Mathew Horne pays tearful tribute to Gavin and Stacey crew member

Mathew Horne has paid tribute to a “lovely” member of Gavin and Stacey’s crew who died earlier this week.

The actor, 46, played Gavin Shipman on the popular BBC series, which ended after 17 years last year. The festive finale episode attracted the broadcaster’s largest Christmas Day audience in over a decade.

Speaking at the Taunton Brewhouse’s In Conversation! event on Thursday (31 July), Horne was reminiscing about up about his time on the show when he appeared to lose focus.

“Sorry. I got distracted,” he told the audience, as reported by The Sun. He became emotional, sharing that he had received some upsetting news from the cast’s WhatsApp group.

“Earlier on… We had a driver on the finale called Rob and he was in his early 40s, and I found out via the Whatsapp group earlier that he has passed away and I got slightly distracted there,” Horne said.

“It’s really really sad. I got distracted by losing Rob. He was a really lovely guy and he’s left a four year old behind and that is really, really, really sad.”

Elsewhere in the talk, Horne opened up about his special relationship with Alison Steadman, who plays his onscreen mother Pamela on the show.

Describing the cast as being “like family”, Horne recalled how Steadman had stepped in to support him following the death of his mother, in the build-up to the programme’s 2019 Christmas special.

“In 2019 before the Christmas special – part one of the finale if you like – aired, I lost my mother, and Alison really stepped up and she became my surrogate mother offscreen as well.

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“Whenever she texts me even now she signs it ‘Mum’. And that is cool. That is so beautiful. And she says ‘How are you, my little prince?’ It means the world to me.”

Gavin and Stacey returned for a final time on 25 December last year, with the much-anticipated episode picking up from 2019’s cliffhanger that saw Nessa (Ruth Jones) get down on one knee and propose to Smithy (James Corden).

The show achieved ratings of 19.3 million viewers, beating the show’s own record from the 2019 Christmas special, which reached 18.5 million viewers within the first 28 days.

After waiting five years, fans were not left disappointed by the episode, with several praising it as the “perfect” conclusion to the series.