I’m still a Welsh girl at heart so I’m staying in the U.K. for the Olympics, it’s such an exciting time for Britain so it’s amazing to be a part of it.
Obviously Gwilym is a very Welsh name! My father is from Maesteg, and my mother’s from Abergavenny.
I’m Welsh. We didn’t do ‘Peter Pan.’ We have far more ancient legends to be put to sleep with.
I think now, more than anytime I can remember, bands are sounding pretty similar whether they’re English or American, from Manchester or London… or Leeds or Welsh or Irish.
But it is my happiness to be half Welsh, and that the better half.
What is so good about ‘Gavin and Stacey’ is that it is very real, Welsh, and well written.
In the 1990s, from the estates of Scotland came the phenomenon of Irvine Welsh. ‘Trainspotting’ demanded its place not only in the high ranks of contemporary fiction but as a describer of a Britain that literally and metaphorically was in a deep mess.
John Hartson, he speaks fluent Welsh and has the tattoos all over him to prove his Welshness. But in my own world, no one is more Welsh than myself.
I thought the first Welsh team I played in was the golden generation, with Neville Southall, Mark Hughes, Ian Rush, Dean Saunders, Gary Speed, and Ryan Giggs.
In Ehrenfeld, we were all jammed together. All the fathers were foreign-born – Welsh, Irish, Polish, Sicilian. We were so jammed together, we picked up each other’s accents. And we spoke some broken English. When I got into the service, people used to think I was from a foreign country.
I grew up in Shropshire, but I was born in Wales. There was a hospital seven miles away, but my dad drove 45 miles over the Welsh border so I could play rugby for Wales. But as a skinny asthmatic, I was only ever good at swimming.
I was fired from my first job in New York. I was just out of school, doing the Welsh play, ‘The Corn Is Green,’ at Equity Library Theater. I was studying with Uta Hagen, and I was really working well, but they got nervous. They wanted results right away. We had a run-through, and I wasn’t there yet, so they fired me.
We moved to America when I was young, but we were always very Welsh in our home. The humor, food, traditions. Very Welsh.
Whenever we’re playing in front of a Welsh crowd, they really do give you that extra bit to get the win.
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