David Jason: I’m a plonker at getting dosh out of the BBC
AS THE roguish market trader Del Boy in Only Fools And Horses, his hapless get-rich-quick plans always left him looking like a plonker.
And now David Jason, the actor who played Del for more than 20 years, has revealed that in real life he is just as unsuccessful when it comes to wheeling and dealing.
Only Fools And Horses began in 1981 and still holds the record for the most popular sitcom episode – 24.3million viewers tuned in for the 1996 Christmas special.
But in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday’s Event magazine today, Jason says the stars of the sitcom were treated as ‘poor relations’ by the BBC.
Jason says: ‘Don’t get me started on BBC salaries. We were never the big league. Situation comedy has always been the poor relation in the television entertainment business.
‘In my day, you got what you got. And that was never as much as people thought.’
He adds: ‘People look at things differently now. It’s all about money and fame. But what I really wanted was success, which is a different thing. We are living in a different world today, where people confuse those things. I’ve been approached to do reality shows but even though the fees are very attractive I always say no, because money should never be your motivation.’
Jason, 76, who is married with a 15-year-old daughter, is back on our screens on Sunday nights, in Still Open All Hours. The BBC comedy is a reboot of Open All Hours – the show in which he first made his name alongside Ronnie Barker – and Jason reprises his role as grumpy Granville.
But despite bringing Granville back to life, Jason rules out a return for Del Boy, after the death of Only Fools and Horses scriptwriter John Sullivan in 2011. ‘Only Fools can’t come back because John is no longer with us,’ he says. ‘He wrote every word of every episode. Without him it doesn’t exist.’