Where do we find the characters at the beginning of this season?

It picks up from where we left off the end of the last series. Alison and Mike had decided to make the gate house into a B&B. It was going to be not quite the full dream of a hotel, but something that they could afford to do which would be a stepping-stone towards their ideal of making a living through the house. And then the place burned down. They realised that in the process of trying to make it successful, they had put a lot of strain on themselves and their relationship, and it wasn't a joyful thing anymore.

So where do Alison and Mike go from here?

They’re back to square one, but in some ways a little worse off because they don't even have that dream anymore. So now they're in a desperate scramble to figure out how to make ends meet and how to find a livelihood that allows them to stay in this place. That's been the backbone of every series; they pivot and find a new plan. But this season feels higher-stakes because they're not on Plan A now; they're on Plan J.

Why do you think the show has chimed with viewers all over the world?

It’s not by design necessarily because really this show was conceived out of a desire for us all to work together. So, we created something where we could all raid the dressing-up box. But we realised early on that we had hit on something. There is something quite rich about the idea of people with very different lives and very different viewpoints being stuck together. That felt very contemporary in terms of how heated conversations are between people with different standpoints. If people inhabit a space together, and look in each other's eyes, they can try their best to maintain a hardness towards each other, but some of that softens and breaks down because we're all people in the end. I think that's a hopeful message.

You have had huge success as a group of writer-performers. Have you got plans to do something else together now?

No, not specifically, but there’s absolutely no way that we won't work together again. We've just been working very hard on the Ghosts companion book, which we're very excited about. So that's been really fun. It's exciting to think about getting back in a room together, talking, making each other laugh and coming up with ideas about what we might do next.

Why did you decide to end Ghosts now?

It’s best to go out at the top while people are still saying, “It's great”, rather than, “It's not as good as it used to be,” which can happen with some shows. The way I see it, we're a band who have made this very successful album. I want the last series to be as good as it's ever been. I want people to miss it and us, and therefore be excited when we come back with something new.

If you take the easy route of just continuing with a show that people are willing to pay you to keep making and you've got very comfortable writing and performing it, you can go on. We could probably have gone for seven, nine, eleven, however many more series. But by the time you stop, people haven't even noticed that you've stopped because you've just become part of the furniture at that point. It's only when you're suddenly there in that final week or two you start thinking, “Oh, my God, what have we done?”

Did the emotion of it all really hit you on the final day of filming?

Absolutely. On the last day, the emotion took me by surprise. I thought, “Hang on, we’ve just got to the end.” I just suddenly found my shoulders going. I felt like if I let myself, I could have really sobbed and sobbed, but I took a deep breath and carried on. If we didn't care that much, there's no way in hell we could have written something an audience cares about.

Can you amplify that?

It was truly emotional. I've never played a single character for that long or written a group of characters for that long. You become so attached emotionally to these imaginary people, but also to the real people who are the cast and crew around you. You’re thinking, “This has been this has been a privilege and a joy.” I’ll carry those joyful memories with me for the rest of my life.

What do you hope people will be saying to each other at the close of this series?

I hope they'll be saying, “I'll miss them.” Unlike almost any other episode, people have all dreamt or speculated about how it might end. So, you hope you're measuring up against people's fantasies about how it might finish. And you're also hoping that you deliver something that surprises and satisfies and gives them more than they imagined. I really hope people don't feel let down by it. I think I'm really proud of it. In fact, I am really proud of it, so I’ll remove the words “I think” from that sentence. I hope the audience love it as much as we do.

Simon Farnaby (Julian)

What will you miss about Ghosts?

The laughter. We spent a lot of our time just goofing around. We probably had about 150,000 in-jokes that have been gathered from the beginning of our time together!

Will you also miss Julian?

I suppose he’s with me all the time, but yes, I will. He is so naughty and says such despicable things, which is quite good fun to play.

Do you think audiences have warmed to Julian over the years?

Yes. We got to know that he had a daughter. It was reset back to normal after that, but we always have that knowledge. That’s true with everyone. I was watching The Traitors with my daughter and she was saying, “I hate this person and all the things they say and do!” And then within two or three episodes, she was saying, “I really love that person.” When you get to know someone, you understand what makes them the way they are. I made that point to her. “It’s funny, you hated that person about a week ago and now you don’t want them to leave.”

There is a surface to everyone, and then there’s what’s underneath. Once you learn more about that, you understand why they are how they are. The more we learned about Julian’s daughter, the more we sympathised with him. You saw the vulnerability, although as he was a politician, you knew that the things he said and the things he really felt were quite different.

How did you find it wearing Julian’s trouser-less costume?

I quite liked it, although we did film in the winter and outside at night, and it was so cold. I’d always be standing there in my bare legs freezing. I had some pyjama bottoms that could go on between takes. But by the time you put them on, it was always time to take them off again. Jim had it too because he was wearing shorts. But he’s got shorter legs than me, so he had less surface area to get cold!

Why do think Ghosts has delighted audiences right around the world?

Maybe because it’s about death. It’s quite a strange concept to have a show where the lead characters are dead, something we slightly fear. I know a lot of other countries have plans to remake it. It works because everywhere has got a history. A country like France or Spain has a rich history, so they have a lot of different characters to choose from; you can choose a conquistador or someone from the Spanish Inquisition or someone from the French Revolution. You can pick individuals from each country’s history, it’s quite an unusual setup.

Does the show also work so well because the characters cannot escape each other?

Even though they’re dead, they behave like normal people trapped together in a flat share or a prison. I don’t think there are many prison sitcoms, there’s Porridge and that’s about it!

It’s a very bold comedy because it’s not scared of featuring pathos, is it?

That’s right. Right from the off, we wanted it to be funny, but we also knew that we had an emotional palette to play with by exploring their deaths. Everyone had a story about their death and how they felt about it. We knew that was going to be a big part of it and it really worked for us. It was the gift that kept on giving!

Why do you six writers have such great chemistry, do you think?

We have a shared sense of humour and a great knowledge of each other. When we all met doing Horrible Histories, it was great, but it was quite a tough job for very little money. So, we have a slight feeling of “We were in the trenches together.” We were literally in the trenches together doing First World War scenes. Not that I want to equate doing comedy with being in a war! But we were literally in the trenches together. So, we have that background, the shared experience of being in that crazy job together as well. That’s where we get a lot of our in jokes from. 75,000 of our in jokes come from there!

Can you conjure up your feelings on the last day on set?

I think I welled up rather than actually crying! We were all proud of what we’ve achieved. If you had told us at the beginning that we would have got five series and three Christmas specials, we’d have been delighted. We would have taken that. I think we achieved what we set out to do, which was to make a series that appealed across the generations. Kids felt it was a show for grown-ups that they were allowed to watch, which is what I used to like doing as a child with Last of the Summer Wine.

Do you think it was correct to bring the series to a close now?

Yes. It’s sad, but it was the right time to end it. We didn't want people to say, “Oh, it's not as good as it used to be.” You always want to leave them wanting more. I don’t think the sixth series of anything is the best. All the good ones end before then, except perhaps Seinfeld. But that’s quite rare. I think it’s the right decision artistically to finish now. Ghosts can’t age. Also, we never wanted to be Last of the Summer Wine which did 32 series.

So you don’t want to be pushed down the hill in a bath tub by Jim and Mat?

Well, I would, but only in my private life. We do do that sort of thing.

Martha Howe-Douglas (Lady Button)

Do you enjoy playing Lady Button?

Absolutely. I love her. I'm going to miss her so much. It's ridiculous. I love playing her so much because she's just so extreme. People find her funny, too. Mostly, the feedback I get is about her faces. I get a lot of people sending me pictures of them bending their faces. And I get a lot of catchphrases – like “Off the lawn!” – on Instagram.

Audiences have warmed to Lady Button over the years, haven’t they?

Yes. I don't think she was pick of the day at the beginning, she wasn’t loved at all. But I think people are softening to her now. That started when they saw her younger self in the Christmas special. There's always a reason why people are the way they are. There’s that saying: be kind to people because you don't know what their struggle is. Lady Button’s rambunctiousness comes from being stifled in the past. I think people now have understood that she is a complete caricature but it's just fun, it's a comedy. It took time for people to grow to love her but yes, she's quite loved now.

Why else have viewers come to love her?

They have seen there is a vein of pathos in there as well. It's easy to be one-dimensional. When you're the bossy chops of the group, it's easy to just be that. But I think the softening of her relationship with Alison has helped that journey as well. When we've been writing, we have discovered new relationships, and I think there's been quite a nice relationship developing between her and the Captain. When you split the characters from each other, you get to discover a bit more about each one. That’s important with Lady Button because it's easy to just go, “Oh God, I wish she'd shut up.” But actually, she's got quite a lot to say, and deep down she has a heart and empathy. It’s been a really nice thing to discover those moments.

Were there many tears on the final day of shooting?

Absolutely. I was in bits! I was the worst, definitely. I'm sure of it. Charlotte was pretty bad. Lolly cried. Mat cried. I had to be taken to the makeup bus because I had ruined all Lady Button’s prosthetics! The makeup artists were like, “No, she does not look like that. Sort her out, for God's sake!” I just couldn't stop crying. It was crazy.

Why do you think you got so emotional?

I think it's such a special show and it’s such a special place to film. On any normal series, you're going to be going to different locations, but we went back to that exact same place every single year. And it's got such happy memories because it's a happy set. The crew are lovely - we get the same people back year after year. It's become a real family. So, there's a lot of love there. And I love the house, we've had such a special journey in it.

What else tugged on your heartstrings?

The six of us have grown up together. It's nearly 15 years now that we've worked together, and looking at them, I was just thinking about all the things that we've done together. I thought, “Here's another thing that's ending.” Of course, we will go on. We are already talking about what the next thing will be so we're not ending our journey here, but it felt like the end of another chapter. And we are all getting older; Ben and Simon both turned 50 when we were filming, and it's that thing of, “God, we were in our 20s and 30s when we met, and now suddenly some of us are in our 50s!” But there is such a lot of love between us.

Is it the right moment to bring Ghosts to a close?

It was a really hard decision. It was certainly not taken lightly, and it was questioned quite a bit during the filming. We were like, “Oh my God, are we really doing this?” It wasn't an easy decision, but I think it's the right one. When we decided to end Yonderland, we were running out of stories. When you start to run out of stories, you don't want it to ebb away; you want it to go out with a bang. So that was the decision that we came to: we should be giving it the finish that it deserves rather than milking it for all it's worth. I hope that we have done that for the fans, and that it's a lovely finish for everyone.

Do you get a lot of feedback from fans?

Yes. We get lots of letters. It’s fantastic that the fan base is so huge and so rich. They come back year after year to the annual premiere at the BFI and at Comic Con, and they just love it. It’s crazy when you step back from it and go, “Wow, that's something that we created, and people have taken it into their hearts so much.” That’s a lovely feeling.

Does it feel great to be going out of the top?

Definitely. We’ve been so lucky to have such a loved show because obviously, we love making it but people have absolutely embraced it. That such a lovely thing in this day and age where people are so quick to criticise. Social media can be quite vicious but it’s so rare that we get any negative feedback and that's just unheard of really. The show may not be everyone's cup of tea but it's been so embraced by the nation, and for that we couldn't be happier.

More interviews here.