‘Gavin & Stacey’ star Ruth Jones and Damon Albarn to read Shipping Forecast to mark centenary

Stephen Fry and 'Line Of Duty' star Adrian Dunbar will also take part in the 100 year celebrations of the weather service

Gavin & Stacey star Ruth Jones and Blur‘s Damon Albarn are set to read the Shipping Forecast – a Met Office broadcast of weather reports and forecasts for the seas around the UK.

• READ MORE: Graham Coxon on the return of Blur: “We can’t leave it too long because we’re knocking on!”

Jones will make her final appearance as Nessa from the BBC sitcom on Radio 4 on New Year’s Day (January 1) to celebrate 100 years of the weather service.

She said: “Nessa has got quite a colourful history and one of her jobs was on the high seas. The Shipping Forecast was always very important and useful to her.”

It comes following the finale of Gavin & Stacey which aired on Christmas Day (December 25) which saw Smithy (James Corden) stopping Nessa from going back to work on the ships after chasing her down to Southampton dock. In the penultimate scene he also proposed to her on a boat.

Along with Jones, Damon Albarn will also feature along with Stephen Fry and Line Of Duty star Adrian Dunbar. The Shipping Forecast, inspired the lyrics to Blur’s ‘This A Low’.

The service was first broadcast on January 1, 1924 as a weather bulletin called Weather Shipping before moving to the BBC a year later, reports BBC News.

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Meanwhile, Gavin & Stacey fans hailed the finale of the sitcom with one calling the episode “iconic”, and another adding the show is “a staple of British heritage.”

The highly-awaited episode came five years after the last special ended on a cliffhanger with Nessa proposing to Smithy.

Elsewhere, Gavin & Stacey star Laura Aikman also shared her family’s reaction to them seeing her appear in the show’s finale.

Aikman who played the character of Sonia – Smithy’s girlfriend and subsequent fianceé – returned for the finale and kept the surprise under wraps from her family.

The BBC sitcom’s finale attracted an average of 12.3million TV viewers – the largest Christmas Day audience in more than a decade.

Reports of the finale were first leaked in February before Jones and Corden officially confirmed the news in May. It was filmed across September and October.