I was groped by TV host, says Gavin and Stacey star Joanna Page

BBC/Sarah Louise Bennett

Gavin and Stacey star Joanna Page has said she was "groped" by a TV host after being warned about him.

The actress said a female producer told her he could be "very handsy" and is "probably going to start touching you".

According to The Times the actress made the comments in her new book, Lush!

She added she was not naming the person for legal reasons.

The 48-year-old said: "Halfway through filming, he starts groping me.

"I hit his hands and said, 'What do you think you're bloody doing? I feel like I'm in Bristol Zoo being mauled by the lions.'"

After that he stopped, she said.

"It was bizarre, a female producer telling you this was going to happen, but it's what you got used to," Ms Page added.

In the interview with The Times the actress also spoke about when the role of Stacey Shipman came along and how she was working in a south London shoe shop.

"It was the first time since leaving drama school I'd thought, 'I know these voices! I know this world!'"

"My mum is exactly the same as [Stacey's mum] Gwen. If you're miserable or upset, she's like, 'Do you want an omelette?'

"Before I first went to London my uncle Anthony gave me a rape alarm, just like Stacey's Uncle Bryn.

"This part was mine. It was sacrilege if it went to someone else, who was either putting on an accent - although you're allowed to do that, I have done my entire career - or they had famous parents, or they were just famous."

She added that had she not got the part she would have been "done with the whole thing".

BBC/Fulwell73 & Tidy Productions/Tom Jackson

She told the paper that at the audition [Ruth] Jones told her to adopt a Cardiff accent.

"The one time I get to go for something Welsh, I still can't do my own voice."

Page added she had no idea what a Cardiff accent sounded like, so made one up.

"Ruth took me outside and said, 'What are you doing? Just talk the way you normally talk.'"

She did, won the part and Jones and co-writer James Corden altered the script to make Stacey from Swansea.

She said to The Times that the series allowed her to turn down most other work to focus on her children, two dogs and four guinea pigs.

Previously Page revealed she wrote Lush! in a disused pub car park, outside a cricket club in the middle of the night and in a car outside her house.

The result was "like a therapy session".

Gavin and Stacey aired its final episode on Christmas Day last year and took home the comedy award at the National Television Awards earlier this month.

The Christmas Day episode became one of the most watched scripted TV shows of the century.

According to official Barb ratings figures, after seven days of catch-up viewing the finale of the much loved comedy had been seen by 19.11 million people, which beat the last Gavin & Stacey special in 2019 which at the same stage had an audience of 17.92m, rising to 18.49m after a month.

As well as starring in Gavin and Stacey, Page hosts BBC podcast Off The Telly, with EastEnders star Natalie Cassidy, and has appeared in films including From Hell and Love Actually.