There's no Gavin & Stacey film to be made... the story is told

GAVIN & Stacey fans might be desperate to know if the Christmas Day episode really did mark the end of the story for the girl from south Wales and the boy from Essex who fell in love and took us all along for the ride, but actor Larry Lamb believes it was a fitting finale.

- Larry Lamb tells LISA SALMON

"In a funny, sad sort of way I'm relieved that it’s finished because in the end people were desperate to see the end of it, and then to know that the whole thing’s all been wrapped up, the story’s told, and it’s had its life,” says Larry, who played Gavin’s dad Mick for the duration of the show.

“You know, that’s what I like about it - we can all sit back and say this is a completed story.”

And one completed story has swiftly led to another for Larry, 77, who's used his time away from stage and screen to write his first novel, All Wrapped Up.

And although becoming an author isn’t the form of creativity Larry has excelled at for half a century, his book’s subject matter hasn't strayed far from what he knows and loves, as it’s centred round an inside look at the film industry.

The novel tells the story of a first assistant director and his crew battling to stop their film production falling apart as they endure a series of problems including power struggles on and off set, and a crew member mysteriously vanishing.

“It’s a way of telling people what my life is all about,” says Larry. “The thing that interests me most is the camaraderie among the teams that make films. So I made it an adventure story set behind the scenes on a film in the Caribbean - it’s the book I always knew I wanted to write.” He explains that years ago he did an acting job in the Caribbean, and before the end things started to go wrong. “So I had the feeling of how I'd set it,” he says. “What I wanted to do was show that the film and television businesses aren't all about the actors. It’s all about the people that go in every day to do a job.