Almost eaten in Miami by an alligator, while me and that dipstick Rodders were shouting at a Bee Gee? Only on Fools And Horses!
IT was the show that introduced ‘Lovely Jubbly’ and ‘You plonker, Rodney’ to TV viewers, and remains beloved by generations of fans. But, as David Jason revealed on Saturday in the first part of our serialisation of his new memoir, the BBC was slow to app
THE makers of Only Fools And Horses were always proud of its reputation as a family show. Certainly, no-one ever swears.
Now, I’m not prudish about swearing. For instance, the time I ran over my foot with a Flymo, I unleashed a torrent of the kind of language that would have bothered the late morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse enormously.
So it’s a firm ‘yes’ to swearing from me, in the right circumstances. It’s just that I don’t think a comedy show on TV is the right circumstance.
You have to remember there is still a significant portion of the audience that will be offended by swearing — not just mildly offended, but actually upset. They’re entitled to feel that way, and I’ve never worked out how you could think it doesn’t matter. That strikes me as a bit arrogant.
One thing I do know: I have never received a single letter from anyone complaining that they didn’t enjoy an episode of Only Fools And Horses because it didn’t have any swearing in it.
In fact, it worked brilliantly to the show’s advantage, forcing the scriptwriter John Sullivan into feats of linguistic ingenuity for which the programme is loved and remembered.
Words like ‘twonk’, ‘plonker’, ‘nerk’ and ‘dipstick’ were its hallmark, with Del’s catalogue of misappropriated French exclamations: ‘mange tout’, ménage a trois’, ‘boeuf a la mode’.
You have to wonder, if John Sullivan had been able to access the full range of the English language in all its saltiness, would we ever have seen Del respond to an explosive situation by shouting: ‘Chateauneuf du Pape’?
In Miami Twice, the 1991 Christmas special, Boycie has a line in which he says, as I emerge from a swamp: ‘Blimey, Del, you smell like a vegetarian’s fart.’ That was probably about as close to the wire as Only Fools ever got.
That Christmas special is a simple way to measure the growing success of Only Fools And Horses: in 1982, during the second series, we were obliged to pretend that the Dorset coast was Malaga in order to save money. In 1991, by contrast, we were off to Miami to film in and around the Everglades.
I can safely say without fear of contradiction that this was the first time I had ever acted alongside an alligator. They say you should never work with children or animals, and they may be right. But you should certainly never work with animals that have sharp teeth and snapping jaws.
The creature chosen for the part went by the unimaginative stage name of Al the Gator. Al was roughly the length of Ipswich and — in common with many of his kind — had a demeanour that said: ‘Don’t mess with me.’
HIS ROLE was to take a run at Nicholas Lyndhurst, as Rodney, and me, perched on a log, ready to sprint off in terror. No tricks, mirrors, screens or smoke were used: when you see Nick and me on our log, with Al just behind us, looking mean, moody and unmessable with, that’s how it was.
What you don’t see is the ranger with a loaded rifle standing by — a sight which was faintly reassuring, although you had to hope, in the absence of any concrete proof, that he was a good shot. You also don’t see the bucket of alligatorfriendly titbits intended to get Al moving in the right direction.
I think we’ll all remember for ever the startling take in which Al set off at high speed as planned, but not in the direction of the food. Instead, he ran at the camera crew who, naturally, scattered to all corners of Florida.
Sue Holderness, who plays Boycie’s wife, Marlene, and happened to be videoing the action at this point, might have had some award-winning footage had she not panicked and ended up making a short movie of her feet running across the grass. No future for Sue alongside David Attenborough in the BBC’s Natural History department, one sensed.
Considerably less risky was the scene with Bee Gee Barry Gibb, who lived near where we were filming. I have no idea who set the wheels in motion to make his guest appearance happen. I only know John Sullivan was beside himself with excitement about having a multi-million-selling singing legend on the show.
It was a complex shoot. Barry was in his garden, which backs on to Miami bay, and Nick and I were on a tourist boat from which we had to spot him, and from which I had to unleash the very Del line: ‘Oi, Bazza!’ The whole thing was co-ordinated by walkie talkies.
BBC budgetary concerns were, as ever, much in evidence. The tourist boat Nick and I were on wasn’t chartered by the production, which would have cost a lot of money, but was an actual Miami tourist boat, doing its routine rounds of the bay.
Had we messed up, we would have had to wait until the next tour before we could try again.
Barry, meanwhile, would have had to hang on in his garden, and maybe his patience would have run out because how long, ultimately, can you keep a Bee Gee waiting for someone to shout ‘Oi, Bazza!’ at him?
Thankfully, we nailed it first time, so I never found out. When the filming was done, Barry had me and Nick round for tea and biscuits. He was a lovely chap, and a massive fan of Only Fools who, in the days before the internet, had tapes of the latest episodes sent to him in the States.
I have a picture that I cherish, taken that afternoon, of me, Nick and Bazza Gibb standing at the end of Bazza’s jetty, Bazza in a police patrol T-shirt and shredded jeans and me in a flowery shirt and a Dolphins baseball cap.
Tremendous fun — and in the Florida sunshine, too. It’s staggering to reflect that we called this ‘work’. Isn’t that what only fools and horses do? FAST forward to March this year, and I was offered the chance to link up with Nick again so we could be honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the UK National Film Academy — our contribution to drama, as the citation put it.
Proof once more: it’s the show that never goes away. At that point, getting on for 36 years had passed since the first episode. Yet still people want to return to the series, to remember it, to celebrate it, to hand it awards.
My first question was: is Nick doing it? I hadn’t seen him since we’d been hanging out with David Beckham in 2014. Would he say yes? I very much doubted it.
I was sure he felt flattered. But I know Nick shares with me a certain amount of reluctance to delve back into the Only Fools days.
It’s not that we aren’t fiercely proud of what we did. It’s not that a giant trove of happy memories isn’t to be found back there. It’s not like we wouldn’t defend the work, or rush to its assistance if it were ever in trouble.
However, for both of us, to revisit it is to open ourselves up to a fair amount of melancholy, among the warm recollections. How could it not be so, when so many members of the tight family we formed are no longer with us?
As well as John Sullivan, the genius who wrote the show and was the greatest writer I ever knew, who died in 2011, and the properly clever Roger Lloyd Pack, who died in 2014, dear old Buster Merryfield, our Uncle Albert, had died in 1999.
And Kenneth MacDonald, that sweet, kind man who was Mike,
the landlord of the Nag’s Head, died of a heart attack on holiday with his family in 2001 at the unfairly premature age of 50.
Plus, we had lost the magnificent Lennard Pearce (Grandad) merely 23 episodes into the show.
People talk about the so-called ‘curse of Dad’s Army’, but surely the less noticed ‘curse of Only Fools’ runs it a close second.
Nick once said to me: ‘The only time we see each other these days is when another one drops off the perch.’
So a reluctance to rake over the old coals might dissuade Nick from taking the National Film Academy up on its offer. It was certainly in my mind to decline on those grounds.
Here’s the thing, though: the invitation did seem impressive. Consider, if you will, the high-class calibre of people who, according to the invitation, would be joining us on this night of a thousand stars. Julie Andrews! Joan Collins! Ewan McGregor! Hugh Grant! Catherine Zeta-Jones, my old accomplice from The Darling Buds Of May! Say what you like, that’s not the cast of Geordie Shore, is it? With no disrespect to the cast of Geordie Shore.
Something akin to this train of thought may also have passed through the mind of my former co-star. At any rate, feelers were put out, my people spoke to his people, and word came back: Nick, it turned out, was in. Therefore, the maths was simple: so was I.
The night arrives. I can’t see any faces I recognise at first: no obvious sign of Julie Andrews, Joan Collins or Hugh Grant or the other promised luminaries. Maybe they’ve been smuggled in through the back door.
Someone official informs me that I’ll need to sign in, and points me in the direction of a queue leading to a desk.
A young woman seated among boxes and sheets of paper and envelopes looks up and smiles. ‘Your name?’ ‘It’s Jason,’ I say. ‘And your surname?’ she says. ‘No, that is the surname,’ I say. ‘David Jason.’
‘OK,’ she says. Her eyes are travelling down the lists in front of her. ‘And are you a guest or an award nominee?’
Do you suppose it’s like this for Nicole Kidman at the Oscars? I hope so, but I have my doubts. It’s a massive room, set for dinner — and there, already at that table and rising to say hello are Nick and his wife, Lucy. What a joy. I’m so happy to see them.
Nick’s son, Archie, is there, too, the same age as my daughter, Sophie. The last time I saw Archie, he came up to my waist. Now, I come up to his.
Nick and I fall easily into each other’s company again and our families settle in. There is a long list of people, we’re told, who unfortunately cannot be with us. Julie Andrews? Not in the building. Joan Collins? Somewhere else. Hugh Grant? Otherwise engaged. Catherine Zeta-Jones, whom I really would have loved to bump into? Not around, sadly.
No matter. Nick and I are having a very nice time and at around 9.50 we get our big moment.
SOME kind words are said about the lasting effect and influence of Only Fools. They show some clips on the big screen.
The bar-flap sequence is there, obviously, and gets a huge laugh, as it always seems to. Batman and Robin also ride again — me and Nick emerging through the mist like a pair of idiots — and there’s laughter for that, too. We are summoned to the stage separately, me first.
I improvise a few words of thanks and then — really movingly for me — everyone in the room is on their feet and there’s a lot of warmth coming off people which I know isn’t just the wine.
I don’t, despite my premature fears, feel like anyone is trying to retire me or subtly nudge me in the direction of the garden. On the contrary, I feel buoyed up. Believe me, standing on a stage while a roomful of people applauds you for some stupid larking around you did in front of a TV camera several thousand years ago is a very flattering situation to be in.
As Nick and I stand outside afterwards, signing pictures of ourselves from yesteryear, there it is, that question both of us get asked pretty much every time we raise our heads in public: ‘Will there be any more Only Fools And Horses?’
It is an easy one to answer. There would be more episodes if there was anyone alive who could write them. But there isn’t, and nor will there be for as long as John Sullivan is no longer with us.
So no. No, there won’t be any more. Yet Only Fools And Horses carries on — unstoppable and beloved. And Nick and I each have a 2017 National Film Award to prove it.
ONLY Fools And Stories: From Del Boy To Granville, Pop Larkin To Frost is David Jason’s second book on his life as a leading actor. His latest autobiography is the follow-up to David Jason: My Life. Only Fools And Stories is published by Century and will be available in all good bookshops across Ireland from October 5.