If you're unable to bring food, it's not a problem.

We bring as much food as we think we'll use.

If it's leftover, it's leftover.

But if it goes, it goes.

But it'll be snacks and sandwiches and chicken wings and lots of squash and stuff like that.

It's a chance to just be together with that whole family and the food is... want, you know, the community to come together really.

Just turning up where you don't know anybody isn't always easy.

We're a friendly, low-key bunch.

You might have other people who have lost their partner decades ago.

We are a social group.

because a lot of people suddenly find themselves, if it's a partner they've lost, or somebody that they live with, might be a parent or a child, suddenly they're having to face the world on their own.

And it's a big thing to start going out and being a singleton.

The interesting thing is my father-in-law, who had lost his wife some years before we started this, he wouldn't come along because he thought we were all going to be sitting around moping.

And after about five years, he came and thoroughly enjoyed it.

If you're feeling low and you're not feeling very talkative, you know that everybody else knows what it's like to have days like that.

A lot of people might want to talk about the person they've lost and that helps a lot of

I know there's a whole list of other issues that have got to be, you know, kind of sorted out and dealt with, but is there any kind of timeframe on these things, Ruth?

Yeah, that's a brilliant question, Adam.

And I'd love to say, oh, yes, well, one's going to be done tomorrow, then one will be done the day after, and then by next week, it'll all be done and dusted.

Sadly, that's not the case because these consultations, I love the civil service to pieces, they're absolutely marvellous, but they want to do things very slowly and very properly.

Whereas we want to say, well, get the consultation out.

You know, electric shock collars, we know they need to be banned.

Let's hurry up and get on with banning them.

We'll give you two.

Yeah

... that has become a new phrase for the English dictionary, binge-watch.

And so many people I know, because this is available in the UK on iPlayer, I think they drop the first five episodes and then the next five.

And people were like, "Oh, my gosh, I've watched five episodes and I need to watch the other five." I'm like, I'm, like, I'm 60 in September, right? And I remember what it was like on a Sunday night to watch a period drama, and you would have to wait, and there was a real painful pleasure in having to wait a whole week before you could watch it.

But the, it, it is so interesting how, uh, people's habits have changed now and how we want to consume it all-

[laughs]

So because I was aware of that, I, I feel very sensitive to it the other way around as well.

So Sarah Quintrell, who did the, uh, screen adaptation for The Other Bennett Sister, was always very, very careful.

Was that deliberate? Was that a very clever schedule there? I don't know, actually.

My mum always tells me it's not called mothering, so it's mothering something.

Because she said there's lots of ways to mother.

But Mrs. Bennet is certainly not the epitome of maternal love.

I think, you know, forgive me because Al has heard me say this before, but She was a kind of a businesswoman in lots of ways, Mrs. Bennett, an 18th century estate agent, if you will, who had five properties to sell and one of them won't shift.

But it sort of comes from a good place in her that she wants for all her daughters to be looked after.

And in that day and age, as a woman, you could not inherit anything.

And how was it for you being Richard E. Grant's wife? How was that? How was the bond?

I interviewed Ruth back in 2019 and she told me about her early career struggles and getting her foot on the acting ladder.

I did a tour of The Marriage of Figaro, and that was great, but then there was nothing after that.

So, you know, and I had to pay my rent.

So I went to work at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council, and was a clerical assistant there for a good long while, and I just thought, "What is happening to me? I'm not ever gonna act again." So I moved back to Wales and was gonna become a solicitor because I just thought, "I'm clearly not gonna become an actress.

It's just not happening." And then that's when one of the letters that I had written over the year, you know, I'd, you know, kept trying for jobs, came to fruition and Stan Stennett, who was a pantomime producer in my hometown of Porthcawl, uh, offered me this job shifting scenery and being a ninja turtle.

(laughs) And that's when I got my Equity card.

And it was the first time that you worked with James Corden who you would go on to create Gavin & Stacey with.

Yes, indeed.