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Vanessa Jenkins, Bryn West & Sir Tom Jones Feat. Robin Gibb
Why we feature this artist Barry Islands in the Stream: television characters meet the song’s real musical history The 2009 Comic Relief recording of Islands in the Stream brings a Gavin and Stacey performance into a much larger musical company. Ruth Jones and…
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The story of Vanessa Jenkins, Bryn West & Sir Tom Jones Feat. Robin Gibb
Why we feature this artist
Barry Islands in the Stream: television characters meet the song’s real musical history
The 2009 Comic Relief recording of Islands in the Stream brings a Gavin and Stacey performance into a much larger musical company. Ruth Jones and Rob Brydon appear as Nessa Jenkins and Bryn West, joined by Tom Jones and Robin Gibb. The character names are part of the joke and the performance; the recording is a deliberately assembled charity collaboration.
The barn-dance scene becomes a single
The project grew from Nessa and Bryn’s rendition of the song in the television series. Tom Jones’s contemporary announcement explains how that scene led towards the Mercury single, released for the March 2009 Red Nose Day campaign. The title’s Barry Island reference connects the familiar duet to the programme’s Welsh setting.
Robin Gibb’s involvement adds another layer to the meeting. The Bee Gees wrote Islands in the Stream, made famous by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton in 1983, and Gibb contributed backing vocals to this later version. Jones joined both the recording and its accompanying comic film.
The comedy depends on a song that still works
The performance keeps the original duet’s easy melodic exchange while allowing the television characters to bring their own exaggerated manner. The humour sits beside recognisable singing rather than replacing the tune with a completely unrelated sketch. The well-known refrain gives the audience something steady to return to.
The extended video makes the occasion larger, sending Nessa and Bryn on a karaoke adventure with their famous guests. On record, the central pleasure is more compact: a familiar song, two fictional personalities performed by real actors, and musicians whose presence gives the comic situation another connection to the music itself.
Essential releases
(Barry) Islands in the Stream
The Comic Relief single brings Ruth Jones and Rob Brydon’s Gavin and Stacey characters together with Tom Jones and Robin Gibb.