Gavin and Stacey star Alison Steadman has revealed she’s ‘lucky’ to be alive after she suffered a fall in February.
The Abigail’s Party actress, 75, tripped on an uneven bit of pavement and is still in a wheelchair two months on.
Alison, who played Pam Shipman in the beloved BBC sitcom from 2007 to 2010 and reprised her role for the recent Christmas finale, fractured her leg and broke her hand in the horrific fall.
‘I knew when I fell that it was serious. The pain was so bad,’ she told The Daily Star.
‘If I’d banged my head the way I banged my foot, I promise you, I would not be here.
‘Every time I get fed up, I say that to myself. The important thing is that I’m alive.’
The actress, who also starred as Mrs Bennet in the BBC’s 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries, explained to the publication how she’s been in a wheelchair for eight weeks, and is getting ‘a bit frustrated’ at the rate of her progress.
She can still move around her flat in the chair, and explained how after having a cast on her leg for six weeks, she’s now got to wear a boot for six weeks and hopes in a month’s time she will start to walk on crutches.
Alison will then undergo another operation to take the metal plates and the screws out of her foot.
The fall happened at a Desert Stanzas poetry event in Dubai.
At the time, Alison explained: ‘The path was uneven and I went flying. At the hospital I had tablets for the pain. It’s been terrible.’
The Shirley Valentine star has been forced to turn down acting work as the fall has put her life on hold.
This comes after a brilliant run for the star, who was expertly cast as Robbie Williams’ nan in his Better Man biopic alongside her reprised role in the emotional Gavin and Stacey finale.
In the sitcom, Alison’s Pam coined the iconic catchphrase, ‘Oh my Christ!’ which has gone down in the sitcom’s history along with Ruth Jones’, ‘What’s occurring?’
On Christmas Day she joined on-screen husband Larry Lamb, plus creators James Corden and Ruth Jones, as the BBC comedy bid goodbye to the iconic characters, 17 years on from their debut.
In the lead-up to the special airing, Alison reflected on her stellar career – but admitted she thought it would be over by now.
‘It was always, “Darling, if you can get beyond 40, you’re lucky”,’ she recalled to The Times.
‘But the thing is, life doesn’t end at 40. We all keep living — well, not all of us, obviously — but that thinking comes from the days of when, unless you were gorgeous and glamorous, nobody wanted to know.’
‘It’s all about men, isn’t it?’, she added.
Alison admitted that as she gets older learning lines is proving more of a challenge. This contributed to her bowing out of stage performances 10 years ago after a bout of anxiety about performing for a crowd.
‘You just get to an age where you think, “I can’t handle it. I’m not enjoying it anymore.” It was very sad and occasionally it still makes me sad, but that’s life.’
On Gavin and Stacey, she said: ‘It’s a wonderful series. It’s so nice that it’s so popular. I feel very privileged and very lucky to have been given that chance.’
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