Gavin and Stacey star admits 'it’s hard to make something great’ amid show finale

Rob Brydon has reflected on the extraordinary success of the series (Image: Getty)

As  Gavin & Stacey prepares for its Christmas Day finale, 59-year-old actor Rob Brydon has reflected on the extraordinary success of the series that made Uncle Bryn a household name.

Speaking to The Times, the star admitted: “You can have a perfectly respectable career as an actor and never be in a bonafide hit. So I feel very lucky because it became a cultural phenomenon.

It gets mentioned. It gets referenced. It’s relatively easy, if you’ve got talented people, to make something good — but it’s hard to make something great.”

The BBC show, which first aired in 2007, has been a career-defining moment for the actor, though it almost didn’t happen. Brydon was initially hesitant to take on the role of the quirky, repressed Uncle Bryn.

“There was a hell of a lot of overlap [with his earlier role in Marion and Geoff], and at that point, I was still of the mindset that I was going to be a proper actor playing lots of different roles,” he explained.

The show has been a career-defining moment for the actor (Image: BBC)

However, the strength of the script and the involvement of James Corden, Ruth Jones, and Alison Steadman won him over. “I mean, Alison Steadman. Wow,” he said, still sounding starstruck.

The Welshman remains modest about his contribution to the show’s success, praising the work of Jones and Corden. “The greatness of Gavin & Stacey is in Jones’s and Corden’s writing,” he insists.

“I just played Bryn as it was written.” That said, the actor did have some input into the character’s look, revealing, “The only thing I contributed in a tangible sense was Bryn’s dress sense. It was my idea that he should wear light-coloured clothes, the thinking being that people who are sort of retired, they’re not going to get dirty. They can wear those beige and cream colours.”

For years, fans have speculated about Bryn’s mysterious fishing trip with his nephew Jason, a long-running joke that has never been resolved. Brydon, however, is careful to sidestep the question of Bryn’s sexuality.

Brydon also reflected on his early struggles in the industry (Image: BBC)

“I skip over these things quite lightly,” he says, adding that he’s never discussed it with the show’s creators. Instead, he prefers to focus on a lesser-celebrated aspect of the character: “No one ever asks me about the aspect of him I like the most, which is his irascibility. I love it when Bryn loses his temper.”

The dad-of-three also reflected on his early struggles in the industry, describing how he would imagine himself being introduced by Michael Parkinson. “I would visualise Parky going, ‘He’s had a wonderful career, he’s done so many wonderful things, please welcome Rob Brydon,’” he said. “With hindsight, that’s what they call positive visualisation.”

From his humble beginnings in voiceover work and hosting the Home Shopping Network to becoming one of the UK’s most cherished TV personalities, Brydon has come a long way.

Gavin & Stacey: The Finale is on Christmas Day at 9pm on BBC1 and iPlayer; Gavin & Stacey: A Fond Farewell is on New Year’s Day at 7pm on BBC1 and iPlayer