they have to have a different opinion this time. I suppose you get
a window of popularity with a show and it can’t stay open forever. That’s one of the reasons why we aren’t doing another series. As long as James and I are happy with what we’ve done – and I think fans of the show will like it – we just have to take the rest on the chin.’
What marks Gavin & Stacey out is its warmth – it’s a comedy that isn’t snide, sneering or reliant on swearing to put pith in the punchlines (although it does feature the odd rude word).
‘At a personal level, I rather like it if you can create characters and storylines that don’t have to rely on being crude and swearing,’ Jones says. ‘Lavatorial humour is just not my cup of tea. But, having said that, I’m really of the mind that comedy is so subjective and whatever makes you laugh makes you laugh. If it doesn’t make you laugh, don’t watch it.’
There is enough comedy out there, she says, for all tastes. ‘James [Corden] loves The Inbetweeners [E4’s sitcom about a group of feckless teenage boys]. It doesn’t make me laugh because it is quite lavatorial. I love Armstrong & Miller. I’m a 42-year-old woman and James is a 31 year-old. But thank God we’ve got a variety of stuff out there that makes people laugh.’
Her concern is that an overbearing culture of compliance, engendered in large part by the furore over Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand’s lewd phone call to Andrew Sachs, and latterly by jokes made by Frankie Boyle on Mock the Week, is stunting this kind of diversity.
‘There are people now who spend all day having to listen to and watch programmes to check that they’re not offending anyone and I find that a little bit depressing,’ she says. ‘And I wonder how long it can be sustained. But do you know what – I think it will all come out in the wash, eventually. As with anything, when there’s an extreme reaction to something everybody gets paranoid and fearful for a while and then eventually people just lose the energy to be paranoid and fearful. What I’m saying is, they just calm down a bit.’
- A Child’s Christmases in Wales is on BBC Four on Thursday at 10.00pm
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