All right all right my son m two m two lovely jubly you plonker rodney this time next year we’ll be millionaires kush for 22 years and 64 episodes the trotter delighted fans across the uk pools and horses has got into the psyche of the country and you can’t avoid it it was just so sid splitting funny they brilliantly written and expertly delivered dialogue it was a boy re it look like rodney it don’t matter as long as it’s healthy you’re annoyed at john solomon cuz he’s like how can you be that clever perfectly executed set pieces gold
Stamps how many gold for me the best visual gag in british comedy and it was both shocking and hilarious and unforgettably funny and moments of genuine emotion and i’ve never felt s in pain like that in all my life and you can really feel that emotion from both pouring through the screen how am i laughing one second crying another second and laughing again and it’s like whoa brought audiences back in their droves week after week year after year it’s a total lovehate relationship but they’d been lost without each other tonight we’ll be
Celebrating one of the nation’s favorite sitcoms it’s more than just a sitcom isn’t it it’s part of british culture with behind the scenes insight once we started to rehearse it and you could see what david was going to do with it you realized that it was going to be very very very brilliant and a peak had rarely seen scripts and sketches the characters are so clearly drawn in the scripts that it wasn’t difficult to see just why we love only fools and horses it just felt real and that’s why we fell in love with those characters a it’s
Genius it is so so so funny i thought do could do it i can do it lovely jly [music] gold believe in your soul my earliest memory of only forsen horses spanel ballet were recording in germany and we used to get the tapes of only fogs and horses sent over special delivery so that we could check it out because it was the only thing on tv that made you laugh there were moments in that show that had the whole country laughing at exactly the same time and it was wonderful i know it sounds like clich but for a lot of people it is the
Backdrop to their lives and it’s so much more than just a tv program is is something they really identify with and adore its original run reached a triumphant climax over the christmas of 1996 with an episode jam-packed with brilliant gags that perfectly suited the characters we’d grown to love i’m really worried rodney has he ever suffered with puracy only when he’s tried to spell it it was the beauty of the writing and the absolute alchemy between writers and casting the whole thing just melding together this is derek
Orir this was the most watched sitcom episode in uk history at 24.3 million more people tuned into to the trotters than that missed southgate euro 96 penalty or princess d’s infamous panorama interview 15 years after these original scripts were first broadcast it was obvious that we loved only fools more than ever and it all came from the mind of one man his eye in his ear for what was funny in real life and the way he transferred that onto the screen the way salivan did that was just it was masterful and i don’t think he’s ever
Been better i think david jason once said you came in in the morning got your scrips and we all got down on our knees and said our prayers to john sullivan he was a wonderful wonderful writer it’s a herculean effort you know 64 episodes he wrote all on his own i reckon he’s up there with shakespeare john sullivan was london born and bred growing up in a workingclass family he left school with no qualifications but what he lacked in grades he made up for with a passion for storytelling speaking back in 2002 sullivan here in his typical understated
Style explains how desperate he was to pursue this career path i’m so enjoyed the process of inventing characters and writing the dialogue and that it just became a kind of yeah basically a hobby uh it kept me off the streets and uh and i didn’t spend too much money on beer because i was just writing every evening and uh i suppose that the dream was that yeah i still hope i can can get into this business determined to get a script under the noses of the bbc bigwigs he bagged a job as a scene shifter and using hustle that would soon become the
Trademark of his best known character he managed to get some sketches into the hands of ronnie barker he liked what john wrote and he said write me more please and put him on a contract writing little bits for the rones and to a degree john was on his way in 1977 this jobbing tv writer got a big break when the bbc commissioned his comic tale of tooting revolutionary citizen smith it was a hit and four years later the be was ready to launch his next venture only fools was you know kind of died in the world working class
Or petty bour perhaps i do know that he set only fools in peckam because he thought it was the how can i put it grimmest area in which he could live there were loads of middle class comedies at the time but only fols and horses was like me watching people down my street when i was a kid it was a show that related to workingclass people this is someone who’s absolutely absorbed their upbringing and just kind of condensed it into a genius comedy with the series written it was time for the all important casting first
To sign up was 19-year-old nicholas lindhurst best known for playing the oertly posh adam on butterflies hey mom does this ey shadow look okay eyes shadow yeah is it dark enough where is it underneath it should go on top mak to make me look older makes you look tired great that’ll do was butterflies the first thing you did no not really it was it was the first one that actually became a series and we did four series of that and before that it was mostly sunday slot dramas and things like that prince in the parer heidi all that stuff i
Remember nicholas lindos playing the prince and the b playing both roles and he was very posh and a really good actor and i was really shocked to see like played rodney when he was initially suggested for rodney there were concerns over how he may fare on a pekka mate but these fears were unfounded as he made the part his own it is not a traffic warden’s uniform you got me done up as a bloody traffic ward is once and for all is not a traffic warden’s uniform now just trust me will you put your cap on well i look like a traffic wen i look
Like a traffic ward ain’t been well he just plays that uncomfortableness and that way of looking too big in your clothes he just makes it look normal which it’s not it’s acting delboy however proved trickier to cast producer ray but spoke to a guy called enr who unfortunately for him he was busy doing another series for itv and couldn’t do it they approached jim broadbent who of course came into any falls later as boy slater jim was busy in a west end show and couldn’t do it they looked at other people billy murray
Who went on to be in the bill and extenders and they also looked at robin nedwell another actor who was quite popular at the time david jason wasn’t on the radar really he was known for playing old men in shows like porridge he played quite a wimpy character granville in open all hours but they got david into reed put him with nick linthurst and magic happened you darth old s it was ar bellony all along any reservations the top brass had were quashed with david jason’s first scene in just a couple of lines we knew
Exactly who delboy was play civil play what an enigma i’ll get better looking every day can’t wait for tomorrow oh you know i think i’m suffering from something incurable still never mind when the show launched in 1981 audiences hovered around the 8 million mark figures that would signify a hit today but back then with only three channels to choose from they were considered average at best when it first came out it was something that people happened to upon i think john sullivan felt that i think he was slightly concerned that it
Wasn’t going to get a second series but i know that what made it was there was a strike at the bbc and all the programs were stopped being made so they put out a repeat of the first series very soon after it went out from that moment the ratings skyrocketed and never dipped below 10 million it was just madness pubs were closing loads of pubs started put televisions in their places because on sunday nobody was there cuz they were all watching fools and aes coming up we’ll reveal the secrets behind some classic only fool’s moments even now i
Started laughing just thinking about the chandelier again [music] one of the reasons we love only fools and horses so much is the sheer number of laugh out loud scenes and iconic moments i’ve seen so many of the episodes i know exactly what’s coming as soon as it happens i burst out laughing now that’s magic the classic moments they were set up so perfectly i mean even now i started laughing just thinking about the chandelier again it’s such a genius piece of writing it was a story that john had sort of known
Something rather similar had happened to one of his rel rel ation but right from the beginning we went god how we going to do this and we ended up at a school down in dors i think while we were filming and we found a house that had two chandeliers for me the best visual gag in rich comedy the set up for it all is glorious grandad does his very good line on the way upstairs to loosen the boat grandad you want a jy no why one before we come out and um oh it was almost like he was in the room is it anyway up he goes to to
Undo the bat upstairs you think they they’ve got it can’t get this out i’m start too it yeah no go we ain’t even up the letters br don’t you touch nothing till we tell you come on get there right rodne is anything you want yeah i want to go firstly there’s the buildup it’s just brilliant absolutely brilliant you know something’s got to go wrong cuz it’s del boy you know so you kind of initially wonder is it going to be they’re going to fall off the ladder is it going to be the fact that you know they’re not going
To be able to just have this sack under the chandelier and it not going to fall through their hands it was amazing on the set because it was quite tense because we only had this one chandelier the pressure was on for everyone and in this 2002 interview nicholas lindhurst brilliantly evokes the a full horror of what was at stake as he calmly outlines the knock on effect of one tiny titter ray he was only a little guy but fierce with it came up to me and said this chandelier that we’re about to drop cost £6,000 and if you laugh when it’s
Dropped we’ve lost the end scene if we’ve lost the end scene we’ve lost the episode if we’ve lost the episode we’ve lost the series because the bbc will only transmit six so if you laugh when that drops i will fire you what happened was we it all built up and of course and i think what you do you your reaction is to go oh my god this thing is going to go straight through this cloth and it’s just going to crash down right and brace yourself r me yourself [applause] [music] it was both shocking and hilarious and
Unforgettably funny what a piece of genius that that writing is how amazing that sequence is the way if you look at the way it’s constructed beat by beat it just flows it feels so normal and realistic and then this happens and of course it happens because it’s delboy and because it’s rodney and because it’s only fors and horses but it was surprising and genuine then to be topped off with the slow motion moving of both heads at the same time to see the other chandelier that’s draw you just laugh without stopping
Because there’s something to look at at every single moment as the show’s popularity grew so did the secrecy surrounding it often because the producers didn’t want the press spoiling story lines for fans but that wasn’t always the reason that whole episode was kept quite hush hush cuz i think they were very frightened of being censored and then being told they couldn’t do it the episode with the sex dolls it is one of my favorite all time episodes cuz i remember watching this i was quite a young kid when i first saw
It and it was just the naughtiest thing that i’d ever seen i think they’ve done a kind of pg doll a parental guidance doll that doesn’t sound right does it parental guidance doll of course most blow up dolls have an open mouth but we couldn’t show that so somebody altered the faces to make them more suitable for television cuz we knew we wouldn’t be able to broadcast it otherwise and we wanted to do the gag which involved the dolls and it involved them being inflated is that funny noise well that was important for part of the whole
Story [music] [laughter] how they got this timing i don’t know they must have rehears this a million times and you’ve got this lovely farle moment albert can’t get out the door dell’s holding the door and it’s just the funniest thing yeah all right all right well in another brilliant piece of topical writing dell then says i mean if that bloke from the council turns up talks us about buying this flat i mean gold knows what he’ll say if he sees pepsi and shirley here my house phone did not stop stop ringing i have never
Had so many people telling me you’re on only falls and horses i mean those calls were more than having a hit record it was hysterical and in a funny way i felt really proud that i was on b falls and horses even if it was a blow up doll proud i was jealous john sullivan’s brilliant ideas just kept coming and it was a pleasure for the production team to bring them to life most of the time well to be bril hon it batman and robin was a bloody nightmare people were absolutely desperate to find out what happened on
Christmas specials on fon horses a lot of the problems that they had when filming was the tabloids giving the story lines away so i started doing my every possible way of finding any location possible in bristol because there was aggro in london because you know you get to people who wanted to just ruin the filming there were all sorts of things that were going on and in the middle you get people in the middle of take oh d boy and all that but rumor had it we were filming a big sequence for the christmas special we
Got a huge amount of security in and we went down to an area of st paul’s which is all couple streets dark and and we lit it and we basically covered it all up with massive drapes going round 400 meter area and the actual batman and robin sequence of them running was actually the simplest thing i’ve ever shot we put them in in their wi bago and then i just get them out okay get them out run action run towards camera cut get them back in what’s happening that’s the faintest [music] idea [music] go it is the most spot-on perfect image
As the counselor is being mucked out of the shadows try smoke ride ing come that pair of plunkers completely out of breath i think it was about 1880 when when fog like that actually existed in london so where that’s came from i don’t know where where that p super rolled in from but it does add huge gravitas to the scene but it’s great we was all done in kind of like half an hour and the press sitting there going what are we doing now let’s go sorry [applause] mustach nicholas and apparently did this on the spot just sort of goes come on d
We’ve got to go does this proper old superhero kapow that adds to it and it’s just the timing of it and i see remember you just all fell about and i think we all had to do it again to be fair cuz uh there was there was so much laughter but you can’t celebrate classic only full scenes without a trip to this yepy wine bar there’s so many favorite moments but you can’t talk the bar we had no idea it was going to be like the most famous comedy moment ever you know it’s just one of those wonderful things that happens and you happen to be
Standing there it’s just wonderful once we started to rehearse it and you could see what david was going to do with it you realized that that it was going to be very very very brilliant and the most important thing my job was was to make sure i didn’t flag it in any way so we just established this ban going backwards and forwards subliminally in the background so that nobody really thought anything of him hey tri trigg trick over here you don’t see it coming there’s no closeup on the b flat all right all right he’s going at the old to the lady
In the corner over there so that totally that’s you think that’s the focus of it and this in the background is totally inconsequential it’s not flagged up not referred to not mentioned you don’t even see you don’t really see it cuz your focus is on what he’s talking to trig about david jason keeps the eyes focused it’s that i suppose that nails it as well there is no hint at all that he’s not going to hit that bar i think we’re on a winner here tri all right play it nice and cool son nice and cool you know what i mean
[applause] [laughter] dr up dr drink up we’re leaving a’t you going to try for them birds no no you’re cramping the style mate his reaction and trigger’s reaction was just sort of dead pness of it just wonderful it was just a stunt for but the way david handled it along with the direction just made it absolutely classic and i’d rehearsed quite a lot of shots because i knew it was going to get a big laugh so i had various shots of roger just from one side going where is he where’s he gone where is he now but i
Didn’t have enough the laugh just went on and on and on and on and then i suppose you kind of realized that was going to become an iconic moment gold stamps comedy gold next we’ll reveal how dell’s classic image was created i took dave jason out shopping his lovely wardrobe up the sort of dff end of oxford street i mean that is very market trader that is quite a common look that it’s well observed and find out how they managed to make us cry as hard as we laughed it’s kind of heartbreaking the writing is suant is best and that’s
Saying [music] something there’s so much that we love about only fools and horses but the beating heart of the show is undoubtedly the relationship between the trotter brothers without the relationship between um you know rodney and dboy there would be no only fools and horses they complimented each other beautifully hello tiosa herbert did you ken john peele come on boy just take a look at him will he spent three hours in a stately home and he thinks he’s the early sandwich you can’t wait to get a shotgun and a retriever and marching
Across the grass mes all done up like a plowman’s lunch can you i don’t think of dell and rodney as characters on a sitcom i actually think of them as real people and that is an amazing testament to the acting skills of both of them del boy for all his bluff and bluster you know he looks after his granddad and he brings up his orphan kid brother there’s a real warmth and heart to it that i think people clocked quite early on without having it ramm down your throat and the fact that they get into grips with some real hardships but not in a
Moish way nothing ever upsets there 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 family i finish with them what do they do to you eh hold your back drag you down and then they break your bloody heart sorry you get to see his feelings and what’s going on behind the d booy mask but he’s just putting on this show for everyone that’s what makes you love the characters as is so often the case with great comic
Characters delboy was based on personal experience i know a large chunk of only falls and aes were based on john sullivan’s own experiences uh he was a market trader when you have actually been to a market and there’s someone pitching the gear you know they are fascinating people to begin with you know at work to see how they deal with life on life’s terms as well that’s a brilliant bit of insight from sullivan he’s on the screen you don’t take your eyes off of him because he’s making you feel the character you
Kind of become him and you might take a bit of that mannerism the next day out with you like oh kushy deloy wasn’t made up out of thin air it was taken from characters that he’ met over the past there was a guy who um i used to work for when i was electrician i was a subcontractor i can never forget him because i used to do that all the time and he had he had the gold bracelets the rings and everything and he used to do that all right all right my son and he did leave a tremendous impression of me when this character came up i just kept
Thinking about it but it wasn’t just the performance and the dialogue that made these characters feel authentic they had to look the part two these are the original costume design sketches rarely seen on tv now i did sketches for the main characters with a sort of key kind of look i think that rodney and the grandfather are probably were fairly close to those sketches it was dell who was really i think developed into something slightly different he’s quite paunchy got quite a beer belly on him and dave jason’s not like that at all so
I think i was a bit off on his one then once um i sort of got going on it i took dave jason out shopping for his lovely wardrobe up the sort of dff end of oxford street and we had got a fun time very amable tried on all sorts of stuff look terrible suits and the sheep skin he used to like sort of you know jigging about and it he did look great in that thing i mean that is very market traded that is quite a common look that it’s well observed some of the shots the early shots of the market was in chapel street market in islington that was the
Market that i grew up in and i know for a fact that that is where the dresser went down to buy fake gold wristbands and watches that he wore on the sh saying their research was amazing they had it spot [music] on appearance was a major theme throughout with dell’s obsession with image perfectly holding a mirror up to 80s yuppy culture are you saying i’ve got to get an image no what i’m saying is you got to get rid of one see you take a look at me see i wear a trendy trench coat gordon gecko braces you wear a lumberjacks coat and gordon bennett
Boots my image says i’m going right to the top flat out your image says i’m going back to bed cuz i’m shagged out encapsulates that but he never he never gets there this time next year we’ll be millionaires of course it caught the mood and it summed up dell completely tough at the top i yeah don’t worry we’re going to get to the top one day don’t worry this time next year we will be millionaires it worked really well and it was it was poking fun in a way at the achievers and the showing off of the yep of it all which was all really rather
Silly now in retrospect that is a bit of me david took it beautifully and played with it beautifully d boy is aspiring to be better than what he is you know and he’s looking at these kind of highend people particularly kind of the yepy scene but then he just kind of kills himself when he has all these misuses of french phrases well goodbye no no not goodbye margaret no just bonjour orir when he says hello and bonjour when he says goodbye one of my favorite things with that yappy type of thing was when d boy was drinking
Cocktails all the time d’s cocktails are legendary aren’t they come on michael give us a drink will you log up for rodney and i’ll have uh a bailey and cherryade what it does is signify that that aspirational thing and he’s getting it wrong you know nobody who lives the high life you know really drinks cocktails like dell that’s just him trying to work his way up the ladder look i drink these you know he who wants to seem worldly wise and sophisticated of course he none of those things i constantly use the word delboy i will
Say so and so is a bit of a delboy everybody understands what you mean by that it’s somebody who’s a bit of a ducker and diver you know it can’t be totally trusted but quite likable and i kind of grew up in a bit of a dell booy house you’d have random things and you’d say to me dad where’s that from oh you know i’ve just bought a few and you look around there’s at 50 of them in the back garden so your dad was still boy i don’t know just one d boy i’ve come across loads and i’ve actually invested in a few as well i’m not sure they were my
Best successes in fairness and now and again you come across somebody and you think he deserves a chance that guy is an absolute tri and just with some guidance who knows it could be a millionaire rodney on the other hand i think would have been happy just to have a bit of a steady job and a settled home life what i like about rodney is there a kind of secret intelligence to him you know he’s kind of quite bright underneath all that but he never gets the air time to to articulate himself about roders who’s actually in many ways
Far more sensible in some ways far more far more debt as a human being he is the reasonable sensible viewers going don’t do this d don’t do this you know this is going to fail you know but yet again he’s sort of he’s tricked into going along with despite the constant and hilarious bickering you give my ass and headache rodney and dell regularly humiliating his brother just look at me i’m supposed to be going out in this tonight you ruined it haven’t you paor rodney is so tall and he’s always got his shoulders stooped and his face looks
Long and it and you can really feel rodney’s disappointment all the time and unfairness of what abdell boy asked him to do thanks to you i am now a 26y old man who just come second in a skateboard darby second you were in the lead when i saw you i fell off there was clearly a huge amount of love between them told you not to go m well their dynamic’s fantastic because it’s a total lovehate relationship but they they’d be lost without each other they don’t have any parents they really have that love connection more than most brothers and
They kind of only had have each other to rely on really they got it all now and this is no more evidence than at rodney’s wedding where dell in the role of brother father best man and business business partner says goodbye to the life they had together oh we had a few good years yeah had some good times right laughs and a couple of tears still ask what’s all about in i just wish that i just wish granddad and mom oh no shut up me [music] going i think it’s is best and that’s saying something it’s kind of heartbreaking when roders finally gets
Married and it’s just so beautifully written and it could quite easily have been heavy-handed cuz obviously you’re dealing with delboy being happy for him but at the same time he’s he’s suffering a loss because he’s losing this in a way he’s losing his partner the moment when he leaves and obviously he’s pleased for him and you get that feeling but then when delboy reaches and he takes the little figurine of the groom off the cape which obviously represents wodney to [music] him he’s just such a beautifully elegant
Really simple but really sort of almost heartbreaking moment of television sullivan had a way of bringing characters to life in a real 3d way you know he would give them the tools to only bring the humor but to be very human and real with it and to bring the paos uh and the empathy this is perhaps most strongly felt during a heartbreaking scene in the show’s original finale that sees dell and rodney trapped in a lift soon after cassandra suffers a miscarriage my god that scene makes me cry every single time it’s so real it’s so raw it’s just
Perfect k was so epic though we were looking forward and all we could see in front of us was this big wide highway and we were just cruising down it and all of a sudden it came to a shattering h just like this poxy lift we had a joint decision that we would not do it in front of an audience and i put them up against the wall in the lift so there was nothing clever to shoot it was shot far more like a drama what john did was even when it got quite sentimental or or there was a you know a difficult or moment that they had to
Deal with it never got overly saided for long he would quickly pull the rug from under that and hit you with a joke so that he didn’t like dissolve into moish and self pee you stop it it’s the only way i could get you talking can’t run away in a broken li you b you can’t come here come on the twist in it the very end is absolute moment of just this love that you feel that is there for the two brothers to be able to have that kind of of moment in a sitcom where you just go how am i laughing one second crying another second and laughing again and
It’s like whoa i don’t think john would ever say that the drama would ever want to take over the comedy and i do remember on a couple of occasions when we were in the gallery and it was very quiet they would be able to see we were doing very moving scene and he would go god nobody seem to be laughing or anything and i said you know john you know the people are completely r they’re almost crying out there you know uh he he he was nervous when there wasn’t anybody laughing next we’ll reveal what some of dell’s favorite phrases really
Mean you plonker and work out what’s going on inside the mind of this nag head regular i think they do think you know i am few sandwiches short of a [music] picnic we brits love a catchphrase our classic comedies are full of them none more so than only fools a show chock full of iconic delm yay lovely lely cushy cushy what a plonker as i just remember every time you got anything wrong it’s oh you plonker oh you dipstick and it’s so affectionate and it’s so loving we’ve never called each other plonkers so mine’s kushy because uh my dad used to
Use that a lot your dad used you you know they weren’t made out out of thin air those catchphrases they were real catchphrases phes that were taken from real workingclass people i have actually finished off meetings and i’ve said this time next week we’ll be millionaires and people just look at you and say h i hope we are cuz we know you are really it’s so beautifully written and the fact that there are catchphrases that came from it but they never felt heavy-handed because they never felt like they were put in there to be
Catchphrases you always thought well they were used in a way which felt real you’re in a hurry i got all the time in the world arie you meet me in the back of the car park in an hour’s time yeah kushy w be long lovely jubly the ear that sullivan had for dialogue was so finely tuned i think that he was capable of of seeing something or hearing something in real life and knowing how funny and memorable it would be in the context of his comedy creation part of our language it’s become inseparable from how we speak
Lovely jubly um kushy m to m two you know we we do them without thinking now i always remember harry you know stressing the importance of catchphrases when we would write together i mean not i’m averse to a catch phrase either but what is great about a catch phrase is that the next day people kids at school can do an impersonation of that character very quickly and very easily you don’t have to be a brilliant mimic to say lovely jubly you know or cushy i do remember i was at a family wedding and david jason was there i could see a few times people
Coming up to him and asking him to say lovely jubly and i did feel sorry for him cuz that’s the curse of having a catch phrases people want you to use it wherever you go d got his catchphrases from everywhere he might see it on the back of a box on the label of a shirt that said fabri bque and then of course there was one of the favorites lovely jubly that was d’s um misquoting of a 1950s 60s ice lolly brand where the catchphrase was lubly jubly and of course d used it uh as lovely jubly and you know you hear people saying it all
The time now don’t you but it wasn’t just delboy another classic catchphrase came from one of the ensemble casts i don’t have to tell you the public love trig they love r you too but they love trig how do they i’ve heard that before how do they react when they meet you like out in the street supermarkets garage whatever they well like he just did they like dave yeah that’s what i get when trigger uttered these immortal words to rodney in episode 1 a legendary catchphrase was born ah there he is oh trigger yeah you know my brother don’t
You yeah of course i do how you going dave sorry i’m late there boy i had to pop around me sisters to arrange an alibi for next thursday he’s got he’s got his own logic somehow to get there i mean well of course you see he thinks that rodney is dave so that’s right and nobody can persuade him other otherwise yeah and uh so why would he call the child rodney that’s right he he can’t quite work out i think he thinks rodney’s a nickname or something and always remember john sullivan kind of explaining the character that everyone’s
Kind of on this train track here but triggers kind of just over ear and he’s just kind of going along on his own kind of train track and in his own kind of world and no one quite understands it he was one of those people that he played stupid in the cleverest way and that’s actually a really hard thing to do cuz you know normally you kind of play a little bit of an idiot and you have to have a bit of bumbling about you but he was so still and measured in his delivery all right dave right have they thought of a name
For the baby yeah yeah well if it’s a girl girl wants to call it seoni after the actress sigoni wer and what if it’s a boy well if it’s a boy he wants to call it rodney yeah who after after me tr oh your instinct when you play a fool is to just kind of play it up and you know deliver it with that kind of energy and manic whatever but the more you hold it back and make it real to the character the more successful it is what name have they decided on if it’s a girl they’re calling call ing a souri after an actress and if it’s a boy they’re
Name it him rodney off the day i can’t imagine what it must have been like to have filmed a scene with rogero pac when he was bold trigger and this outtake perfectly shows how hard it must be to stay professional when roger lloyd pack is preparing to deliver just two very simple words problem dave we’d been reading the scripts and we would be going and the roger would come into a scene and they would be line after line after line and then you could hear david going here we go because he seen a roger line coming up and of
Course line roger everybody laughed but the interesting thing was david would never ever interfere would always be sure that trigger got the best laugh he could give it he was i think deep down quite jealous of it trigger was one of many great supporting characters in the show we all knew characters a bit like all of them not just delboy and waters but also all the caster characters around them anyone growing up in london we all know them characters you know that the wheeler dealers you know i grew up in a pub myself my parents
Republicans and we all know a bit of a trigger you know we all know a bit of a kind of snobby voicey you know we all know a bit of a denzel you know these kind of characters but the everpresent supporting character came from the elderly third trotter i loved leonard pierce i thought he was extraordinary there was something inherently sort of sympathetic about his performance and he’s got gullible and dell could have a laugh with him like he does in the scene of the ashes you know that’s that’s a cra sit there and do nothing do
Absolutely nothing and still get a laugh amazing there’ll be a scene between david and nick and be two pages of battling talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk and in would come leonard with one line and the whole audience would go woof with laughter and you could see david and nick looking at each other going we’ve just become a bast feed and this old man sits in this thing and gets all the laughs i mean they did it with affection i was down in it that laugh was was brilliant i remember them all saying it got such a big laugh in
The studio none of them were quite expecting it i thought he’d get a mild titter but it gets this explosion the way he does it then appear is actually slightly out of character he’s quite in your face with it and it’s i think it was almost that that shock that he sort of says it in this really small of almost aggressive way granddad was brilliantly brought to life by leonard pierce but when he died in 1984 just as filming was beginning on a new series john sullivan and the team were left with an unenviable decision
Should they carry on without him fortunately they navigated this tricky path beautifully only a writer of john sullivan caliber could write and would be brave enough to write an episode of a sitcom in which one of the much loved characters had died and we were seeing the funeral played out in real life the cast and crew had only been to lon’s real funeral recently and then they were back filming one down the road but john wrote it so carefully and of course it’s sad poignant moving and then he quite brilliantly has the gag of the hat
That’s gone into the grave it was a lovely service vier thank you very much has uh anyone seen my hat it was here it was a tricky time i mean obviously we were all sad but nick genuinely really really upset and didn’t come out of it for quite some time i think he loved leonard um as a grandfather father i think he thought he was the grandfather the nick never had but the void left by granddad was aely filled by the not very able seaman uncle albert played by a bank manager who only gave professional acting a shot
Aged 57 well i should have gone until 60 in the bank you see and uh when it got to 57 there was this early retirement going about and um i thought well money isn’t everything buster’s photograph his resume just flitted across rayb but’s desk looking like an old sailor and again the quality of john sullivan and he remembered way back in the it never rains episode when granddad’s actually in the spanish prison he came out with a line saying us throttles never made great sailors so straight away he had that line and an actor who looked like a
Sailor and uncle albert was born one of my absolute favorite moments with uncle albert is the sequence you know where he’s told how to react by by delboy you know um so that rodney gets a telling off for dating this other woman you know while he should be with cassandra that’s it that’s it it’s him he’s coming now don’t forget you got to look horrified right as though you’ve seen a yubo off the starboard bell not uncle albert’s delivery is superb and you can’t help but just go no not now don’t react now percolator is bubbling
Fancy coffee rodney no no thanks r i’m going out no no the frustration not only as you as a viewer but watching then del boy frustration on top of everything else it is one of the most genius scenes i’ve seen going on your own no going with someone you can can see in that scene and the seriousness from nick linders what’s the matter with him and you’ve just got on either side of the room you got nick linders over there bst over over there and it’s just one is dead pan and one is just complete comic genius who are you taking cassandra no no
Cassandra it’s a girl a girl a girl you can see in that scene david jason and tess trying not to laugh and and who can blame him you know i would have hated to hated to have been in that scene cuz there was no way i would have got through that one of the greatest things that’s come out of all this is that when i walk along the street i suppose seven out of 10 people recognize me but people break into a smile and that’s wonderful it’s like magic walk along and there there’s uncle albert up next who wants to be a
Millionaire the whole country was with them the trotters do of course i love the fact that his dream came [music] true throughout the ‘ 80s christmas wasn’t complete without a trip to nelson mandela house only for was christmas day christmas specials it was the big moment wasn’t it in our house it was hard work but we laughed a lot we all turn up we sitting there waiting to get the script and you can see them all going oh god i hope it’s going to be good how are we ever going to beat that last year and then we start reading it sort of like 10
Minutes in we all on the floor ah we’re all right now thank you let’s go and film it brilliant amazing mr sullivan so high with the expectations that when the show was coming to an end with a trilogy of episodes over christmas 1996 almost half the population tuned in desperate to know how the trotters would finally become millionaires do you know how many people watch that show that evening to watch them become millionaires 24 million people up and down the country it was absolutely huge i was just a kid but i can remember the
Hype and the excitement around the very last ever only fools and rumors going around they were going to be millionaires and the rumor was that they were going to win that lottery thing that had just started i can’t remember who he was the daily express uh the lady said um i cannot believe a person of john sullivan’s talent would fob us off for becoming a millionaire with vi winning the lottery and of course she was absolutely right he would never do that we all research a very long time to find something that would be worth that
Amount of money at auction and i think we came up with that watch and a certain strat of various violin could have possibly made that kind of money so they went for the watch john harrison was just about the finest watch maker of his time of any time after discovering the watch in the trotter’s lockup sullivan brilliantly ramps up the tension knowing full well that viewers expect something to go wrong have you any proof pro that this watch is your property a receipt something like that oh well no see don’t keep receipts they just clutter the
Place up well do you reckon that’s worth something then assuming it’s not a copy yes the thing about that is the first episode rodney is sat on the sofa filling in a receipt the tax man gets older that it puts away for 3 years don’t worry if a tax man comes i’ll eat it it’s the only way i keep a check on you dill i’m sure you cheating me in some way i just can’t figure out how cut to 15 years later that receipt is the thing so they’ve been millionaires the whole series because that receipt that rodney had has been in the garage the
Whole time i’ve got it i’ve got it receipt from the landlord look for two paintings four jugs one rocking chair one silver fob watch engraved harison good boy roders what have i always told you i’ve always said always keep the receipts you annoyed at john solomon cuz he’s like how can you be that clever it was magnificent i i think i might have even cried i shed a tear it was it was that bit at the auction house where dell falls over first this lovely nod and i’m marge towards that glorious scene when delboy falls through the bar
Without moving a muscle they enter the auction room they’re expecting maybe £30,000 if they’re lucky i’d like to start the bidding at £150,000 and pow straight down goes dboy in a dead faint exactly the same again doesn’t move a muscle falls dead to the floor and then they go back in and it’s in the millions three and three4 not to be outdone lindur shows he’s learned a thing or two from his onscreen big brother the beot stands at 4 million [music] pound the jason are clearly top fallers and i think what they’ve got is the old
Stiff as a plank straight back you know no fear when they were doing something which was physically quite demanding in coby terms and pulling off so brilliantly i no longer felt like wow that’s amazing it was just like of course that’s amazing it’s only falls and horses the whole country uh was with them i i don’t know anybody who didn’t wish dell well at the time and still does i love the fact that his dream came true and that he wasn’t destined or doomed to forever be a trier he got to be someone in his own eyes at least but
John sullivan wasn’t done yet there was one more heartstring left to tug when the trotters now living in luxury happened to pop back to nelson mandela house one last time it was really emotional and it brought a tear to your eye where it all started they now have had everything they’d ever dreamt of everything they ever wanted always wanted to be a millionaire rodney you know i always wanted a rollsroyce big ass in the country and jet off to the caribbean and all that well you’ve got it but actually they missed their old life but it’s not like
I thought it would be you know all the dreaming and the schem and the chasing and the trying that was the fun part you know it was like it was dangerous it was it was impossible it was like columbo sailing away to find [laughter] america you know and just not knowing whether he was going to fall off the edge of the world that’s how i used to feel and actually the phone went off and it was lenia and he was trying to give him d a deal and dg got excited he came alive listen he’s got 250 electronic carpet steamers right now listen they
Retail at 115 quid he’s going to let us have them for 25 nicker and then rodney had to point out to him that actually they weren’t in the business anymore dell says to lenny hello lenny no we’re not interested trotter’s independent traders has ceased trading b you it was such a moving moment it was over you knew at that stage that he put his old life behind him but it was the spark it gave him that spark again that he seemed to have lost now he was a millionaire and with that our three heroes walked off into the sunset as
Dell delivered the perfect spin on his legendary catch raay come on rodney this is our big chance hey he who dares wins this time next year we could be billionaires after the end of the show fans were clamoring for more the trotters returned for three festive offerings between 2001 and 2003 and again for one last time when delan rodney teamed up with a very special guest for sport relief in 2014 we didn’t think we could ever do anything because john had gone but you know his kids came up with a script which was very good anyway why are you
Wearing them glasses these yeah to be honest i thought that you know if i was to wear these no one would recognize me and i could be a little bit you know incognitive yeah good thinking amazed how how you know how they aged however that aside they were so on point with the performances but that’s what actors do good ones in 2014 they were still delivering the goods here is the speciality t yes each one of these has been personally signed by none other than golden balls himself no this is true straight up because it just so happens
That beex is a personal friend of mine isn’t he rodney i’m going to kill you they wanted to do something massive for that particular year and that’s one thing that david beckam would do without being asked twice he just said you know you’re in charge whatever you want me to do i do can i make that better cuz he’s not an actor are you david beckham i am but don’t tell anyone i don’t want to draw any attention to myself all right okay good [applause] boy what a do you know what credit where credit is due to old golden balls he does do
That fall very very well did it perfectly and did it so quickly i had to do it twice cuz i was just making sure i got it but he was great and and a very very charming man coming up the trotters travel from pekham to the glittering west end it was such a privilege that’s how i felt every night i’m walking out to do grand [music] dad as we’ve already seen john sullivan was a master joke writer heartstring puller and character creator oh salivan was just the best absolutely genius and that is a gift i don’t know how you
Write like that i don’t know how you you keep that you know formula going his brain must have been everywhere but he was also it seems a bit of a profit too john really did have his finger on the pulse of what was going on in britain and on occasions he was able to predict the future you know with the gen ification of beckham he really did bring a lot of realism into his situation comedy pekam here is becoming a very trendy area i mean it’s full of wine bars and beast stroes you know property prices are booming so if we can flog
This place to some you know chinless wonder for some vastly in orinet sum well that means that we can get a nice little drum out there in a suburb d council properties were built so the poorer classes would have somewhere to leave if they start selling him to huray henry’s where are they going to go isa or warington somewhere like that it just kind of says about the whole scene that was going on about popular kind of trendy wine bars and this whole thing looking 20 years later play on the money i wish i’d have knew him then i’d
Have bought somewhere and peek him the pekam like much of london seems a world away now from the communities john sullivan was writing about this was something that his son jim and co-writer paul white house explored further in the most recent incarnation of the trotter world aware of all the companies he actually granddad’s lament for what’s gone already you know it’s 1989 we set the musical in and things were beginning to change it was an idea of just sort of an old guy at that point thinking oh london’s changed for me it’s gone my
London has gone the old cy hangouts a changing [music] fast it was a really really heartwarming show i left the theater you know feeling great john sol had decided he wanted to write a musical about honey falls i think probably enough time had elapsed since the end of the tv series for him to want to do something different but when john sullivan passed away in 2011 the project was shelved for a few years until his son jim decided to take over where his father left off i was very wary about taking it on because of the reputation
Of the show and the love and adoration that it has and you don’t want to you don’t want to get on the wrong side of that all of course the legitimacy came from the fact that it was john’s idea john’s project and he’d written one song with ch hodes which is in is the last song in the [music] musical no worries and no cares cuz guarante no fear is time next year musical it was the most dangerous thing for anybody to right but i’ve got to tell you it was absolutely fantastic it was such a privilege that’s how i felt every night it’s a joy
Really it’s clear that the popularity of only fools shows no sign of waning anytime soon and some fans would go to extraordinary lengths to show their appreciation for the show even when you’re the miserable with dies only fools and alers is always a show what’s going to cheer you up so for them reasons i knew if i had that tatto on my back i knew that i’d never regret it and i knew that you know every time i look at it make me smile we took 60 hours some parts of it was very painful grandad hurt quite a bit yeah i was kind
Of g my safe you know it wasn’t as bad as del boy the del boy the bit middle of my back when i had him done i mean i thought what have i got myself into but i was like he who dares wins i got through it lovely jubly now i’ve got it all done all r paint it was all worth it cuz now i can up the girls bandy you know as deloy would say but if the ink is not your thing there are other ways to express your love i decided to build only fools and horses themed narrow boat to give people a laugh and a smile well the boat was
Called trots independent and after four pints of guinness in a pub it seemed like a good idea at the time but most of us are just content with watching and rewatching a solid gold comedy classic i think you’d probably have to put only fools and horses as sort of the ultimate sitcom because of the affection with which it’s held the life that salivan and the actors breathed into these characters was so rich and so vibrant and funny everything gels so well you knew any given week that you are going to spend time with essentially a comedy family
Who you adored you’ve got all these different cast members that you can call on to make it such a brilliant spectacle so i think that’s the true view to and that’s why it’s endured so long only fools on horses was a time piece and it should be wrapped up in that time capsule and buried forever because it was so good i think it’s a real family show um and i think it’s just got passed down through the generations and long may that continue i know when i have kids it will be the first thing that they’ll be seeing people will be
Laughing at john sullivan’s jokes and he writing way after all of us a long gone we just were so happy to be together working with these amazing scripts we sat around and we laughed and we joked it was work and it was very hard work but it wasn’t really in the end and you look back now and go how lucky we all [music] were if you or someone you know has been affected by any of the issues raised in tonight’s program please go to channel 5.
Com helplines for information and support we’re going behind the scenes of another classic comedy discover dad’s army secret lives and scandal brand new at 9:30 next saturday next tonight at britain’s greatest 80 songs [music]
