James Corden joked he had named his newborn baby after Beyoncé- and the midwife believed him.
The 39-year-old TV star – who already has son Max, six, and daughter Carey, three, with his wife Julia – welcomed their little girl into the world on Tuesday (12.12.17), but the star almost landed himself in hot water when he pretended to the medical staff he had given his tiny tot the same moniker as the ‘Halo’ hitmaker and the nurse – who was unaware it was a gag – started to fill out official documents.
The ‘Gavin & Stacey’ actor said: "After the baby was born, anyone who’s been in this situation will know, we were both crying, I was crying my eyes out, my wife’s crying her eyes out, the baby’s crying and the doctor asked about her name and I don’t know why I said it and I looked at the doctor and said, ‘We’re going to call her Beyoncé.’ My wife did not think that was funny.
"Especially after the nurse went to the other side of the room and started filling out her form with the name Beyoncé and I had to go over to her and say, ‘There’s only one Beyoncé.’"
But the funny man made the light-hearted quip because he and his spouse had yet to pick a name for their new addition to the family as their baby was not due to arrive for "another couple of weeks".
Speaking on his return to the CBS programme ‘The Late Late Show with James Corden’ on Thursday (14.12.17) after a two-day break, which saw Harry Styles and Bryan Cranston step in to host the show in James’ absence, he said: "Very unexpectedly, my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. We’re over the moon. It’s been a whirlwind 48 hours. It really has.
"This all started over the weekend my wife started experiencing some sort of pain in her stomach, we checked it out. We thought it had gone away and we went into a routine check-up on Tuesday and suddenly the doctors turn to us and say, ‘Oh no this is probably happening today and this baby could arrive in the next few hours.’ A complete shock, we were unprepared.
"But seriously we were not expecting this baby to arrive for another couple of weeks. We didn’t think this would happen and so this is absolutely true, we still haven’t chosen a name for her yet. We don’t know what we’re going to call her."
James has admitted he feels guilty about the moment his wife went into labour because while she was discussing "very serious things", he was worrying how he will be able to film his show.
He explained: "It’s a really terrible thing and your wife is 8 and a half months pregnant and the doctor is talking to her about very serious things about giving birth and there’s really no easy way to bring up the fact that you have to tape a show that day.
"Take my word for it you can’t say that without sounding like a d**k. I was like, ‘When you say how likely, like how likely?’ She said, ‘Well you just have to wait and see.’ But I was like, ‘Owen Wilson and Seal are on the way to the show, how likely?’ ‘Well, very likely.’ So I did what I always do in my life at a time of crisis – I call Harry Styles. And God bless him for filling in for me."