This is the story of how one sitcom became one of the best loved and most watched shows of all time sh lazy and created the most beloved christmas specials in tv history when i hear those stories about how much pleasure it’s given a lot of people oh bane marie bane marie it gives me a great reward one two three yes tonight in the company of the great dell booy himself poery poer we’re celebrating the greatest moments of the fabulous festive episodes our coach is just blown up of only fools and horses which way to holland with cast is it
Derek raquel everyone everywhere had watched it crew it was a bloody nightmare and famous fans it’s just brilliant what an episode leave without out you tart it’s timeless you it’s just perfect who thinks of that we’re celebrating the trotters come here there is this extraordinary bond between the two of them what’s that dirty looking thing reving in the greatest scenes that is your uncle rodney i couldn’t stop laughing cuz it was so funny along with rarely seen moments these white mice did not turn into horses really there was nothing to
Touch it and hearing backstage secrets it wasn’t a trick because it was actually done we took all night doing it and sir david jason will share which one of all the fabulous christmas moments is his favorite of all it really is difficult to choose so prepare to have your ribs tickled i fought for free speech shut up as we celebrate christmas with the trotters oh and merry christmas yeah and a partridge up your p tre and all your when it came to the christmas specials we all had a great time making it it was fun throughout the 1980s and ’90s
Christmas wasn’t christmas without turkey tinsel and an annual trip to peckam for a festive feast of marvelous moments sorry the only fools and horses christmas special was required viewing not only was fools and horses christmas chras special the highlight of christmas for me but it was for the whole family i think everyone in the country after the queen speech that’s what they all did they watched the christmas special of any foen horses you know what i said to him the night that we came up with the scheme this time next year
We’ll be millionaires i said this time next year we’ll be millionair was like a christmas present 1981 was a year of firsts march saw the first london marathon in july prince charles married his first wife and in what would be a far longer lasting love affair on the 28th of december the nation got the first only fools and horses festive special christmas crackers oh bane marie bane marie that episode it just it it’s got a lot in it that that captures why only fools and horses were so brilliant that very first
One um was amazing because he had the electric knife we had the identical electric knife that mrs p would use on [applause] christmas must get a plug put on this thing on after watching that show the funnest thing we would do is unplug her what we get in that first christmas special is some classic only fools and horses moment and really sums up that family dynamic grandad he looks after the home that’s the idea he’s going to cook meals for everyone but he’s not very good at itad slightly underdone maybe slightly underdone or a kiss of
Life would revive that ch it’s is a breathtaking piece of writing because although dell is the comedy star rodney has these little moment moments of genius these moments of genius were almost unseen the bbc only asked for a festive helping of only fools just 6 weeks before christmas bless him john suiv was under a lot of pressure it wasn’t really enough time to do it for christmas we should have asked him months before and so we’re all sitting there like 2 weeks before christmas going what do we we are we doing the
Show they said yeah yeah we’re doing where’s the script we haven’t got a script yet filmed just a week before transmission what they do is they take the gyet out put it in a plastic bag and they put it back inside the turkey don’t they yeah the final show was far more fabulous than granddad’s foul feast you took the bag out didn’t you i didn’t night was in there oh my god because we all knew each other and because we just loved the show so much we all just knuckled down and got on with it and en and enjoyed it the only fools and horses
Christmas episodes have become iconic but here’s a moment from a 1982 bbc comedy special that may be less familiar silly old here rodney chuck that away will you but you could quite easily have made some fresh could i even long this six minute sketch called christmas trees is also known as the lost episode as it’s seldom been broadcast for 40 years isn’t that beautiful that he raised the chess as they say in it even as a lifelong fan i hadn’t seen that christmas tree sketch in the market but it’s timeless you do
Not have to struggle with it like you do the old forest type christmas tree because this tree falls down it’s all about dell booy trying to sell some slightly dodgy christmas trees you’ve got no ethics you don’t even know what ethics are do you yeah h ethics make model airplanes it’s incredible underling jokes that go with it together i i just loved it the first two series of only fools and horses saw doing figures of around 8 million a hit by today’s standard but not so impressive in the early ‘ 80s series 2 of anys and horses was not that
Successful and john sullivan was really downcast about it but it was repeated in the summer of that year and suddenly it was huge in the ratings which meant that 1983 marked a milestone a coveted christmas day slot for thicker than water where we met a ghost of 18 christmases past re this is rodney rodney i’d like you to meet your dad the way that john had written him was he what can i say wasn’t really a very pleasant sort of character dale boy good to see you son pour yourself a drink d booy’s patently angry that his
Father’s turned up you can see the anger that he feels about being deserted by their father he’s back now well after 18 years did his watch stop stone near rodney we see more of al’s comet than we do him it made me angry watching this because you know you the frustration that delboy has trying to explain to rodney look you don’t understand this man just went away one of the only fools and horses themes i think over the years was for dell to say something funny in a really sad moment or an emotional moment in the way that a
Lot of us do which i think is what gives it that genius do you know once when i was a kid i was doing me homework and i asked him what a cubic foot was he said he didn’t know but he tried to have a weak off work with it and of course that just was typical of john sullivan he made a wonderful piece of comedy out of a piece of tragedy if you like you can have humor you can have good acting but if you haven’t got heart you haven’t really got a program and i think what this program has is is heart and kindness qualities this episode had in
Spades as delboy sent his dad away he did it with both heart and kindness you can see the heart of delboy and he he’s not going to let him go with nothing so he is he you know what delboy is and it’s just the most beautiful moment 10 million in to watch the first and only appearance of re trotter and the last for granddad leonard pierce died as filming began on series 4 we all loved the show so much and we loved working together that suddenly to to hear that leonard had passed see you yes see you grandad was a terrible shock for all of
Us we had to stop filming and we didn’t know quite what was going to happen coming up which way to holland the christmas specials get more elaborate it was the most expensive joke ever to have been [music] perpetrated christmas is all about family but when it came to brotherly love there there was none greater than that between delboy and rodney trotter most of the [laughter] time you couldn’t have had a better um co- partner than nick he said to me i’ll always want to be your wingman we liked and respected each
Other so much and we were genuinely good friends what you never lost because of those two great performances was the love that the two had for each other as brothers all i ever got was a 50 yard certificate at school well you only need to swim 50 yards down on your bike you could believe they were brothers there’s a deep bond between them but they fight like cat and dog some of the time they both got so brilliant that it was sort of effortless and we knew them they almost didn’t have to say very much for us to know what was
Going on i can’t think of two better people to have learned from than david jason and nick lindur the christmas specials were always centered around the holy trinity of trotters she joe nothing much we was just talking about w that’s name but following the death of leonard pierce in 1984 just as series 4 started filming the whole future of the show was thrown into doubt john’s decision was do we recast in other words grandad lives on with a different actor playing it and i think john rejected that in probably a
Minute flat and then we thought well what we’ll do is we’ll introduce another character we’ll get a member of the family that was a long lost member enter uncle albert who would go on to appear in 13 christmas specials what’s that dirty looking thing that is your uncle rodney he brought another side to the trotters and i mean a really clever way of not replicating a character who’s no longer there but actually maintaining that sort of trium between the three of them uncle albert would become a firm fan favorite in the festive editions of
Only fools but buster merfield who played him wasn’t even a trained actor it’s just extraordinary because he was an amad actor who had been a bank manager but he put his photograph in and they thought oh that looks good and it’s obviously the the extravagant bit white beard and of course at christmas time you think it’s his father christmas it’s just perfect uncle albert that well-known naval captain of her majesty’s navy was another great character and no christmas special was complete without his wartime reminiscing
During the war huh during the war during during the war he was always going during a war bo watch it he’s a war hero he’s got a right to speak i fought for free speech shut up during the war well during if you say during the war once more i’m going to pour this cup te right over your head i wasn’t going to say during the war well that’s all right then bloody little nol you’re all right i’m sorry thank you during the 1939 1945 conflict with germany he probably didn’t go to the war at all uncle albert would be front and
Center in the 1985 christmas special to hull and back which saw the trotters charter a boat to holland putting uncle albert at the helm what could possibly go wrong aoy there yeah yeah ship aoy dell every single ship or vessel that man has ever sailed on a sank i know luck’s got to change sometime in it rodney the bbc of stumped up the budget to do a feature length episode a large budget £850,000 this cost and that’s a bit of a gamble but the show had become so popular at that point that they were prepared to do it this is a show that
Basically started in a flat and that was it main scene and then suddenly it’s it’s kind of big and it’s out in the real world so it’s quite a shock for the viewer but it’s but it’s quite wow as well we were going to amsterdam and how to get there was a bit of a problem so we thought we’ hire a boat to take us there albert slow down you’re going too fast hey to your right got a captain you know that was uncle albert you you mean starboard i mean right don’t start all that captain birds ey bloody cobblers i said right finally
Being at sea with the guy who goes on about being at sea all the time is is funny and uh um and and you and it draws you in this episode called for location filming on the north sea cast and crew set sail to bring us christmas special tv magic in those days there was nothing called health and safety so i think we probably just went down to the docks and saw that that all looked some scruffy old boat found out who owned it and we booked it this island race this septic aisle we didn’t think anything of it at the time
Absolutely nothing that’s brck we got salt water flowing through our veins now we shut up about blood and vines we set out in this bow all of us go out into the ocean wait till we get out there on the big waves we’ll be going up and down and up and down and we were riting about in the middle of the north sea this boat’s going i mean and i i’d be fascinated to know how they sort of survived it all the costume department were seasick the cameraman was feeling sick i was on the boom at one point holding the sound because the boom
Operator was being sick feel sick though i leave without you tart david and nick were kind of i think no nick wasn’t feeling great oh god and while much of the action could be filmed in closeup on the harbor there was one particular moment that required the boat to go offshore quite a bit offshore all the way to an oil rig the problem was that we soon realized the uncle albert wasn’t quite as well equipped about navigation as he purported to be and so what the joke was we sto at the bottom of the oil rig and derek trotter shouts
Out hey wa jump holland what which way to holland holland the flo just looks at him and he’s in this mankey little troller with uncle albert at the helm and he just looks at him and just points that way and goes it’s over there cheers pal albert holland is that way what you saw on that boat in fiction was like them all going what the hell are these idiots doing was it like it in real life what are these idiots doing in the middle of the sea rodney see don’t know the way you just got asked someone a you despite being a mere 40 seconds
Long this iconic scene took a 12-hour round trip to film so that was the day uh to to do one line really basically very funny that episode was one of the if not the most expensive joke ever to have been perpetrated certainly by the bbc if not for television the world over who thinks of that you know obviously john suan it was absolutely brilliant for them to be spending the level of money that they spent as thoren horses grew was unow but they knew they could attract tens of millions of viewers on christmas day it was the highlight there
Was nothing to touch it so hilarious was this epic tale of high jinx on the high seas the bbc decided to go head-to-head with rivals itv in the battle for viewers there’s always been a rivalry between the bbc and itv especially at christmas this was a jewel in the crown for the bbc schedules at christmas and and they very deliberately put it up against itv’s big hope of minder i remember that we were disappointed because minder was one of the big successful shows that itv had that was sort of so dangerous because we thought
We’re going to lose a lot of the audience to uh itv and this is a time when you can’t just stick the video on or set the the digital box to record it people would be i got to make a choice now i’ve either got to watch minder or we’ve got to watch fools and horses an auntie went all out with their press campaign as seen in this rare bbc breakfast news sketch mr trotter now you assured mr buttons that these white mice were magic and they turn into horses did i say that you most certainly did turn in horses yes and i’m here to tell you
Mr trotter that surprise surprise these white mice did not turn into horses really i suppose in michael gr’s mind it was um well we’re going to we’re going to pinch your audience that’s what it we we’ve got the best show with almost 17 million of us tuning in only fools were the clear winners over itv’s 12 a2 million so actually michael grade um uh won his point really didn’t he you know so it was quite quite an achievement really nobody even minder no one could compete with it there’s no one i don’t know anybody who would have competed
With only fools in that time and every year it got better and better and the following year’s christmas special good sh which saw the trotters mingling with high society got almost 19 million viewers come on where are you i know you’re at there somewhere you free will jello but despite his popular po ity behind the scenes it was far from plain sailing good morning ch hod royal flush was uh a late decision by the bbc to want a show for that for that christmas period i think the filming was squeezed into a few weeks
And a lot of factors conspired against us uh nick lindst uh went down with about a flu dav jason uh lost his voice and they lost filming days because of that the problems of royal flush um sort of went right down to the wire finally it was still being edited actually early hours of christmas day on the day it was shown would you like these sir now can’t listen to music while i’m shooting the show was only completed hours before transmission but ready when you are john do you mean paul but it did have some cracking christmas moments in your own
Time my [music] son it wonderful cuz it’s light sort of b inclined isn’t it just up and the bang bang both of the gone i’ll be all right when i get me eyeing and the incredulity of jack hedley who plays the father of rodney’s poshh girlfriend it was great where did you get that gun from iggy iggins iggy iggins robs banks no but it’s saturday the best line after is about the fact that you know this this gun was used in some properies it’s an actual real gun the christmas specials weren’t just entertaining festive ratings
Winners john sullivan also used them as a chance to introduce key new characters not least in 1988’s ba winning dates is it derek raquel yes oh hi hello hello that was the very first scene i ever filmed with david and i remember being quite nervous and i remember walking in and roger lloyd pack who played trigger said oh welcome on board uh your life will never quite be the same again it was quite obvious that dell couldn’t go on being you know couldn’t go on being a bachelor have a a wife and it you need to have a female character to play off
So in terms of the structure of the program raquel was was the vital element this is a bit like brief encounter isn’t it that’s my favorite film oh yeah oh yeah and yeah and it’s mine yeah mine really when we came to do this scene at waterl station it was meant to be not in the middle of russia so they closed off water loose station that’s the power of fools and hes they kept everybody back for 15 20 minutes while we film these sequences my favorite bit is when the big spaceship comes down and all the little mars come
Out that’s close encounters yeah i love it that was the first thing we ever did when i was in the program meeting under the clock at waterloo station i don’t think anyone realized of course probably how iconic that scene was going to be long term they just at the time it was just a rather sweet way of two people on a dating agency meeting under a clock and then of course it came out on christmas day and boxing day and yeah it was amazing i mean everyone everywhere had watched it but it certainly did change my life but i think it’s unfair to say
That everything he touches goes wrong coming up an explosive christmas moment our coach is just blown up it wasn’t a trick because it was actually done the entire studio just sort of [music] exploded the 80s was the decade of consumerism making money spending money yuppies would flaunt their wealth in displays of blatant one-upmanship right up dell street derek trotter was very much like the pico he got body language and he was young and fit and he was all symbolized all of those things and the 1989 christmas special jolly
Boys outing saw dell embrace this new yuppy world nowadays it’s the sort of game that guys like me and steven enjoy it how do you mean guys like me and steven well yeah yappies derek i am not a yappy you are steven i was that bell yuppy at the time i had a burberry coat i had a file ofa i had a scarf we just followed the trads and there was no way that dell wasn’t going to fake it till he made it he had all the kit so he had to have the coat and the ffx and the mobile phone and makes you laugh at yourself i did that i
Had a fire fact i had a mobile phone he wants to be a yuppe we start to see the braces he’s got the filofax and then when he comes up against a real yuppe in steven they don’t see eye to eye sleepy dawn rises to reveal killer manjaro in all its hypnotic majesty oh sounds great we’re all going on a beo to margate let and that beino to margate gave us some of the most iconic christmas moments ever in this much loved festive favorite we were a team and because of that we had a wonderful wonderful working relationship we could not stop laughing
Right come on in denzel full ahead both we’re off to marate the jolly boys outing is a much loved episode if you ask many people they’d say it’s their favorite because you know we all want to be there we feel like we’re there enjoying the day out with with the gang you see the the brothers get together with everyone and they all go for this day to margate and cause chaos of course uh as they always do everyone was there boisey trigger all right dave in a joyful three-minute montage which required writer john sullivan to rely
Heavily on the creative skills of the director when i got the script it said bus comes into town we’re having uh everybody’s talking and over to you and i went oh thanks the director had set it up that um we should all run into the sea just to show how these silly men are being like children again he explained what he wanted us to do was to all running up to our knees and just paddle about for a minute the as we all ran down i s this is too bloody cold this so i turned around and ran back up much to the surprise of everyone including the
Director we had great fun running in and out of the sea i couldn’t get out the sea quick enough everything about that was a jolly boy outing to be quite honest and i realized that we were only halfway through the you know the song and i still hadn’t got enough to actually allow the program to take a breath and do that fantastic montage of them just having a good time down in margate it was a bloody nightmare it was absolutely i always remember it those actors when they got together in between takes someone would
Crack a gag they would never stopped talking and laughing and it was an absolute nightmare but i it wasn’t obviously it was great fun and david jason one of his favorite sequences of all the fools things and he said because we were allowed to do it but after all that fun in the sun what followed was one of the most explosive and hilarious moments of only fool’s christmas history d smoke coming from the radio well you must have pressed the wrong button or something well that got one of the biggest jokes in it again that uh
Anybody had dared to do john and i used to meet up every so often we call it script meeting which basically meant we talk about manuscript and have a few glasses of wine so this particular occasion john said what we need to do is to um is uh can we get a coach cuz i want to start a little fire abandon [ __ ] come on get off come on and everybody hurry up look liely and i basically said at the end of the night oh come on john let’s just blow the [ __ ] up it’s unfair to say that everything he touches goes wrong
But that was how that happened it was a drunken evening essentially it wasn’t a trick because it was actually done we were all standing there and it just waiting for it to go and it blew up it was just a a lovely lovely moment don’t wor ar i won’t tell your governor about it the flames you see the orange flames and glow that you see around us is actually very true that came from the explosion there’s a charge that was in the back of the bus that didn’t go off so unfortunately they had to do that again which for us is you going to blow
It right this time because i ain’t stay in there fire like that ever again the first time i saw it was on film on the television sets in the studio with the audience and i’d heard them talk about it and they’d all said oh it’s going to be a laugh as it blows up i thought really well the entire studio just sort of exploded literally like the coach and you you just thought oh my god they’ve done it oh the audience went to pieces on that because no one knew it was coming the audience loved it so much they broke out into a round of applause
And of course the film was still running and the next lines were lost our coach is just blown up so there was quite a lot of repair work to do on that uh to try to fit their laughter to the pictures it is one of the biggest sequences i think um you know that kind in a sitcom on british television and they had over 20 million viewers at this point which oh my gosh in this day and age that’s like the whole of england’s just watching you i thought it would it worked really really well um very i think we’re all all very proud of that
Sequence it was brilliant everyone just yeah it was breathtaking and what better way to celebrate christmas than to put it into a christmas special the jolly boy outing i suppose will go down in history as one of the best episodes ever and this episode has gone down in history for another reason jolly boy outing was one of the classics and i remember hearing about where that’s the first time i realized where bonet dche came from bonet dche bonet d douche he’d use that a lot and he’d use it a lot when we rehearsing for
Anything he’d just go oh bon to douche whenever there’s just so many of them and i i just wish i knew where it got them from i went for a weekend with friends of mine to paris i was in my room and went to have a shower and i saw this cap and it said bonit the douche and i just could not understand what the hell did that mean so i went and until the friends of mine they said it’s a shower cat i said you are joking bonet duche was one of many glorious examples of dell’s misuse of the french language and no christmas
Special would be complete without it oh bane marie bane marie ban marie what’s that got to do with anything one of the most absurd ideas is that del rudy is good at french what do you want are a sacra blur chef or something dell desperately wants to be a great linguist because it will show his sophistication and his learning and it will impress women and he always very nearly gets it right sh a laser you’d have to know your french to know quite how funny it is the one i really liked when he just says when he’s
Telling people to hurry up he just says mch to mch to mch too mch to he thought that that he was in command of the language shut no to of course d did not have a command of the language at all i think it was rodney who said to one are you and your stupid french phrases which don’t mean anything what do you mean they don’t mean anything and it’s amazing how other people don’t interfere and say look this is rubbish um and that just means it’s a classic sort of perennial joke oh fr he just heard it and he’d heard two words
And they put two words together but wait a minute oh poer poer i often wonder if he knew what any of it meant by christmas 1991 the only fools and horses series had finished and s david and the team were only making christmas specials and this year saw two no expense spared adventures which took the trotters on their transatlantic travels to miami in 1991 we get miami twice it’s so big they’ve had to split into two that’s great for the bbc it means they get the ratings on two separate nights but also it means john
Sullivan has more time to develop a story and to kind of bring more elements into it yes d and rodney we’re off to the super glamorous us of this was a far cry from nelson mandela house and to add to the hollywood feel some famous fools fans joined the fun me anybody think he owned the plane we get a little cameo from richard branson not a born actor perhaps and then we get barry gibb you only saw the back of his head first when you saw del boy waving and then you realize it actually is him he went oh my goodness b
Was on only horses i need all this it’s such an iconic moment he was great he was a lovely fell delan rodney’s trip to miami just went to prove you could take the trotters out of pekam kind know am yeah he’s enjoying himself we af to the bloody but never pe come out of the boys and there was david jason on a jet ski seeming to be doing about 80 mph he can’t even swim but i thought he said he had a certificate for swimming oh yeah he has but he only e i could watch that scene over and over it’s the sheer [music]
Terror of course d and roders didn’t get to enjoy the miami high life they end up in the muuk or rather the everglade swamp in a classic close encounter that could have spelled a snappy ending for the actors it was a real live alligator right and it was about five or six foot long lots of people think oh they must be a protective screen between the two actors and this huge great creature but no it was actually there next to them we’re having a discussion about what the director wanted and how it was to be achieved
That we would be in the same shot as the alligator he wanted the alive alligator to creep in behind us and frighten the socks off us i wasn’t particularly concerned until i saw the alligator’s minder had a huge pistol in his holster next to him and he said well well is it going to be safe to do this he said he pulled it the gun out of his house and he said yes don’t worry sir if the such shine of it going wrong i’ll shoot the alligator okay i thought oh my god this is going to be disaster very slowly walk away
D we don’t want to alarm it alarm what that thing behind us [applause] all the time that is in the back of your mind when this thing at the corner of your eyes creeping towards us for the shot nick says that they were so close they could actually hear it breathing goodness knows what what the insurance companies must have thought about that heaven only [music] knows coming up there must be something wrong i couldn’t stop laughing cuz it was so funny i’m not kidding in out dress like this we see how the team struggled to keep their most famous
Christmas moment under wraps for the big day the press would would arrive in droves uh trying to film what you were [music] filming well you won’t be careful with the old beef though oh shut up you brass i don’t know what you’re worried about i’ve been eating british beef all my life egg and chips please m some of the greatest moments in only fools came courtesy of this fellow and at christmas like santa trigger always delivered we were all such a good team and he was a good team member that he was lovely to to to work with i know
John got complaints when uh trigger wasn’t in an episode long enough you know the trigger fan club would write to john and say well trigger was only given half a dozen lines in this episode what are you doing this old broom has had 17 new heads and 14 new handles in its time what july pat was so brilliant h yeah can he be the same bloody bruy well he’s a picture of it what more proof do you need roger’s secret i think was was the very very serious face he treated it like a tragedy as if he was playing hamlet if one of those iconic characters
That you never shake off i don’t mean as a as an actor but as a person you walk down the street and people don’t go oh you’re trigger and only falls nois they go all right trick i mean they just shout at him and we had so much fun you know taking the mickey out of each other as well of course whenever he met rodney he would call him dave and he said that with confidence and solemnity and you knew it was coming and it it was always funny all right dave i don’t know if we ever found out why trigger called rodney
Dave right dave he never ever ever corpsed we would um but he didn’t ever do you know about this sort of thing then dave i seem to remember david and nick saying about trigger is that he always got the end of the gag he always got the laugh in the end they’d set it up and set it up and set it up and set it up everybody would be doing dialogue dialogue dialogue dialogue and him would come triggered with one line and it would bring the house down you know people become famous for a little while then they disappear
Like ren and rata simon the or gandi gandy yeah i mean he made one great film and then he never saw him again he must have driven nick and david mad but but of course you know you don’t you don’t not give it to him in 1992 for health and the environment it became all the rage to give pesticides the push and go green the organic market was suddenly booming everyone wanted to buy something organic and and i remember when this actually happened me thinking well why would i pay you know a pound for a tomato because it’s organic and then
When bottled water came along you’re like but you’ve got app at home why would you want to do that well john sullivan saw the funny side and for that year’s christmas special dell diversified into the health food market every single item in this shop has been grown away nature in tended oh yeah well that must be very nice for you and cassandra to sit down to dinner knowing that everything on your plate was once under a pile of all [ __ ] dough boys just non-plus about the price of stuff like brussel sprout tops and then he sees a
Bottle water ding and he has this idea a crafty hose pipe later and dell was sitting a top the purest peckam spring water we don’t actually know where the spring comes from do we rodney no certainly sprung up from somewhere to actually start producing peckam spring from his tap in pekham in nelson mandela house and then start flogging it with just i was a brilliant idea we had an awful lot of laughs um you know when things went wrong and water bottle caps came off and the audience loved it of course when things
Went wrong the social commentary of that is really clever we are selling public water to the public ah where you’re cuz this water used to be public and then maggie she privatized it didn’t she it now belongs to a board of directors and a load of investors they sell it to us we sell it on all we’re doing is repackaging it again it just kind of hits that sort of thing right on the nose of of what we were doing and how absurd it was and how absurd it was that you were paying for water that was in the bottle john sullivan was always
Always doing things like that it was a very again a very clever concept a very very clever idea the actual bottles used for peckham spring occasionally come up for auction and sell for thousands a nice little earner delboy would fully approve of quite a lot of people kept a bottle or two um i i had a couple but um uh i took them home and after a couple of years with young children he just i just threw them away but uh you know they were just in the way shatow nerfer [music] pap after three long years without any
Only fools in 1996 john sullivan gave us the ultimate christmas present a [music] trilogy but there was a catch the three episodes that were filmed for 1996 were intended to be the last three episodes of only fools and horses in fact originally it was only going to be one episode and then they realized that actually john had written lots of material and therefore they increased the budget and they realized they could just about squeeze filming into the into everybody’s schedules i missed uh fools and horses so much david turned down an
Extra episode of a touch of frost nick linter has postponed an episode or a series of good night sweetheart so that he could do only fools because they were they were all really keen that they give this show that’s been so popular and and they’ve enjoyed doing the send off that it it really deserved in what became an iconic christmas day out heroes and villains didn’t disappoint the script was making me laugh genuinely as an actor it was so wonderfully put together and so funny and it was just the most wonderful moment to have it back on
Television and you went straight back into it there was no question of not sure this is just works now as it changed have the characters changed not at all it was exactly as it was and it was still as brilliant as ever do you want to buy a ticket for a publican ball yeah certainly which one left or right and of course it included possibly the most memorable moment in only fool’s christmas history which had been safely under wraps for months it was terrifying because we would be we the press would would arrive in drones uh trying to film
What you were filming so they could sp sp everybody’s christmas by telling everybody before the christmas special what the thing was about the streets around where we filmed it in central bristol we blocked off with fencing with black drapes on and scaffolding up they did everything they could to make sure that that that image did not leak out and of course it didn’t we just wanted to keep it secret for christmas day i think what set in there must be something wrong i know this is the one where i couldn’t get it
Right i couldn’t stop laughing cuz it was so funny you go and have a look at the engine i have a look i’m not cting out dress like this that fantastic reveal where you see the blue booted foot coming out of the van so when delboy gets out as batman the woof from the audience but then rodney gets out that was an even bigger wolf because he looked ridiculous he look this lanky boy as robin you know it’s men in tights it’s underpants over your tights all of which is funny about superheroes anyway but then it’s delan rodney and it’s you
Know and it’s their build it’s just perfect you know rodney’s tall and thin dell isn’t tall and thin and so it’s just it’s just brilliant you had two ways of going you either did it in reality in real life which was you’d have these ill-fitting batman and robin costumes because they would be tired and old and ill-fitting right or you have costumes that you have made that are so uh correct in terms of the the idea of batman and robin will you get back inside the van i don’t want people seeing you dressed like that what r
So i thought about it for a while and i thought well what is the best comic [music] [applause] effect and of course the the the lady from the council is at this moment being [applause] [music] robbed what’s happening i have the faintest idea no the whole of the batman and robin sequence was just a joy we took all night doing it and it was probably about three or four shots the counselor her expression on her face was so brilliant that you couldn’t stop laughing d let’s go we were probably talking about it for 6 months afterwards cuz it was just so
Funny the best moment on television and never ever to be forgotten it was truly wonderful those are magic moments that the nation shared together and it’s something that ain’t going to happen again coming up christmas with the trotters takes us from tragedy we decided to play it a different slightly different way than we would normally do to triumph it’s a brilliant story line because obviously when the line was this time next year rodney will be millionaires in fact they had been millionaires all [music] along on christmas day 1996 the first
Episode of the iconic only fools and horses trilogy was watched by 21 million of us harry died yesterday and when i hear those stories about how much the pleasure it’s given a lot of people it gives me a great reward and just as many viewers were there for the heartbreaking second part 2 days later far from the madat mayhem of heroes and villains modern men saw tragedy strike as cassandra and rodney suffered a miscarriage i’m sorry rodney all great comedy has got to have has got to be realistic about tragedy [music]
And what you’re talking about is something which is beyond words it it’s it’s beyond ordinary ordinary feelings what do you say what can you say i remember john sullivan talking about it actually and saying don’t know how this go down in the sitcom world but you know i wanted to do it so i think it was quite important for him to as usual he liked stretching the boundaries a bit he knew that uh well the rest of us all of us as actors we could go much deeper than just being funny all the time and a record-breaking 24 million
Tuned in on the 29th of december 1996 for the finale just hoping for a happy ending rodney’s life has just crashed to the floor and episode 3 starts in that same condition what h was trying to think of a way to get rodney at least to talk about it and forget to get both of them to talk about it delboy is deliberately contrived he stopped the lift from working because he knows cuz i mean despite all the bluster there’s an element of quite savvy psychology about delboy as well certainly when it comes to rodney we
Decided to play it a different slightly different way than we would normally do nick and i both felt we didn’t want to over rehearse it because it was such an emotional scene and we wanted to give it as much truth as we could 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 hole just like this poxy lift we did a pre-record rather than in front of the audience it was cu it’s such an emotional scene i think tony and gareth
And all the everybody thought let’s give it some space and time and not have the pressure of the audience and the nick and david were brilliant absolutely brilliant they love the scene both of them i think nick and david played it for nick as well david wanted it and said this is a great moment for nick and i’ve never felt sudden in pain like that in all my life nicholas lind hurst’s ability i’ve had tears watching it two men going through those emotions with something you hadn’t seen a lot of on television so you you loved their
Vulnerability we lost our b but and they were allowed to show their emotions which was quite groundbreaking you shield yourself from it you know rodney is grateful for being given the opportunity to confront his demons it made me cry that scene so many times i’ve watched it so many times and it i just thought everything about that show is about that scene really you’re continually continually reminded that there is this extraordinary bond between the two of them come here wait come on and then a gear change as every scene
Led us towards the trotter’s magic moment as raquel’s antique dealer dad spotted treasure buried in dell’s lockup a fabled harrison watch it has the name harrison engraved in it you see that harrison watches were for navigation captain cook had one for taking around the world he had h2 there was h1 h2 four and five then the six never got made but there were drawings of it so that’s why it got called the mythical watch because nobody ever knew whether it got made or whether it didn’t get made so it was an important piece
But it looked very ordinary it didn’t look valuable so when they find this watch they have to prove that it is theirs and that’s difficult for someone like dell boy who doesn’t like to keep much of a paper trail dell was not one for keeping receipts he was always fearful that the tax man or the police would find a bit of paperwork and would link him to something and get he’d get into trouble but rodney does rodney in the first episode we see looking through a pile of receipts what are you doing now our accounts you doy little twonk
Rodney this is prime fy evidence in it he the tax man gets older that it puts away for 3 years don’t worry if a tax man comes i’ll eat it those very receipts that they later find in the garage in time on our hands that actually prove that the trotters own that watch one silver fob watch engraved harish good boy roders what have i always told you i’ve always said always keep the receipt everything was plotted so carefully i don’t know whether he had lots of things at home on his wall or whether it was just all in his brain
John sullivan he he was so clever and the scene was set for trotter’s independent traders to pitch up at the creme dea creme of international auctioneers i think if you were going into soube and saying you were doing a show about in a drama or whatever about two south london crooks they’ just you would get in the door but once you say it’s only fools and horses i’d like to start the bidding at £150,000 and you just watch del boy do his faint and can i just say that’s really hard to do those faints where they go straight back cuz the crash m
Can hurt but he does the most fantastic stiff as aboard straight back fade four thank you the bit stands at four million pound when i first started watching on fools and horses i so wanted them to be millionaires it’s a brilliant story line because obviously when the line was this time next year rodney will be millionaires in fact they had been millionaires all along and it was there and it was right under their noses and they didn’t realize you want to go first or should i well you why don’t we go together yeah
Yeah all right one two [music] three in 1996 they got more than 24 million people watching only fools and horses which happens to be more than those people who watch the euro semifinals that same year between england and germany it was a strange feeling of one of joy and one of sadness really because you thought that’s the end of delboy and rodney i remember being in the studio and um recording that see i just remember saying to the floor mansion in front of the audience that’s it folks that’s the end of fools and horses the
Whole place exploded um oh thinking about it feels emotional now the audience went potty we got a standing ovation in the studio of 7 minutes and they wouldn’t let us go in the studio on the final night everybody’s quite emotional it’s just a silly old wooden set in studio but this funny little world of the trotter flat meant a lot to everybody coming up this time next year we’re going to be millionaires this time last week we were millionaires as only fools and horses and this celebration comes to an end sh nerf to
P we find out which festive moment must get a plug put on this thing with tops of david’s christmas tree it really is difficult to choose between them and there are so [music] many one two three only fools and horses had finished on a high in 1996 and it seemed we were destined to spend all future christmases without our much-loved annual visit to the trotters or did it i know that john and i know more importantly the bbc were absolutely desperate for more it was so difficult to let it go there was some discussions about how could we bring it
Back well you couldn’t because it’s finished no no wait a minute what we could do they could lose the money couldn’t they and yeah [music] g shut nerf do so in 2001 after a 5-year absence only fools and horses made a triumphant return with three final annual specials 20 million fans tuned in to see delboy and rodney return pennil to beckham don’t worry this time next year we’re going to be millionaires this time last week we were millionaires he’s come up with it john sullivan he’s taken them from one place uh and you’re going to
See them for that for a bit and then he’s going to take them right back to the bottom again you know how clever is that there was some fantastic stuff in those last three episodes you have to end lectures on modern climactic change what with global warming and al paccino elo trick he delivered he brought in something that you you think how did you think of that but although the comedy magic was still very much in evidence there a much loved character was missing buster maryfield died in 1999 we always talked very fondly and
We’d say oh you know he’d have been sitting in that chair now when we got to the studio you know so he was in our memories and in chat all the time when buster dear buster passed away suddenly we were left on our own busta had had had a big contribution to the program part of you is no longer there like losing a limb however bust marfield plays a crucial role in all three episodes in a way he is present even though sadly bu merfield had passed gone but not forgotten john sullivan wrote uncle albert’s funeral into the series a
Chance to say farewell to the salty old sea dog hello i’m maran i did a bit cleaning for albert lovely old man went on a bit but this trotter tragedy didn’t stay somber for long bunny yeah howbert why’d you call him bunny well that’s what they called him in the rf didn’t they cuz his surname was warren again john sullivan was so clever wasn’t he we’re at the wrong funeral yes again go from sort of rather sad poignant moments flip the coin and you’re you know you’re at the wrong [music] funeral i’m i mean how funny can that be
How you know it’s it’s so lovely in the the last episode where they go to the will reading of uncle albert not expecting to get anything after death duties he has left you the sum of 145,000 they ended up comfortable it and it was a lovely way of remembering buster i think that sort of that that act of gener that last act of generosity and love to both of them that meant that the family was back and they were going to be exactly like they always were and there was one final moment a christmas miracle for rodney and
Cassandra when eventually cassandra and rodney have the baby it’s the most beautiful moment again it makes me cry and i thought oh god this is lovely and what an end it felt like you wanted to enjoy every line you wanted to make the most of every scene you did somebody came up to me actually years later and said i was in that last audience they said it was amazing and i will never ever forget it because i felt it was like history being made because we’ve been told by the walmart guy we were never going to see the this again
That’s special and very sad for 22 years john sullivan gave us more than 20 hours of christmas tv joy must get a plug put on this thing but among all of the wonderful u tied moments is there one that stands out for the man who played perhaps the nation’s alltime best loved comedy character john sullivan invented so many silly which way to h funny but wait a minute oh poery poer brilliant moments the it really is difficult to choose between them um and there are so many if i was really really pushed i think it after batman and
Robin so a joy a joy for me only fools and horses is about family you know when i think about that show i think about my dad giggling sh las there’s a gaping hole in christmas still isn’t that with no only fools and horses you appreciate people like john sullivan when they inhabited the earth because you you didn’t have people like him you wouldn’t have only fools and horses up and down the way people watch television has changed so i think those times were very special because they did bring people together especially the christmas special is it
Derek rael yes to be involved with a program like this where 2030 probably in the future 50 years on people are still saying oh it’s really it really makes me feel better to watch it really cheers me up it’s a really good program i mean you don’t get that every day the camaraderie between everybody the fun that we had if i could regenerate that relive it if you like yeah i i grab it like a shot cuz it’s so powerfully such powerful strong happy memories if you or someone you know has been affected by any of the issues
Raised in this program please go to channel 5.com helplines for information and support who can ever forget the hilarious candles skate in the two ronies celebrating one half of that jew in brand new ron corbett my 30 funniest moments of boxing day night at 8 next
