Famous? It’s the f-word
Thanks to Only Fools and Horses, Nicholas Lyndhurst is one of the most recognisable faces in Britain. Just don’t tell him he’s famous. Interview by Michael Donaldson.
NICHOLAS Lyndhurst is famous in that slightly awkward ‘‘don’t I know you from somewhere?’’ fashion.
‘‘People used to think I lived next door but one – they knew my face but didn’t know where from,’’ Lyndhurst says, in what turns out to be a very rare interview. ‘‘They’d go ‘how’s your mum?’ ‘Fine’. ‘‘You still at Number 21?’ ‘Yeah’. It’s a lot easier to agree rather than say ‘sorry you’ve been mistaken’.’’
He attributes his boy nextdoor-but-one fame to the fact his career has followed ‘‘a gradual recognition curve’’ – as opposed to modern famous-15-minutes-ago trend of reality TV stars and talent show performers (more on them later).
Lyndhurst is one of Britain’s best-known comedic talents, most famous for his role as Rodney (you plonker) opposite David Jason’s Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses, a show watched by approximately half of Great Britain when the 19th and final Christmas special ran in 2003.
Before that he was the son of Ronnie Barker’s Fletch in Going Straight, the sequel to Porridge, before a stint on Butterflies (the real purpose of our interview) with Wendy Craig and Geoffrey Palmer.
Despite being in the homes of most Brits (and quite a few Kiwis) most weeks for the best part of 40 years, real fame – as measured by regular appearances in the British tabloids – passed him by. At lot of that has to do with the fact he shuns the ‘‘pack of wolves’’ that is the British media.
Lyndhurst feels lucky to have made the best of his career in an era before instant fame, social media and insatiable digital news desires – and is grateful to have kept his home life and work separate.
‘‘I don’t think I could have started my career now when there is a tremendous blurring between your job and your private life. For those of us in their 50s, the papers aren’t much interested in what we flaunt on the beach in Dubai – but for the up-and-coming generation it seems to be you do the publicity first and you get everyone interested and then they see the show. One minute they’re normal people and the next they have the press camped outside their door and interviewing all your exboyfriends and girlfriends.
‘‘The prime example is the Kardashians. I looked at their TV ratings because I thought ‘Oh my God these girls are everywhere’ – they are in the tabloids every day and online – but when you look at the ratings of their show, most of the BBC’s children’s shows double their ratings. And yet there they are every day – part of the famehungry phenomenon sweeping our country.’’
Lyndhurst is so incensed by the nature of reality TV and socalled talent shows he compares them with the practice of selling tickets to mental institutions a century ago so people could watch the ‘‘lunatics’’.
‘‘I don’t think we’ve gone much further with reality TV and talent shows. These people are clearly delusional and yet they get up on stage with the four judges and everyone knows there’s something wrong, but they are allowed to perform –I think it’s cruel.’’
Given Lyndhurst’s anti-fame mentality and general prohibition on press interviews, why on earth, then, is he talking to a Kiwi journalist? ‘‘You’re a nice bunch of people,’’ he says without a hint of irony or faux sincerity, ‘‘and it’s astounding that something like Butterflies is screening again on TV there – it’s been 38 years since we started shooting it’’.
It’s a show Lyndhurst has huge fondness for.
‘‘It was great to work with Ronnie B in Going Straight and see how he worked an audience and to see how a sitcom worked – I only had a couple of lines so I had plenty of time to watch. Then Butterflies came along and I was honoured to be working with Wendy Craig and Geoffrey Palmer – I watched them closely because you cannot fail to learn from those guys unless you’ve got your head in a bag. To watch them in action is a masterclass.
‘‘It was one of the happiest jobs I’ve ever been on,’’ he said of the genre-bending show that was partcomedy, part-drama about a mother and wife who contemplates an affair to break the drudgery of her everyday life.
‘‘There were a few people in suits asking ‘What is it? Is it a comedy or a drama? Carla Lane, the writer, said ‘It’s one of these, it’s what I write’.
‘‘And it had so much truth to it. We had a letter in our production office from a woman saying ‘I had to buy a small portable television to watch this show in my bedroom by myself because if I watch it with my family they’ll know what’s going on’.’’
‘ Butterflies was one of the happiest jobs I’ve ever been on.’
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