Gavin & Stacey will come to a close this festive season, with the much-loved British comedy airing its long-awaited concluding episode The Finale on Christmas Day. The show made stars of James Corden, Ruth Jones, Mat Horne and Joanna Page and first aired over three series from 2007-2010, with a Christmas special back in 2019. The theme music for every episode is a swaying acoustic number titled Run by Stephen Fretwell, an elusive singer-songwriter from Scunthorpe who has only released one record since 2007 – 2021’s excellent Busy Guy – but who is held up as a big influence by indie big hitters such as Arctic Monkeys and Courteeners. In his dormant years, the use of Run on one of the BBC’s biggest shows must have come in handy for Fretwell but he told this writer a few years ago that he almost turned the opportunity down. Well, he did turn the opportunity down.
“My publisher called me up and said, “there's this new show, it's got James Corden and Ruth Jones in it and it's coming out on BBC Three. We don't know anything else about it, but apparently James Corden has picked all the music and he's a big music head and he wants to use Run as the theme song. I've just got the thing through now, so I've got to get you to approve it,” he said. “And I said, ‘Certainly not. No way. I'm not having a fucking theme song on some fucking show we've never heard of,’ and my publisher Joe said, "Okay, alright.'”
Luckily for Fretwell, he explained, his publisher completely ignored his instructions to say no. “He pretended that that conversation never took place and signed it off,” he recalled. “A few months later, the show came out and Run was the theme song. I didn't watch it and I said to Joe, "I thought I told you we weren't doing that.” And he said, "Did you? No, you didn't?" I said, “I did!” and he said, “No, no, you definitely didn't.” And then everyone started to love the show. Eventually, I sat down to watch it and I couldn't believe how in keeping it was with the kind of things I think are funny. I just assumed it would be a load of tosh. I sat and watched it thinking, ‘God, this is one of the best sitcoms of all time and I've got the theme song on it, which is unbelievable.’”
Over time, Fretwell said, he began to fully embrace being the man who wrote the theme tune for Gavin & Stacey. “For years, whenever people would ask me what I did, I would say, ‘Oh, I'm a songwriter,’” he continued. “They’d say, ‘Oh, really? Anything we'd know?’ ‘Oh, no, I never really did that much but, you know, I keep my hand in, I'm looking after the children at the moment,’ I used to answer with that. And then there just came a tipping point where people would say, ‘What do you do?’ and I’d say, ‘I used to be a songwriter. Do you know that show Gavin & Stacey? That's me, I wrote the same song.” They’d go, ‘Really? I love that song. Who sings it? Who did you write for?’ and I’d say, ‘It’s me singing it as well.’ ‘Oh my God!’ It just became this thing I was extremely proud of rather than a little bit scared of talking about.”
Run will get its final airing as the Gavin & Stacey theme tune on Christmas Day. The song originally featured on Fretwell’s 2004 debut album Magpie. Watch the video for it below:
