Alison Steadman has shared a health update after she suffered a fall earlier this year. The Gavin and Stacey star is back on her feet nine months on from an incident in a Dubai restaurant. The actress spoke about her recovery on ITV’s Lorraine today, November 12.
The actress said: “I’m doing ok. I’m back on my feet after eight or nine months. I’ve just stopped using a stick. I thought, ‘I’ve got to try’, It was a concrete walkway and I just landed on my foot and it broke the metatarsal bones. Me and David Beckham.” Former England footballer Beckham broke the same bone in April 2002, months before England’s World Cup campaign.
She spoke about the incident at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature. She said: “There were beautiful seats laid out and a buffet. I went to get some pudding. I was walking along a concrete walkway that was not 100% smooth.
“I tripped and it felt like I went up in the air about 5ft and then just crashed down on concrete. It was absolutely horrible. I landed on this foot and this hand and was in absolute agony.”
Images taken of the actress at Heathrow airport on her return to the UK showed the BBC star in a wheelchair with a bandaged hand and injured leg.
She told the Daily Star: “I knew when I fell that it was serious. The pain was so bad. 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.”
Alison also opened up on her 80th birthday, which will be next August. She said: “I’m in shock myself, I don’t want to be 80. I want to stay 79. If I think of my grandmothers, they had a way of dressing that was suitable for them. The way we all dress [nowadays] is so different.
“Now, I’m wearing trainers all the time, because of my foot, and they’ve got a little sparkle on them. I’m not going to retire.” Alison reprised her role as Pam Shipman in the ‘Gavin and Stacey’ finale over Christmas 2024.
She found out that the show’s creators Ruth Jones and James Corden wrote the character Pam especially for her after they worked with her on ITV series ‘Fat Friends’. Alison previously admitted it has been one of the highlights of her illustrious acting career.
Appearing on ITV’s ‘Loose Women’ in December, she said: “I feel so lucky that I worked with Ruth and James on ‘Fat Friends’ years ago. They decided to write the series and wrote that part of Pamela for me. I was so thrilled. She’s such a great character to dive into.”
She added: “It was brilliant, it was wonderful, we do feel like a big family – 17 years ago, was the first series. It was so good to be back together, we were all chatting and hugging each other.”