Just weeks after Gavin and Stacey wrapped filming for its final ever episode, one of the main characters from the show revealed he was left ‘feeling like he was dying’ due to a ‘hellish’ medical condition.
Larry Lamb is known in millions of households across the United Kingdom for starring as Mick Shipman in Gavin and Stacey across its three seasons and three Christmas specials.
Returning to the role for its final ever episode on Christmas Day 2024, more than 12 million people watched it on the night making it the most watched TV programme on 25 December for a decade.
Set five years after the last Xmas special, in which Nessa was left on one knee after proposing to Smithy, it caught up on what was happening half a decade later.
A perfect feature length episode of television, it has been hailed as an ideal ending to the show that has been in our lives since 2007.
Aged 77, Lamb played Gavin’s dad, Mick, across all the seasons and episodes.
But with filming wrapping in October, he revealed he was struck down by an awful ailment that has left him permanently disabled.
The former EastEnders star said he was left feeling ‘like he was dying’ during the bout of illness that left him seriously unwell.
Weeks after filming for the Gavin and Stacey finale wrapped, he flew out to Senegal for a trip to help publicise some of the worst poverty in the world that children in the country are enduring.
But after returning to the UK, Lamb was left fighting a brutal infection across his body.
Wiping him out, it reached his ears and as a result, has caused him to be completely deaf in one of them.
“It’s been catastrophic. I’m famous for never being ill,” Lamb said.
“But I went in to complete physical meltdown.
“At one point I felt like I was dying. But the real shock was when I realised I couldn’t hear properly.”
Suspicion is that Lamb’s infection and hearing loss was caused by malaria, with the actor saying: “We were in and out within a week. Back home in north London I felt fine, so stopped taking the Malarone pills [malaria treatment].
“I’d been told I should take them for eight days after leaving Senegal, but didn’t understand why as I was completely well. But about three days later I began to feel ill. It was like the worst hangover I’d ever had.
“For a few days I had a fever which caused me to sweat and then cool again. I couldn’t sleep – I didn’t have the strength to do anything.”
Lamb has been left completely deaf in his right ear with mild hearing loss in his left.
