Ghosts actor and co-creator Mathew Baynton has explained why his character Thomas Thorne was suddenly revealed as Scottish.
The Regency-era Poet has always been assumed to be English, with his plummy southern accent and alleged history with Lord Byron. As revealed in series 5's second episode, he's actually from Scotland.
His fellow ghosts, including Pat and Julian (who were having an argument that led to the revelation), just do not believe him. Thomas gets annoyed, and drops a bit of Gaelic to prove that he is.
Related: Ghosts stars talk movie idea after series 5 ending
So why the sudden revelation, apart from a joke within the moment? It turns out that it's something that goes all the way back to series 1.
In the show's debut episode, Thomas and Julian talk about the accident that almost killed Alison, and Thomas gets quite worked up and says "Damn your eyes!" while drifting into a Scottish accent.
As revealed in a behind-the-scenes video, other takes didn't have the accent. Because this is the take that was used, the team decided to make it part of Thomas' origins.
"We ended up with a whole storyline because of that," Baynton said (via Radio Times).
Related: Ghosts cast react to the final series 5 episode
"'Answer the question, damn your eyes!' in the very first episode came out ever so slightly in a different accent. So we ended up writing an origin story to explain it."
"It really makes me laugh when Thomas goes so big that he has a different voice," fellow Ghosts actor and co-creator Laurence Rickard added.
Baynton also stated that he hopes he gets "another part that's as fun" as Thomas in the future, and hopes he gets to be part of a team creating another big project.
Ghosts' final series is airing on Fridays at 8.30pm on BBC One, and the full series boxset is available now on BBC iPlayer.
Ghosts: The Button House Archives is published by Bloomsbury on October 26, and is available to pre-order now.
Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer and resident Welsh person at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016.
In his time he's covered a host of live events, interviewed celebrities big and small and crowbarred a countless amount of great/awful (delete as appropriate) puns into articles.
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