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1. Everybody was shocked by the Dave Coaches moment

One of the big reveals of the finale was that Gwen has a new man and that man is… Dave Coaches. It was a big surprise to viewers, and equally as stunning to the cast. “I’d met up with Chris Gernon, our amazing wonderful director, before I’d had the scripts,” says Melanie. “She said… ‘There will be a point where I think you might shriek.’ I just thought, alright… Then I was sitting in the garden [reading the script] and I did shriek.”

Jo was equally shocked. “Reading it, I thought, ‘Oh, Gwen’s got a fella’. Then when he came down the stairs and… it said it’s Dave Coaches, I couldn’t believe it!” Jo calls it her “favourite ever Gavin & Stacey scene to film.”

2. That bus stunt was less dramatic than it looked

One of the big moments of the episode sees the gang on Dave’s coach, rushing to Nessa. They dramatically crash through a hedge to reach her on time. It looks exciting on screen, but was less high-octane to film. “We went through the hedge at about eight miles an hour,” laughs Melanie. “We were building it up and building it up. We got so, so excited. ‘Oh my god, let’s do the stunt! Let’s all be involved in the stunt!’ Really over-excited, and then when it actually happened it was like, brrrrrrrrrmmmmm.”

3. Keeping Sonia a secret was a big mission

James Corden and Ruth Jones pose with the finale script.

There was a huge twist when everyone headed to a big wedding and it was not Nessa who came down the aisle, but Sonia (Laura Aikman). It took a lot of effort to keep her appearance a secret, including keeping her name out of the scripts. “I couldn’t work out who ‘Susan’ was in the script,” says Melanie. “Sonia, in the scripts, was Susan.”

Everyone was so determined that Laura wouldn’t be seen that she wasn’t allowed to stay with the rest of the cast. “The hotel we were filming [the wedding] in, they made her stay there,” says Jo. “There weren’t any staff there. It was just an empty building, I think. She had to stay there because they thought, ‘We can’t chance it.'”

4. They had unique methods for deterring paparazzi

It wasn’t easy trying to keep the plot from getting out, and the crew would do anything to stop paparazzi taking photographs and revealing too much. During the shooting of the bus scene, one photographer refused to move, determined to get a shot of everyone on the bus. But he didn’t reckon with producer Sarah Fraser.

“She [and two others] took these big umbrellas and walked up to the hedge where he was with his camera,” says Melanie. “When we went to do the actual stunt, they put the umbrellas up and went running. As he was running up and down to avoid the umbrellas and take pictures, they were running [in front of him]. So he’s got some wonderful pictures of these black umbrellas.”

5. Sometimes they got a bit too paranoid

Everyone was so focused on keeping Sonia a secret that they occasionally took it too far. In one instance, Assistant Director Sophie Hebron thought she’d spotted a paparazzi sneakily taking pictures. Jo explains: “She saw this fella in the bushes and said, ‘Oh hello, do you want to take a picture of me?’ and started posing. He said, ‘No’… ‘Well, what are you doing in the bushes then?’ He said, ‘Well, I’m cutting the bush. This is where I live.’”

6. Jo forgot her screen son’s name

There was the occasional code name in the script, to keep things secret, but there was one name Jo should have been familiar with, yet somehow wasn’t. “I sent a message to Chris Gernon saying, ‘Who’s Harry?’,” says Jo. “She sent me a message back: ‘It’s your son.’”

7. None of the final speeches were scripted

The finale ends with Smithy and Nessa’s low-key wedding, where some of the friends stand to toast the couple. You don’t hear much of what’s said – there’s music playing over it – but Jo revealed that it was up to the actors to decide what to say. “I was worried about that,” says Jo. “But I thought, ‘I’m not going to prepare anything. I’m just going to speak.’ Then I did and I just cried and said how much I loved everybody. I was quite nervous beforehand, because Matt (Horne) got up and did his speech first and he had his toast and props. I thought, ‘Oh flipping heck, he’s written something.’ Then it was time for mine and I just stood up and said, ‘I LOVE YOU AAALLLL'.”

8. Gwen’s omelettes were never meant to be a running joke

In Gwen’s view, there are few situations that can’t be fixed with a nice omelette. But her signature dish was never meant to be a running gag. “That was never really written as a thing,” says Melanie. “It just grew with the series.”

9. One cast member doesn’t think it’s the end

While almost everyone is definitive that this is the final chapter of Gavin & Stacey, there is one member of the cast who isn’t entirely convinced. “Every time any of us are asked, now I can genuinely say, ‘No, 100% there definitely won’t be any more,” says Jo. “But any time anybody asks Larry (Lamb), he always goes, ‘Yeeeeessss'.”