Actress Alison Steadman has won awards and plaudits galore... but none bring as much pleasure as her role as a real-life gran.
The star of Gavin and Stacey and Fat Friends is back on the box this week in new BBC One show Here We Go – playing a gran. Albeit a slightly potty one. But, like Alison, a gran who adores her family.
On that note, Alison admits in real life she’d love more grandkids... but daren’t raise the issue with sons Toby, 43, and Leo, 40.
She absolutely adores Toby’s four-year-old son Freddy and says: “I am very much the doting grandmother.
“I love the fact that I only live 20 minutes away from him so I try to go around as much as I can.
“I just love him to bits and it’s just such a lovely thing to have in the family. He makes me laugh all the time because he is so funny. The things he comes out with, he sometimes talks like a teenager!
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“They grow up so quickly now with all the iPads and television. We didn’t have a TV in my house until I was seven and we didn’t have a phone till I was 15.
“You look back and you think ‘Oh my God’, but of course it meant that we had other things to be interested in and sometimes I think kids miss out on wildlife and gardens and looking for insects and things, because they’ve got so much fun on iPads.
“I don’t think either of my sons are having more as far as I know. But, as we know, a mother-in-law doesn’t say things like that. I put myself in their shoes and I wouldn’t have wanted my mother-in-law to go, ‘When are you going to have another baby?’
“And I don’t say anything and it is entirely their business.
“But I am just delighted with Freddy. He is the light of my life. He really is.”
Alison had Toby and Leo while married to film director Mike Leigh, 79 – who wrote her award winning 1991 Brit flick Life Is Sweet. It is just one of a string of career highlights which include Abigail’s Party in the 1970s and The Singing Detective in the 1980s.
Gavin and Stacey brought a new generation of fans 15 years ago and, at 75, Alison is earning more plaudits for her latest outing in BBC One’s Here We Go, written by and co-starring Tom Basden.
It follows the highs and lows of the Jessop family – including romance, kidnapping a dog and sabotaging a wedding.
The pilot episode aired in 2020 and Alison loves playing widow Sue, who finds a boyfriend. She draws inspiration from characters she met growing up in Liverpool, saying: “Well, Sue is a nutter and it’s fun to play nutters. It was good fun.
“And I love the fact that she loves her son to bits and she loves her grandkids. And she just says what comes into her head. She’s got no filter. And that’s fun.
“It’s when she keeps saying (to her son) ‘How’s your bottom’ and she is talking about his piles. How many mums would keep on repeating that?
“Tom wrote it so brilliantly and I could identify with it from knowing those kinds of women all my life, so that was good fun.”
Alison, who is now with actor Michael Elwyn, 79, says she feels blessed to have had two sons – but would have loved four.
She goes on: “I love babies and I love kids and I loved it when my two boys were small.
“I would have loved to have had more children and could have had four easily. Sadly, it wasn’t to be.
“I was 31 when Toby was born and 35 when Leo was born and I was trying to keep my career going as well. As an actor it is quite difficult to take five or six years out, so to have another child or another two children would have been a lot to keep going and keep working. Some people can do it but I felt I couldn’t.”
As well as playing a gran, Alison is adored for her role as mum Pamela Shipman in Gavin and Stacey.
The show ran for three series and returned for a Christmas special almost a decade later. And, Alison says, the final shoot with co-stars such as James Corden and Ruth Jones was an emotional affair.
She says: “I think it is the only show that I have ever done when everyone cried. On the final shot they say, ‘Ladies and Gentleman, that is a final wrap for Alison Steadman’, and everyone applauded and bowed their heads and cried.
“At the end we took over this local pub in Cardiff and had lots of drinks. I think James and Ruth never wanted Gavin and Stacey to end the first time around really.
“People are constantly coming up to me in the street saying ‘Will there be any more’? I can be in the supermarket and people will say ‘Paaamelar’ and they will ask me when it is coming back.
“We were all hugging and when we finished filming we couldn’t stop texting one another because nobody wanted it to end. We had such a lovely time.”
So will there be another special? Alison says: “I’m not going to say anything because I have been wrong so many times, but if it does happen it will be another surprise.”
One thing she has noticed as time marches on is how tougher it is to learn her lines.
She admits: “It takes me longer and as you get older your brain gets slower. You have to work much harder and it is boring.
“Instead of being able to learn them in a day, it takes me a week. But I am determined.”
Alison handles the stress by firing up her karaoke machine – a gift from Toby.
She reveals: “I love to unwind by doing karaoke. When I am on own and I might be feeling a little bit stressed or I am fed up of learning lines, I put the machine on.
“I know the words to a couple of Adele songs and that is about as modern as I get
“I love having a go at Someone Like You – and it is a very difficult song because it goes so bloody high!”
Alison is grateful to be in good health and proud to be an ambassador for cancer charity Marie Curie, saying: “Their nurses were so brilliant in looking after my dying mum 21 years ago.
“Mum had a healthy lifestyle. She didn’t drink, didn’t smoke and she ate well and when she got the disease she was 80 and was really in great form.
“I hope I never get ill but I might get cancer and, if I do, then I will have to face it. So my philosophy is to keep as busy as you can and enjoy life and do things.”
Here We Go, BBC One, 8.30pm, Friday
