Ruth Jones reveals problems which left her 'weeping' during end of marriage

Gavin and Stacey creator Ruth Jones struggled to cope with her menopausal weeping fits and mood swings in the latter years of her failing marriage. The writer and actress, 58, announced this week that she had split from her estranged husband David Peet after 26 years together.

She revealed that they had actually legally separated some 18 months ago. Peet is now living in Canada and has even found a new partner. However, this is not the only emotional ordeal that Ruth had to wrestle with in recent years.

The Welsh star – best known as Nessa Jenkins in the BBC comedy Gavin and Stacey which she co-wrote with James Corden – has admitted she would ‘weep down the phone’ to friends while she was going through the menopause in her early 50s.

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This is because she could not deal with her mood swings. She revealed: “I think the menopause is a really strange experience to go through and I think, partly, I thought ‘Oh it won’t happen to me’.

“My mum used to say to me ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about. I don’t think I ever went through the menopause’. And I say ‘Mum you must have done’.

“When I started to go through the menopause I was completely amazed by how it affected my moods and I’d be on the phone to one of my best friends and I’d be weeping on the phone ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m a different person’.

“And it was really astonishing and I started HRT and almost over night it kind of went away.” Ruth opened up about her struggles going through ‘the change’ at a literary talk in Bath in Somerset to promote her new book By Your Side at the end of May.

Ironically, the novel’s main character, Linda Standish, is a divorced plus-size woman in her 50s. Ruth admitted there have been discussions to turn the story into a TV drama and she claimed she would love to play the lead role.

She said: “A lot of people and early readers have said to me ‘Who would you get to play these characters like Linda?’ Well I am not going to lie. I’m in my 50s and I’m a plus-size woman.”

The writer – who is set to appear in a new BBC drama about Jane Austen next year – admitted, however, that she has no plans to write a comedy about women going through the menopause. She added: “I wouldn’t know how to articulate anything about menopause.

“One of my characters in my book Love Untold is about to go into the menopause. She is about that time in her life. Seeing characters going through the menopause is interesting but I don’t know how I’d write about it in a funny way.

“Davina McCall has done stuff and talked about it. It’s more about communication. I mean you don’t want to go out and talk about anything personal all the time and shove it down everyone’s throats but on the other hand it is good so people don’t feel alone and think ‘Oh my god this is only happening to me’.”

Ruth also said that although she and James had penned the final ever episode of Gavin and Stacey, which went out last Christmas and drew an audience of 19 million viewers, the show was still going on - in her head.

She added: “With Gavin and Stacey, I think that Nessa is still working down the slots. I think she is very much still there. And I think Pam is still having fencing lessons.”

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