TV REPEAT Long live Hooky Street

37 years ago, the BBC introduced us to the wheeling-dealing Trotter brothers

NEW words entered the English language with the start of Only Fools And Horses. Del Boy utterances like “plonker” and “lovely jubbly” were soon on everyone’s lips as well as his prediction “This time next year, we’ll be millionaires.”

The opening episode of writer John Sullivan’s comedy was broadcast on September 8, 1981, and was entitled Big Brother.

It followed John’s earlier success with Citizen Smith and introduced David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst as brothers Derek (Del Boy) and Rodney Trotter.

David Jason later said he was grabbed from the first script. “It was one of those ones where, within about a page-and-a-half, you realise it’s got you hooked,” he said.

“It had characters, it had some zinging lines, it had warmth. It seemed to have all the necessary ingredients.”

Del and Rodney lived in Peckham in a council flat at Nelson Mandela House with Grandad, played by Lennard Pearce. Their friends included Trigger, Boycie, Marlene, Denzil and Mike.

The death of Lennard Pearce later led to Buster Merryfield joining the cast as old sea dog Uncle Albert. Del Boy made a living selling iffy goods and was a familiar figure driving around in his banana-yellow Robin Reliant with Trotter’s Independent Trading Company written on its side.

John Sullivan allowed his characters to develop, mixing tragedy with comedy, and 24 million viewers watched when the Trotters finally became the millionaires they had always hoped to be in 1996 when they discovered a watch in their lock-up garage was worth £6 million.

Only Fools And Horses has been voted one of Britain’s top television programmes and spin-off comedies have seen Marlene and Boycie starting a new life in the country in The Green Green Grass while Rock And Chips in 2010 looked at Del and Rodney’s early life with Nicholas Lyndhurst returning to play Rodney’s father.

In the words of Del Boy: “He who dares Rodney, he who dares.”