Joanna Page is best known for her breakout role as Stacey Shipman in the much-loved BBC sitcom, Gavin & Stacey. First broadcast in 2007, the highly anticipated finale broke viewing records when it was shown on Christmas Day in 2024. She has had memorable roles in many other TV shows and films including Nativity 2: Danger in the Manger and Love Actually. Before that, the RADA trained actress spent ten years on stage working with the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, amongst others. More recently, she has moved into TV presenting, with shows including Shift the Thrift and Joanna Page’s Wild Life. She is also the reigning Taskmaster champion.
I’ve just started reading her autobiography Lush! My Story, which came out in paperback this July, and I’ve been stalking her Instagram where she posts teasers for the Lush podcast she does with husband, James Thornton. (If you’ve ever squabbled with a spouse, I highly recommend tuning in as the couple’s candour is so relatable. Watch them and be reassured that arguing is normal, even in celeb world.)
Ten seconds into our chat over Zoom is all I need to appreciate the fact that, in her words, Joanna Page is “very unfiltered… as soon as you meet me, it all comes out”. By the time we’ve bonded over working through the school holidays (“my God, everything is just all over the place), she’s told me about locking herself in her garage studio to escape the family, wondered about the birthday banners she could see behind me on the screen, and asked how my daughter celebrated her big day, I’m completely entranced. Having watched Gavin & Stacey when it first came out (and repeatedly since then, including introducing said daughter to its delights during lockdown) her face and voice are very familiar to me. She’s not Stacey, she’s Joanna, I kept telling myself. You’ve only just met; you haven’t really known her for the last twenty odd years…
When she said that after the finale in 2024, “I wasn't really sad about not getting to play Stacey again, because I thought, my God she is me, she's living inside me forever”, it made perfect sense. Everything that is lush about Stacey Shipman is fully present in Joanna Page, so it was with something of a wrench that, after a few minutes of general chitchat, I realised I’d so far failed to ask her a single question on my prepared list.
Joanna, I need to ask you about the Malvern Autumn Show! “I'm so looking forward to it. I've been told there's going to be vegetables and I'm very excited about that because, at the moment, I'm growing tomatoes, strawberries, cucumber, carrot, cabbage, lettuce and then I've got parsley and other herbs, but I've only just started up again.
I used to have a huge veg patch and grow everything, and then we moved house and I thought I can't look after three big children and one baby, and keep my veg patch going, so it’s only this summer that I've restarted. I love gardening – I'm not an expert. I just enjoy it.
Malvern is completely my world. I've never been to the show before, so I'm waiting to see the flowers and the veg. And are there competitions? I love that. I used to go to loads of those when I was small, and you go into the big white tents and everything. There was recently one around the corner from where I live, and you go in and there's the judging of first place for the cucumber.”
I tell her there will be all of this and more, including a wide range of plants from specialist sellers. “I'm hoping to pick up tips, but when I'm growing stuff, I go mostly for just instinct. I used to get a bit nervous and think it's got to be done perfectly – I've got to water at a certain time and make sure I'm feeding it with this and that. Stuff all of that, right? I don't care if I'm doing it right or I'm doing it wrong – I'm just going to go by feeling and just enjoy it.”
There then follows quite a lot of chat about how to manage with the hosepipe ban “we’ve got the bath water and all of that sort of stuff… I'm managing to still do pots and my veg, but we have a lemon-coloured lawn at the moment”, and she squeals when I proudly share that I’ve managed to grow aubergines this year, before I remember that I still haven’t asked what she’ll be speaking about at Malvern…
“I’ll be very excited to see all everything that's going on there. I think that's my top priority – over the fact that I'm going to be talking about my autobiography, Lush. When it came out in hardback last year, we got on the Sunday Times bestseller list which I was over the moon about.”
By this point, I’ve realised that Joanna Page isn’t much of a dissembler. “I'm literally just me. I can't be bothered, and I don't have the time or the energy think about trying to be anything else. Writing my book, I wouldn't ever have thought about doing it any other way; if you're going to write about yourself, well, just write about yourself. The reality of trying to get into the business, and then being an actress, and then having children, and what that's like…I may as well say what it's really like. I couldn't ever imagine writing anything else because I am a very open and honest person.
I think that makes my husband panic sometimes, because sometimes when we're doing the podcast, because I'm like, should we talk about the fact that we're not speaking this morning? Because we may as well just deal with it. In the early days that would freak him out quite a lot, and you could see the fear in his eyes.”
And how about the move into presenting? Do the shows she’s fronted (wildlife, upcycling etc) reveal her true nature? “Being an actor, people don't ever really get to know you as you, because you're always playing a different character. Me as me, I'm very earthy. I grew up opposite the sea, I just like being back in Wales, I like being with my animals. Being out in the countryside, getting my hands dirty, being with animals, being with my family: that is me.
An ideal weekend for me is, we’ll get up, walk the dogs, come back and feed the guinea pigs, feed the dogs, get a load of food going for the kids, wear everybody out, and then sit there, do a jigsaw, have a glass of sherry, and watch a Miss Marple on the telly… do board games, play Cluedo, Monopoly and cards, and that's all I want to do. It's my upbringing; it's what I've come from.”
I take this as my cue to ask the obvious question: how similar are you to Stacey?
“I would say very similar. I'm not as ditsy as she is, but then when she wants something, she is quite focused, and she goes for it. When I first opened that script, I started reading it, and I thought, oh my God, this is my world. These are my people. This is me, I can't imagine anybody else having this voice. Nobody else can play this part because she is me.
The thing that I was the most sad about [when the show finished] was not being in that environment with that set of people and in those circumstances ever again. We’ve got a WhatsApp group called Christmas is Occurring, and we've always got stuff going on there. People will always be putting stories they've seen in the papers, or somebody will put a photo on, going, ‘look, this is where I'm filming today’. We're all incredibly supportive of each other. Even if you don't physically see each other all the time it's like, when you've got family or a true friend and you haven't spoken to them for ages, you just pick up where you left off.”
I know everyone must tell her this, but I can’t resist telling her how Christmas two years ago had been pretty much planned around the broadcast time of the finale, and how our multi-generational family had gathered around the telly to see how the story played out. I was interested to know if she had also watched it with her children. “My kids hadn't seen it at all because they've never been interested in anything I've ever done, and they weren't interested in Gavin and Stacey. It was only when the finale came up that Eva said, ‘people are talking about it in school. Can we watch it, Mummy?’ We all sat down to watch it [from the first episode], and because I'd only ever seen it when it first came out, I couldn't remember that Stacey had been engaged that many times, or that she tricked Gav into trying to get pregnant – I still can't even properly remember it now.
I'd forgotten how risqué the first series was – that was my favourite one: we were on BBC3 and we had no money, so the costumes were rough and they were real. It was just a bit edgier, and I absolutely loved it, but sitting there and watching that with my daughter, I'd suddenly go, "Oh my God, Mummy's going to fast forward because Mummy's doing a bit of kissing here’. I fast forwarded through loads of the first series, and then as it goes on, it gets tamer and tamer, so it's a lot easier to watch. It was an utter joy, because it was so long ago, it was like watching a different person”, she smiles.
“We got to Christmas Day, and we all sat down as a family, and I can't believe how well behaved everybody was – the dogs even didn't perform. It was brilliant. I didn't cry watching that, but I did start crying when I watched the [cast reunion show] on New Year's Day, which was a celebration, showing clips of when we first started. Oh God! That set me off and I couldn't stop sobbing.”
Although sadly we (I) have to accept that Gavin, Stacey, Nessa, Smithy et al will be living their lives outside of our watchful gaze from now on, might there be a part which could tempt Joanna back to acting? “There isn't a dream role that would take me back. I've never thought, oh, I want to be Juliet, or I want to be an action hero. The only part I'd love to play is Miss Marple – I'd love to just do murder mysteries. But right now, I turn down every acting thing that I get offered, even if I love it, because acting just takes up so much of your time. You are required to go away for a couple of weeks, if not months, and there's so much sitting around… I know that I'd be sitting there going, ‘Oh my God, I could have done it by now. I've got a load of washing. I need to be with the kids.’
At the moment, I'm enjoying presenting and I'm liking being me. I like talking to people and meeting the different contestants on the show. I'm interested in people, and it's nice going on set. I'm starting the second series of my show, Shift the Thrift next month, and that's great. I'm going all around the country, but I'll be away for three days maximum in each separate place, and it just works so much better with a family.
I'd love to do theatre, so I think when they've all grown up enough that they don't need me as much anymore, then I'd love to go to Chichester and do a play, or to the West End for a six-week run of something”.
She pauses for a second and reflects, “writing my book was really exciting, and it sort of gave me my love [of acting] back. Writing about jobs in the early days, going off to Prague to make a film, when you first put your costume on, and your wig goes on and you walk on set… That is ultimately what I wanted to do in the first place, and that feeling as an actor never leaves you.”
Joanna Page joins Monty Don, Jekka McVicar, Chris Bavin and some former Great British Bake Off favourites in a lineup of very special guests at the Malvern Autumn Show 2026. Taking place between 25-27 September at the Three Counties Showground, expect combine world-class gardening, giant vegetables, baking and all-round family entertainment.
For more information and to book tickets, visit malvernautumn.co.uk.
