Our Joanna's off in Barry filming Gavin & Stacey right now, but Rob Brydon has been posting pics of the filming to his Twitter account. Here they are. Thanks Rob!

And for you Russell Tovey fans:

So what's our Joanna up to at the minute, given it's been a little while since our last Today's Joanna Page? Well, apart from filming the third series of Gavin & Stacey, she's been off to Dubai for Jack Osbourne's Adrenaline Junkie, and pretending to be a puppy for the new series of Mist Sheepdog Tales.

But it's that time of year again, so she's gearing up for Race For Life in Swansea; she shares her top tips on the latest Cancer Research podcast. Don't forget to sponsor her!

Today's Joanna Page is a public safety announcement. Or at least a public Safety Catch announcement.

Owing to a slight misapprehension on my part, the first episode of the second series of Safety Catch isn't on at 11.30pm tonight, as it was during the first series, but is actually on at 11.30am this morning. So that's 12 hours earlier than planned, although it does mean I've only given you an hour and a half's notice.

On the plus side, it does mean that today, you can wake up with Joanna Page and go to bed with her, too.

Just in case you want to go to bed listening to Joanna Page, she's reading Mari Strachan's children's detective story The Earth Hums in B Flat every night this week on Radio 4 at 10.45pm.

Thought I'd mention it.

Today's Joanna Page is Ready When You Are Mr McGill, a 2003 remake of Jack Rosenthal's famous 1976 play.

Rosenthal is best known for creating London's Burning and for writing the first ever episode of Coronation Street as well as famous plays such as Play For Today's Bar Mitzvah Boy and P'Tang, Yang, Kipperbang. In Ready When You Are Mr McGill, he turned his attention to television.

The original play, made for Granada, focused on the filming of a single scene of a TV show, in which just about everything can go wrong, does go wrong, and Mr McGill, one of the extras, does everything he can to help out and deliver his all-important line before the end of the day.

ITV, back in 2002/3 when it had a little bit of cash and was using big names to draw in the crowds, decided to remake the play as a one and a half hour movie. Starring Tom Courtenay as Joe McGill, Bill Nighy as the egotistical director, Amanda Holden as herself and Phil Davis as the cameraman, it also featured comedy luminaries including Tamsin Greig, Sally Phillips, Sam Kelly, Stephen Moore and Stephen Mangan.

It more or less followed the original play's plot, but was updated to cope with modern television politics and production - and changing it to the filming of a cop show instead of a spy show. But to pad it out for an extra half hour runtime, there's an additional sub-plot about Babs Carter, an actress who's a bit worried about her nude scene and who does everything she can to get out of it. Playing Babs Carter: Joanna Page.

Continue reading "Today's Joanna Page: Ready When You Are Mr McGill"

Exciting news from Mark at comedy.org.uk which I've negligently forgotten to blogroll until now. Somehow he spotted the occasional Joanna Page theme to the blog and has been kind enough to let me know that Joanna Page is  going to be hosting The Paul O'Grady Show for a one-off special in April, being recorded a week on Monday:

Stepping into THE PAUL O'GRADY SHOW hot seat for one afternoon in March will be JOANNA PAGE, star of the BBC's hilarious GAVIN & STACEY! As always, there will be a feast of teatime treats, some of the biggest names in showbiz as guests and Paul’s regular ‘family' of reporters from all around the nation.

This special one-off show is pre-recorded for broadcast in April, when Paul will take his well-deserved break during the series.

RECORDING ON Monday 30th March @ 12.30pm, The London Studios, Upper Ground, SE1 9LT

You can get tickets from Lost in TV. Thanks Mark!

Next week, more rampant (implied) Joanna Page nudity in Ready When Your Are, Mr McGill, which ITV thoughtfully decided to repeat last week. Until then, you're just going to have to cope with her and most of the cast of Gavin & Stacey as backing singers on Comic Relief's revival of Top of the Pops last Friday. It's Tom Jones, Ness and Bryn singing 'Islands in the Stream', which went to number one this week – can you believe that Sir Tom actually complained to Ruth Jones that Stacey's accent was too Swansea?

Anyway, enjoy!

Read other posts about: Gavin and Stacey

As Radio 4 comedies go, Safety Catch is an odd little show. Starring Darren Boyd (Green Wing, Smack the Pony), Joanna Page (Gavin and Stacey), Brigit Forsyth (The Likely Lads), Lewis McLeod (Look Around You) and Sarah Smart (Wallander), it's aimed at the same kind of liberal, middle class audience as more obvious fare like Claire in the Community.

But it's about a man who makes a living from mass murder, gun running and selling weapons to child soldiers ("putting the infant in infantry").

No wonder then that yet again it's been marooned in the 11.30pm slot when it returns for its second series on 1st April.

But, hey, I went to see two episodes being recorded last Sunday. Here's what that was like.

Continue reading "Preview: Safety Catch (series two)"

Read other posts about: Gavin and Stacey

Bit of a brief Today's Joanna Page today. But be prepared for an extensive one or two in the next fortnight.

Anyway, our Joanna's appearing in The Vagina Monologues at the Wales Millennium Centre this week (anyone going?) and there's a big interview with her about it over in thisissouthwales.co.uk. But she's also doing a lot of work for Comic Relief, including appearing in a Marie Claire photoshoot. Here's a behind-the-scenes vid of her, Stephen Mangan, Alison Steadman and her Fat Pig co-star Kevin Bishop at said photoshoot.

Today's Joanna Page should have been This Year's Love. But since she's not in the cast list at the end, I'm guessing it's something of a cameo appearance by Ms Page in said movie, so I'm actually going to have to sit through the whole film - Dougie Henshall's kilt and all - to find out which five frames she's in or whether she's simply sitting on a cutting room floor somewhere. Apparently Richard Armitage plays "Smug man at party" in it, so there's a double whammy for you.

So in the meantime, here's a picture of her with Ruth Jones from the Comic Relief launch earlier this month. She's going to be one of the Celebrity Apprentices, you know. And here's a chat with her courtesy of Holy Moly. It's quiet brief, but it is revealed that Tom Jones doesn't know what a chocolate orange is.

Read other posts about: Gavin and Stacey, The Apprentice