Rob Brydon reveals the ‘Gavin & Stacey’ cast had a WhatsApp group chat code name to keep the Christmas special a secret.
The popular BBC sitcom will be back on December 25 for a one-off return, and the 54-year-old actor – who will reprise his role as Uncle Bryn – admitted his co-star Alison Steadman (Pam) came up with the pseudonym at an awards ceremony.
He told the Mail on Sunday newspaper’s EVENT magazine: "She came up to me asking me if I could believe it, and she was so excited about ‘Gilbert and Sullivan’.
"I’m a bit thick so I didn’t get it at first. I thought she’d been in a drama that I’d missed so I actually told her I’d seen it and hoped she’d get an award.
"It was only a few minutes later I realised what she meant. I think we were all so stunned and so desperate to keep everything quiet."
Indeed, Ruth Jones (Nessa) – who was back collaborating with co-creator James Corden (Smithy) on the script for the special – admitted they even kept the reunion news a secret from their own parents.
She added to the publication: "We didn’t even tell our mums. And I had to keep inventing reasons why I was going to Los Angeles to see my friends.
"We couldn’t be pictured together because the whole world would start thinking, ‘Oh yes… ‘Gavin & Stacey’ is back’. We said absolutely nothing to anyone."
The sitcom – which aired on the BBC for three series, plus a Christmas special, from 2007 to 2010 – stars Mathew Horne and Joanna Page as the titular Gavin and Stacey.
Meanwhile, James previously admitted he feared they were being "naive" about plans for a one-off revival when they were struggling with the script almost a decade after the show came to an end.
He recently said: "We’d confused ourselves in thinking there needed to be an absolute narrative arc – there was so much in the story, there was no room for the characters to breathe.
"We’d written about 40 pages, and we sat and we read it … and we both went, ‘This just isn’t good enough. It doesn’t feel like the show. It doesn’t feel like it’s right.’
"There was a real silence in this room … a sense of, ‘Maybe we were too naive to think we could pick it up.’ "
Rob Brydon says Gavin and Stacey cast had secret WhatsApp group
