Only Fools and Horses was truly laem de Mon it’s just like legendary well lovely jubly really you know we know Delan Rodney better than some of our own family it became a National Institution you saw real people there a spectr of people but this is the story of some of the bits you don’t know I nearly died of fear nearly died in fact I nearly died it’s the story of Lost episodes when it was transmitted John said no this is not a good episode lost friends and lost jobs it’s a story about Christmas half the country sat down to watch the Trotters
moving moments everybody was in tears and Maggie Thatcher money money money money it’s about money and the story of some proper ducking and Diving you little bit woo a little W way all that sort of stuff you don’t know me too well but I’ve just written your next sitcom we’ll reveal some surprising secrets and Scandals behind Britain’s most pucka sitcom action [Music] [Applause] [Music] it’s the start of the80s the fairy tale marriage of Charles and Dy is off to a great start there’s war in the folklands and in London the writer of a newish BBC
sitcom has been called in for a meeting with his boss the first series of Only Fools and Horses hadn’t been particularly popular with either viewers or the Press series 1 and two weren’t the biggest success that we’d hoped for it wasn’t one of those sort of musty things marked out in the radio t times or whatever it just sort of slipped into the schedules without much fanfare luckily at the time most shows were given a couple of series to see if they’ve hit their stride but in a rare interview from 2002 writer John Sullivan
was refreshingly Frank about the BBC’s initial lack of enthusiasm for what would later become the most successful sitcom of all time John H Davis invited me to his office and talk about the future and the first thing he said to me basically was you don’t want to make any more of them dear and I said well actually I do we we all enjoyed it so much and we thought we had great faith in it despite lackluster support from his bosses John Sullivan got his way and was soon given an unexpected helping hand from the competition I think it had a had a bit
of a help from the series minder on ITV because minder had shown StreetWise people uh multi-racial London uh action in sort of lockups in strange places like Camden and Railway archways and things like that and the BBC realized that the background of peek could be equally as popular and the show also got a Nifty bonus thanks to a very timely Strike It wasn’t until the second series of only Falls and horses was repeated because of a technician strike where the BBC couldn’t make new programs so the second series was reshon and that
gathered traction and the series slowly became a a much bigger success nobody knew it at the time but those repeats included a scene which would still be voted the funniest sitcom moment of all time nearly 20 years later but for this particular particular scene there could be no retakes so giggling on set was strictly forbidden and as they got into their precarious positions a visibly stressed David Jason and Nicholas Lindhurst looked as nervous as Delan Rodney look this is the chance I’ve been waiting for but don’t let me down rodne
now don’t let me down all right all right Granddad we’re ready you can start undoing it now he’s coming d boy d boy and Rodney go to a manor house to repair someone’s Chandelier and you know they’re out of their depth they know they’re out of their depth and you know something funny is going to happen it was a complicated and expensive scene with only one chance to get it right and the tension was palpable one more turn d right and brace yourself Ry [Music] but that eruption of hysterical laughter meant had have been worth the stress
although as David Jason calmly explained in a revealing 2015 interview not cracking up had been the cast and crew’s biggest problem that day we are gripping everything in our professional bodies not to laugh CU we can see the picture in our minds at last the director shouts cut well you’ve never heard such an explosion of laughter from the crew and when I looked around there was people taking socks out of their mouths handkerchiefs microphones anything they could stuff in their mouths to stop laughing when that chandelier dropped do
you have to admit it still is one of the funniest moments ever to be seen on television as that chandelier crashed magnificently to the floor a masterpiece of comic time you might wonder where on Earth writer John Sullivan got such an outrageous idea funny enough the chandelier the world famous chandelier say things true happened it actually happened Sullivan’s father had been an apprentice plumber fitting central heating at an old manor house and as a safety precaution they decided to take down a chandelier they were all laughing
when he told the story they only going to knock the wrong thing for him and they would put it in the show and he oh can’t no can’t he was he was very nervous about not about doing it because people got in a lot of trouble for this and they got fired after every episode of Fools and Horses um John S would always await the phone call from his dad just to you know just to hear hear what he had to say about the episode and he was incredibly nervous about A Touch of Glass John Sullivan’s dad was very much of the of the school of thought that you
know that’s terrible people lost their jobs it’s not something to be laughed at but luckily um the phone went and John answered and um his dad replied yeah you’re right that was really funny Sullivan would use plenty of real stories in his scripts and he had plenty to tell he’d been a messenger boy a secondhand car salesman and a plumber amongst other jobs all the while sending scripts into the BBC eventually he decided that to get anywhere he needed to know more about how TV was put together literally so we apply for a job
in the scenic Department building sets the famous Mor and wife Singing in the Rain sketch he did all the plumbing um for for that sketch and he got to work on so many different comedies of that time from the mor wise shows the two rones and porridge he had access to camera scripts he had he had access to kind of really become like a student of of how the process works Sullivan was watching and learning but he was also meeting people who might give him a leg up if he played it right I think it was on the set of porridge that he finally
plucked up the courage to present the star of Ronnie Barker with some sketches he said do you read sketches from everyone and Ronnie Barker said politely yeah yeah I’ve read I’ve reading the sketches and he read the sketches and he loved them that was brilliant and so John Solon was put on to contract as a sketch writer on the two runnies having started with sketches Sullivan’s first sitcom script was citizen Smith which he sold to influential BBC producer Dennis M Wilson with all the huder of delboy himself and John sufan after doing his
usual set shifting work went to the BBC bar and found him there cigarette in one hand glass of scotch in the other and said aren’t you the bloke who gives people a break and Dennis M Wilson said yes what have you got and he wonderfully with a lot lot of swagger and a lot of confidence said you don’t know me too well but I’ve just written your next sitcom on citizen Smith Sullivan teamed up with producer director Ray butt who turned out to be the perfect person to help come up with his next idea Ray but who was the director from produc he uh
he was talking to him and he had this idea about people selling stuff in Market men in Street Markets you know fly pictures luckily like Sullivan himself Ray butt had at one time worked on A Street Market they’d watched fascinated in that in the same kind of way of the delboy types and how they performed as they were trying to sell and so that made him very effective as well in terms of bringing delboy to life and you’ll never guess who Ray butt worked for on the market a young Tommy kooper just like that anyway with all
these people and experiences to draw on Sullivan would never be short of a story but he even found inspiration amongst the cast themselves like the origins of Boise’s famous laugh there was one episode where John quite out of the blue just did this weird laugh just off the cuff it wasn’t in the script and then when he came to do the next episode I think it was a series later a year later and John Sullivan had written in the script boy he does his laugh and John said what laugh he said you know that laugh you did in that
episode so we had to go back and listen to it [Laughter] again it had actually come from a moment in a pub when he’ heard this woman who had this ghastly cackling laugh and he had for fun copied it anded everywhere he went John all his life until his dying day people would say go John do the laugh do the laugh coming up a rarely seen clip with heartbreaking significance and then we got the hammer blow that that Leonard Pierce died he died during filming and we reveal how Marlene got her famous look I mean why
not don’t we all love a bit of Leever print it’s 1984 tville and Dean win gold at the Winter Olympics the minor strike begins nice music listen it I typed it off the radio and the half Peak coin is withdrawn from circulation meanwhile at the Trotter flat in pekham it’s a typical scene with Dell and Rodney gently teasing poor old Granddad we in the RAF I flew in Wellington why didn’t you just wear flying boots like everyone else ah these old episodes are all so familiar I bet Dell’s going to say that famous catchphrase in a minute this time next
year we’re going to be millionaires oh yeah does anyone else think that the flat looks a bit sort of off you just take a butcher at that you know like it’s been shot on one of Dell’s Russian video cameras magazine about North Sea oil well spotted hang on I don’t remember an episode where they’re reading a magazine about North Sea oil well you might think you’ve seen every episode of Only Fools but I bet you haven’t seen that one in fact that episode was made as a promotional film for schools funded by a petroleum
company to encourage children into the oil and gas industry and it’s not the only lost episode of Only Fools more on that later but we can reveal that it does have a very poignant importance license to drill wasn’t shown on TV at the time but if it had been it would have been the viewer’s last glimpse of Leonard Pierce playing Granddad the second episode of series 4 opened with some moving and emotional scenes as Delan Rodney and attend granddad’s funeral we leave to car [Applause] we I have a nice little walk yeah con but in fact the cast and
crew were also genuinely grieving the loss of the actor Leonard Pierce who had died while the series was being filmed it was a terrible occasion you know this is Leonard Pierce who died not just a character in a show we were saying goodbye to a really nice a nice gentleman and a great character lard Pierce he’d always had health problems he suffered from hypertension and later on he also became somewhat reliant on alcohol as well he just became more frail because of his health as time went on sometimes he’d have someone help him
to come to work it was a tough life for him in in the final couple of years or so Pierce suffered a fatal heart attack age 69 a couple of days after filming some location scenes for series 4 this was late 1984 so I was decided to kind of shove everything until the new year the death of Leonard wasn’t just a personal sadness for John Sullivan and the rest of the team it presented a very practical Problem scripts had already been written and some filming had even been completed but now one of the main characters was gone and then the
question had to be how did they deal with this and and that again really shows you the distinctiveness of the show and also the distinctiveness of John Sullivan that he really wanted o Fools and Horses to be some something with more depth in it than conventional sitcoms whereas the old routine might have been you either write the character out or you recast it uh he wanted the character to die and the other characters to react to the death nothing ever upsets d boy I’ve always played the tough guy I didn’t want to but I had
to and I’ve played it for so long now I don’t know how to be anything else I don’t even know how to oh it don’t matter bloody families are finished with them what do they do to you eh hold your back drag you down and then they break your bloody heart and it brought a Darkness to the show and a different quality to it another diens mention to it that really helped to elevate it to the next level and and made it very special in terms of the acting and the power of the script in between um Christmas and New Year it
was decided that the series would continue but John Sullivan wouldn’t he didn’t entertain the thought of recasting the’s character so he had to cleverly write a new introduction episode and like all funerals family come out the woodwork and it was a great opportunity to introduce another character a brother of of Granddad Uncle Albert Buster Maryfield shuffled onto our screens as Uncle Albert with his father Christmas beard an endless supply of War Stories quickly inserting himself into Delan Rodney’s lives morning son
morning you’re back Boomerang Trotter always comes back what happened what happened I’ll tell you what happened I drove him all the way back to North London right through the bleeding rush hour and what did we find when we got there Stan and Jean have moved but Maryfield had inserted himself just as cunningly into the series having only recently taken up acting when he heard that Leonard Pierce had died he wrote a letter to the BBC asking to be cast as a replacement character the guy was a bank manager it was his first professional
job you know he he’d sent in a a photograph and John just went that’s that’s Uncle Albert you know it was a move of which delboy would have been proud lovely jly but casting the other characters for this funny sad Brash touching sitcom hadn’t been quite so easy when it came to D booy they did go through quite a number they looked at Jim Broadbent for example who didn’t want it because he wanted to stay on the stage and they looked at enry tell who was very famous for voice overs and they went through a few others until David
Jason became an option well Ray but caught a repeat of open all hours and he saw Granville this character played by David Jason and he saw something in that character this little man who was quite vulnerable but also quite prickly when it suited him raybot was instantly taken and thought that’s our Dell boy and he phoned up John Sullivan and said I found him he’s got to be David Jason but would this David Jason have the star power for a leading role David Jason was really an interesting character because for a good
decade or so if you looked at entertainment articles in the newspapers at regular intervals they were saying is it time for this man to become a star David Jason had played opposite Ronnie Barker in both open all hours and porridge and behind the scenes at the BBC there was a fear that casting Jason in a starring role would offend Ronnie Barker who at the time was one of their biggest stars and John Sullivan wasn’t sure that Jason was their man either John Sullivan to begin with wasn’t wasn’t overly convinced he had to take
take a little bit of convincing because David Jason was really famous that point for playing largely quite slapsticky type Parts I suppose even David Jason wasn’t quite sure what was going on with the casting David originally when he got the script thought well they want me to play Granddad uh which was possibly logical because he was quite Adept to playing old men the wranglings about casting David Jason were made more complicated because Nicholas Lindhurst was already in place as Rodney Nicholas Lindhurst great actor because he’s quite
Posh really I remember we he was like in Al Loa children’s film Foundation was like he was in The Prince and the pop and he played both parts he’d been in a number of things and obviously it caught many people’s eyes in in butterflies as a sitcom playing fairly kind of middle class figure but I think enough of the team had seen him in other things to realize that he he could bring this sense of authenticity and vulnerability to the role of Rodney Lind Hurst may have been perfect for the gawky awkward Rodney but head of light entertainment
Jimmy Gilbert was adamant that the two Trotters should look like brothers when it came to delboy and Rodney in particular I think Jimmy Gilbert thought because they were brothers they ought to be quite alive and So eventually when David Jason and Nicholas lindur were cast he was quite resistant to that at the beginning I think because he said they don’t look like each other and someone had to say well that’s partly the point the iconic part of Marlene was originally written into just one episode until Sue holderness impressed the team with her
first scene it was a tiny little scene in an episode called sleeping dogs lie it was in series 4 and all I knew about this character Marlene was that occasionally people would say or do you remember do you remember Marlene and the reply was always all the boys remember Marlene so you know I gathered she was obviously a a a bit of a girl the director said right s when you hear action just run out to D booy he’ll give you a bit of a snor maybe you pinch your bum and you’ll do the lines and then back you go into the
house Marley my love hello he did indeed give me a bit of a snog little bum pinch we said the lines and then I went back into the house and came back out with the dog with her massive fur coat and incredible 80s perm Marlene certainly made her Mark Marlin come along for God’s sake we do have a flight to catch come on kiss him goodbye yeah bye D see you soon but God s the dog Marley she made her Mark in lipstick on Dell’s face and at the end of it I absolutely just thought what a wonderful day out pity it’s only one day but hey
ho and it was a couple of weeks later that John Sullivan rang and said we like Marlin to come back and he said then this is a surprise because we weren’t going to have Marlin back thank you thank you Marlene’s dress sense was about as subtle as a leopard print brick and the secret behind that involved some very interesting shopping trips well when I got the call that I was going to be in only fils and horses I met up with the makeup and the Wardrobe Department in dickon Jones to choose Marlene’s look and everything we tried on the gordier
and the worst it was the assistants in the store would say oh Madam looks so lovely and that they didn’t really get it but we did have some glorious times and Lepard print did become a very strong feature of Marlin’s wardrobe I mean why not don’t we all love a bit of Lepard print as the series got bigger so did the cast and eventually Dell and Rodney had their own families but one casting decision could have made things very different for Rodney well many many people were considered for the roller Cassandra most notably Liz Hurley she
auditioned for Ro and it was felt that perhaps she was probably a little bit too glamorous for our how can I say it diplomatically our lanky Trotter brother with Tessa Peak Jones and Gwyneth strong joining the cast things felt a bit different at Nelson Mandela house and if they looked a bit different too well we can let you in on a little secret about that you don’t really notice unless you look for it but with this expanded cast the sets are lot bigger they literally just added like a meter and a half where the window was
and there like an extra extra section A this once unloved sitcom ended up making superstars of the cast including Jim Broadbent who hadn’t wanted the role of delboy but did bring a menacing snideness to the role of bent copper inspector Roy Slater Chief Inspector sorry I didn’t know you’ve been promoted do you fancy a cup of tea don’t ah actually Roy we’re in a bit of a hurry if please don’t mind I don’t think you heard the question D I said do you fancy a cup of tea well no you come to mention it I’m a bit parched
as soon as you mention the name Slater or Slater if you prefer immediately we think of only force and Horses Don’t We and immediately we think of Jim Broadbent he was Slater it was what a role and as Jim casually told an incredulous gram Norton it was a role with a much bigger impact than anyone would expect you’ve been in so many films and lots of them big big favorites when people come up to you what are the ones they always want to make or do you know when they approach you oh this is a Paddington fan or this is a
Bridget Jones fan Only Fools and Horses really really really more than anything else more almost more and it goes across the generations so kids now young people who weren’t alive when I did only fs and horses oh Slater oh he’s my favorite being famous for being in the nation’s top sitcom is a given but Boise actor John chalice was stunned to discover just how popular he was it turns out Only Fools was a massive hit in the Balkans and after filming a documentary about it in Belgrade boisey well John chalice was actually made an honorary
citizen of Serbia the cast of Only Fools may have been elevated to Godlike status but there was one occasion when the production was a teeny bit careless with some of them for Miami twice um it was decided to to really take the trotes transatlantic to this wonderful kind of big road film with the first part being filmed as like a standard 50-minute episode in London and the second half would be there the Trot of Brothers adventures in in Miami the most exciting read through I think probably was when we had Miami twice because at that read
through we discovered the only people going to Miami were Dell Rodney boy and Marlin you can imagine how pleased the rest of the cast were when they discovered that a big budget foreign shoot oh it all sounds very Glam what could possibly go wrong filming in the Everglades was quite frightening because we were short of time everybody was pushed for time there’s one bit where there’s an alligator that that is walking behind D and Rodney who are sitting on a log and they had a a big Burly chap called Shawn who was there to
um try and keep control of this alligator the idea was that the alligator would walk up behind Del Rodney they’d run off and the alligator would run towards them and there was a bowl of food here so the alligator was left off off it Lee very slowly walk away D we don’t want alarm here alarm what that thing behind it all going well dlan Rodney on a log alligator turns around good work Sean and then the alligator headed towards the camera to the bowl of food and didn’t stop at the bowl of food well the boys were the other other end of the
forest by then I in the meantime was had was filming this with my video camera and I didn’t notice that these boys had gone and I lost the alligator in my camera and it was about 2 feet from me and sha the the chap who was du to was supposed to be in charge had leapt on its tail grabbed its its its jaws shut and W was wrapping the thing around it with me I nearly died of fear nearly died in fact I nearly died not only a fear I could have been eaten by an alligator coming up the secret behind why we love these characters D Boy
terrible man it’s slugging you what what fire damaged walks rain damaged umbrellas what’s all that about and the episode that vanished for 20 years there were very few episodes that we weren’t entirely happy with one of one of the episodes was Royal Flush it’s Christmas Day 1996 and all over the country people are settling down for Britain’s biggest festive TV tradition no not me you idiot The Only Fools and Horses Christmas special and this year there would be three of them the series itself had ended 5 years previously but the show
was so phenomenally popular that the Christmas specials continued more than 21 million of us were treated to The Surreal and hilarious sight of Delan Rodney emerging out of a misty evening to accidentally stop a mugging on their way to a fancy dress party what’s happening the faintest idea [Music] having done a couple of Christmas specials and they proved popular um the BBC entrusted us with three episodes over the Christmas period I believe starting on Christmas day and working uh through the Christmas week between
Christmas and the New Year yes it’s staggering when you look back and think um possibly half the country sat down uh on an evening of of Christmas stage the Trotters cuzz it had sort of taken over for [ __ ] wise hadn’t it it was something you could watch with every age group with your children your grandparents it was just an absolute tradition and a huge gap if it wasn’t there but spoiler alert the heroes and villains episode was very nearly ruined for the expectant Audience by an overeager BBC publicity team in a bid to
improve their chances in the Christmas ratings battle the BBC wanted to Trail a clip of D and Rodney in their hysterical costumes ahead of the episode David Jason revealed in his autobiography that behind the scenes he and the team were fighting a battle on two departments against the press and BBC publicity and luckily the show had the clout to tell the BBC that nothing should be leaked the trilogy of Christmas specials that year ended with what was intended to be the last ever episode as D and Rodney finally become millionaires in an
auction house scene where their reactions say it all I’d like to start the bidding at £50,000 in the studio that night when the boys actually when when they had that wonderful scene in southern bees honestly the feeling in the in the studio audience was so lovely because everybody was so pleased for them that they’d actually done it they’d been through so much together as actors as well as characters but it was also the fact that they believed in these characters by now they’ created ones that were real to them as well as the
audience it was a very remarkable moment that was very emotional was quite difficult to get through time on our hands still holds the record for the highest UK audience for a sitcom episode but how did John Sullivan and the only Fool’s team know exactly what 24.3 million people wanted for Christmas the secret behind the bond between the audience and characters goes all the way back to Charles Dickens John Sullivan had left school with no qualifications um but his last in memory of school was an English teacher with
one eye who used to act out Dickens he would do he’ love so he’d act out Oliver Twist into the class he would act out DAV Copperfield and things like that and that captivated John’s imagination and the characters he created were all inspired by the things he seen and people he knew or people he’ encountered and that’s why you could feel the authenticity you had to be really good to be able to get all the language rhythms right because Generations people talk differently they have different concerns it was so complex it was
incredibly complex and this is where [ __ ] comes you see you think up one L these are people a grotesque still Boy terrible man it’s slugging you what fire damage walks rain damaged umbrell that’s what’s going out about people are being condia but of course when you see the bigger picture don’t always had that heart and that’s what he’d learned from Dickens that you could add these characters they could be flawed but at the same time they could be engaging I mean he’s a rogue delbo is a rogue now villain he’s a rogue with Only Fools and
Horses the audience weren’t just seeing themselves they were seeing their world what was so special about Only Fools and Horses was it reflected real Society you saw real people there a spectrum of people John Sullivan was adamant that he he was going to write a working class program because there were many other comedy programs on but they were all very sort of a middle class to upper class sort of things and they were all very white to be quite honest one of the things he admired about Dickens in his portrayal of Victorian London was that
he would have Jewish characters and female characters to to really show the full range of the typical communities at that point in time so the idea of having a black figure amongst these white workingclass londoners was very important to him to actually give at least a degree of authenticity to the community that he was portraying Only Fools and Horses Denzel was one of mainstream sitcom’s first black characters and we can reveal it was actor Paul Barber while visiting a School drama class in Hackney who inspired a young Idris Elber to become
an actor and when you looked around the various characters that you saw in in in the streets in the cafes and the pubs you saw young old and half to say black people black and brown people reflecting that they were part of that Society at that time you go out in your street and see what was on the Telly and there was a black character denel that’s what made particularly special for me it wasn’t anything to do with tokenism it was really to say here is an individual and he happened to be black like the others happen to be white or happened to be
very dim Only Fools knew its audience and was all about its audience trouble is when the audience wasn’t there that’s when things could go wrong we’ve already heard about one Lost episode but here’s a story about another one which ended up buried in the archives for years there were very few episodes that we weren’t entirely happy with one of one of the episodes that John certainly wasn’t happy with with was royal flush the 1986 Christmas special a royal flush was when Rodney fell in love with the Duke of murry’s daughter and Rodney and Dell and
Alba end up staying the weekend at the Duke of maly’s manor house and there’s the usual predictable comedy moments of them interacting with the higher echelons of this family but it’s quite a cruel dark episode it became clear that Dell wasn’t just being stupid he was actually being quite nasty to to roders I mean is a future whiskey yeah well it’s got two GC yeah a drunk Dell was usually still likable but in this awkward dinner conversation about Rodney’s time at College David Jason portrays a much more hostile Dell
how long are you there o 3 weeks three weeks well I left for personal reasons M his fault the hell no Rodney no it’s important that these good people know the whole trueu they weren’t his drugs what he was found in possession of why no they weren’t during the shoot writer John Sullivan had been away working on another series but it wasn’t just Sullivan’s absence that can be felt in the episode it’s the audiences there’s some sequences in the Royal Flush which probably would have been suited better if it was actually filmed
in the studio in the episode David Jason is um as Del booy is is very drunk if if that scene have been um recorded Ed in the studio he would have been able to kind of um work his performance the reaction from the audience from the laughter he’d be able to kind of match the tone to pitch it better but because it was on location and filmed like a film it didn’t didn’t really work as well as intended Not only was the episode filmed on location instead of in front of an audience but the editing wasn’t finished until Christmas morning
too late to show the episode to a studio audience and record a laughter track was originally when it was made and broadcast in 1986 it didn’t a laughter track so it was completely silent in certain scenes where Dell is being quite cruel to Rodney and it’s a very hard watch when you see that original version now even the Cho’s Lounge was was was shot at eing I believe on film cameras um not even at the television Center so it had a different feel to it and that also didn’t uh it just didn’t ring true and without an audience it it it it
didn’t work it felt like a dodgy Market store knockoff and we can disclose that John Sullivan was so unhappy with the episode that it wasn’t repeated for years and not until it had been extensively re-edited when it was all put together and and even transmitted John said he he he just said no this is not a good episode it was nearly 20 years later with a DVD release on the horizon that Sullivan had the opportunity to put right some of the problems with the episode he said look what can we do about about Royal Flush
can can we do anything to just take out Dell being nasty or overly stupid in this clip from the original version Dell’s trip to get ice creams at the Opera is uncomfortably tinged with aggression please be quiet I can’t find my place me we’re over here D thank you excuse me thanks girl excuse me oh oh oh yeah is that your foot yes oh are you going to continue making this noise throughout the entire performance I don’t know I might let you off the second half no will you please just sit down I’m trying to listen why don’t you shut up then
will you please be quiet I come down there smack you in ey a minute joh and it just got silly and it wasn’t clever so John and I went through it taking out lines I had a terrible job trying to sort of make edits that both made sense musically uh and also the also from from the actor’s point of view that same episode um was shown to an audience to get an audience soundtrack on yeah that was that was um difficult I don’t think we succeeded completely oh don’t put yourself down Chris is the new gentler version of the opera scene where Dell’s
got much less of the UMP we’re over here Dell thank you excuse me thanks G excuse me oh is that your [Music] foot coming up the secrets behind Only Fools and Horses most famous scene D say no we’re not going to do it again we’ll do it tonight cuz you know he wanted to keep it fresh and when sitcom meets drama it wasn’t just that they could get laughs a lot of the time it was very lump in throat stuff it’s December 1988 and the world is changing America and Europe have been connected by an Internet thanks to the
film Wall Street sales of braces and ffacts have gone through the roof people are drinking wine in bars wine bars they’re called and Only Fools and Horses has been extended from half an hour to 50 minutes in Shepherd’s Bush a studio audience is waiting to watch the first episode of the new series and with its new longer running time the show’s Under Pressure to deliver some really big laughs this shows were getting bigger and bigger and getting a ticket to go and watch only fren horses was like getting a cup final ticket it really was
this is a ticket that the audience would have got they got him for free they wanted to be there and they bought in completely to the show it’s just a great atmosphere all down to the warmup man I might add so oh we all love a warm-up man but what this very lucky audience don’t know is that they’re about to witness a scene which would regularly be voted one of the greatest TV moments of all time the rehearsal was in the afternoon and I remember David doing it going over and doing and I remember Tony coming down and saying
right can we do that again and I I I seem to remember David said no we’re not going to do it again we’ll do it tonight cuz you know he wanted to keep it fresh and of course we knew what was coming um but of course the audience didn’t and when you’re working on a Fisher boom you’re quite high up um above above the Set uh and we were all just waiting for this I can still remember just waiting for this particular stunt to happen knowing that the audience would just fall apart with some clever use of extras to distract the eye the result
was a piece of exquisitely timed comic Perfection I think we’re on a winner here tree all right play it nice and cool son nice and cool you know what I mean and it was just the biggest the biggest laugh I’ve never heard a laugh like that at the BBC I’ve never heard a laugh like it the way in which he fell uh unflinching straight down it’s amazing it’s timing timing timing timing timing timing time trigger’s typically gormless failure to realize what’s just happened is as much a part of the scene as delboy’s perfectly executed fall
[Music] drink up Tri drink up we’re leaving are you going to try for them Birds no no you’re cramping the style mate you’re cramping the style but in fact trigger was not even originally intended to be in the scene and it was only when the team bumped into Roger Lloyd pack by chance at the rehearsal Studio that he was written in the original script for yepy love um David Jason’s standing at the bar by himself um and because Roger Lloyd pack was another production at the BBC at the time he was appearing in another program
and he just happened to be around he was quickly ridden into that scene um and it yeah it works so well cuz suddenly there’s this great reaction shot Dell and trigger’s trip to the wine bar was all because of Dell’s New Image Only Fools was moving with the times and Dell had become a yepy well on the surface at least no I mean it is I mean it’s the little things you know it’s like me aluminum briefcase there me Mercedes key ring my file effect effects when people see these things they know exactly what I am it is a bit of a giveaway is it one
of the great things about um the organic growth for f losses was John was able to to weave in social trends and so you had the yappies now in the 80s you can talk about how much money you make which as an American I thought well I mean it wasn’t that okay with everybody but it wasn’t you can talk about your house how much it cost you can talk about your car how much you paid for it you can talk about your clothes you can talk about your job that was not done in Britain before John Sullivan like to bring in topical things when he could when he
thought it would be relevant and it would work that would reflect very much 1980s Britain he writes modern um uh modern history into his scripts and wrote comedy around how his characters would react to to this new political uh crisis or F or fashion but bringing in topical themes and contemporary fads also meant that our own lives seem to be moving in parallel with the characters not something that usually happens in a sitcom I think only Falls and horses actually went beyond its genre in a way that it it ceased just to be a sitcom
certainly in a conventional sense because as the saying goes in sitcoms what you do is you nail the character’s feet to the floor and you don’t make them change John Sullivan and I think the cast to some extent wanted to grow and so the the show really becomes a kind of hybrid between a sitcom and a soap it became a kind of life story um as dramatic as it was comic with all the complexity that comes with it as director Tony da explained insightfully in a 2002 documentary it was the development of John Sullivan’s
writing itself which drove the change from Pure sitcom to something bigger one of the defining moments of Fools and Horses that was when John realized that he always had the ability to make people laugh but he probably then realized he had the ability to make people cry one of the thing about John’s writing is that you can go from from circuses to funerals in in less than half a page it wasn’t just that they could get laughs a lot of the time it was very lump in throat stuff suddenly there’s a there’s a moment where their world comes
crashing down I mean Rodney he he could touch people’s hearts couldn’t he I mean the whole story of Cassandra and the miscarriage was heartbreaking the moving and memorable scene where Dell pretends their lift is stuck forcing Rodney to confront his deep sorrow is an astonishing piece of acting is Cassandra hurting of course she is how do you know you haven’t talked to her about it no and you know why it’s because it’s because like it’s almost if if I don’t talk about it it might not be true but it is I know I know but if I
don’t say it if you don’t say it what we lost our baby with Rod in the lift heartbreaking and and uh because that’s life you I mean you can’t just all be you know comedy comedy comedy and that’s that’s good writing when you can uh when you can Bridge it with some real pocy and stuff that really gets you like that show does few of us would disagree that Only Fools and Horses is an absolute sitcom classic some of the best acting in British TV was in that sitcom but its big secret is that it wasn’t just a sitcom it was part of our Lives I think
that’s why people go on being being so fond of it because we have all grown up together it’s so accessible to to everybody and what they’ve lived through it was a show commissioned on a wing and a prayer which ducked and dived its way into our hearts and became part of the family the audience felt like they knew Dell they knew Rodney they knew boisey they knew all the characters it became a National Institution something that became part of our culture it’s an authentic record of Britain at the time not to mention a true quality piece of
merchandise bonjour now whether you love neighbors back in the day or you’re a lifelong Ramsey Street regular it’s going to be a stellar send off and emotional too neighbors the finale next Friday night at 9:00 stick around Ford the king Sara Franklin Simon and gar funcle and Sila black 1970 was a strong year in pop Britain’s biggest hits next
