by John Challis
For my day job, at the time, I was also performing with Sue Holderness in Relatively Speaking, which had gone well. Our partnership was working and the audiences who came out in good numbers didn’t seem to mind that the characters we were playing bore no resemblance to the Only Fools characters for which we were known. After Eastbourne we had successfully transferred to Windsor and later went on to Bromley.
While they were making The House Detectives I was commuting every day down to Windsor and driving back after the show to Wigmore to carry on filming the TV programme next morning. It was lucky they were such different jobs.
Generally, with all that was going on, we seldom had a chance to listen to the radio or catch up with the TV news. On 11 September, I’d set off as usual after lunch to drive to Windsor. I didn’t turn on the radio until I was nearly there and, unusually, tuned it to Radio Four, probably to hear a cricket score.
A very grave-voiced newsreader announced that some catastrophic disaster had happened in New York, leaving thousands dead and the massive Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre collapsed in a heap of rubble. The Pentagon had been attacked, too and it seemed like the whole of the US was under threat.
For a few moments I could only assume that I’d just found one of those futuristic, experimental dramas that the BBC likes to put out on Radio Four, like the Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds, which US Radio had broadcast fifty-six years before. I fiddled with the tuner, but the same news story was everywhere.
I reached Windsor and sat in the car park by the theatre, listening in complete disbelief, until I realized a major world drama really was unfolding, and I started getting angry.
I knew the Twin Towers – I’d been up there. I had a lot of friends in New York.
Jesus! – I thought – we couldn’t possibly do the show!
I rushed in through the stage door, spluttering incoherently. ‘We can’t do the show! It’s out of the question! Fuck these people – whoever they are. We must show some respect for the people who have died. We can’t do a fucking comedy! It’s stupid and thoughtless!’
Everyone else had already been watching the shocking scenes for hours on TV. They’d had time to calm down and be more rational about it. They understood my rage, of course, but pointed out that if we cancelled the show, the leprous rats that had done this horrible thing would have won. It was our duty to carry on, as normal, and say ‘Up yours!’ to Al Qaeda.
We went on, and received a standing ovation for our efforts. On the long drive home in the dark, my rage turned to a feeling of dread for the future. Like a lot of people, I spent most of the night unable to sleep, unable to dispel from my head the horrors I’d seen on the endless loop of those ghastly events.
It’s still horrible, at this distance in time, over ten years on and I still don’t understand how anyone could ever be motivated to cause so much death and destruction. Whether or not our going to war in Iraq was the right response, I don’t know, but I always felt someone, somewhere should have been brought to justice, and I wish Osama bin Laden had been put on trial before he’d been shot.
At the time, though, life grudgingly got back to normal. The House Detectives was edited and shown. Dan Cruickshank did a super job of explaining the house, both in his delivery and his narration. The programme generated a lot of interest – at least in our village, and, I hope, a bit beyond.
In the house, our new local decorators were laboriously painting the grand, high-ceilinged abbot’s parlour in yellow ochre mixed with cow dung and lime, while Bill Kenwright had sent Sue and me off to Bromley with Relatively Speaking. On top of this, at last, the rumours of a final Trotter outing had come to fruition. John Sullivan and Gareth Gwenlan had persuaded the BBC that they should make three very, very last Only Fools Christmas Specials, to be broadcast over the next three Christmases but all made at the same time.
After much discussion, it had been decided that there should be a new end to the story. I’d always held the view, quite strongly, that the wheel should turn full circle for Del and Rodney, that they should lose all their new-found money and end up returning to live in Nelson Mandela House, happy to be back to their old life. If they hadn’t the programme would have promoted the undesirable and erroneous idea that money was the answer to everything.
The seeds of this had been sown in the original ‘final’ episode, Time on our Hands, shown over Christmas ’96, with Del sitting in the empty sitting-room, on the phone, working out a deal with Monkey Harris, and Rodney saying, ‘Del, we don’t have to do this anymore.’ Del looks up with a look of disappointed acceptance.
We were, all of us, quite distracted when we met up for the read through. It had been five years since we’d all worked together. There was a little more ‘snow on the roof’ for some of us, although in David’s case, his hair seemed to have got darker. There was no doubt that we all felt it just wasn’t the same without Buster and Kenny. Kenny especially, as his natural chutzpah had always rubbed off on everyone, while David and Nick no longer had Uncle Albert to bounce off. We had Albert’s funeral scene to look forward to, reminiscent of Grandad’s back in 1985, when Buster had first appeared. Kenny’s character, Mike Fisher, landlord of the Nag’s Head was said to have been up to some chicanery, fallen foul of the authorities and disappeared.
John Sullivan surveyed us all. ‘I really miss those two, you know. I thought it would be OK, but it ain’t the same.’
It wasn’t. I missed talking to Buster about parking, and his bouncing around on the piano stool. I missed saying, ‘Kenneth, behave yourself!’ which he’d always enjoyed, because it made him feel posh.
The first of the three specials, If They Could See Us Now, featured as a guest Jonathan Ross, playing the host of a quiz show. Del, having lost all his and Rodney’s money in dodgy Central American funds, has wound up back in Nelson Mandela House and on the quiz show, where he has worked his way up to the £50,000 question.
Quizmaster Ross asks him, ‘What is a female swan called?’
Rodney surreptitiously waves a pen at him.
‘A bic?’ Del answers.
Despite losing two much loved characters, John Sullivan hadn’t lost his touch. If They Could See Us Now was as good as any script he’d written for the show, and full of affection for the core qualities of the two remaining Trotters. It achieved 20.3 million viewers, which was amazing, given how long it had been since the last episode and the way the world had changed since Del Boy had first been introduced to the public in 1981 – twenty whole years before!
Following straight on from making If You could see us Now, we made Strangers on the Shore and Sleepless in Peckham, to be aired as Christmas Specials at the end of 2002 and 2003, which would bring the whole Only Fools & Horses saga to its very final conclusion. Although we were now certain we would never make another episode of the show, there was nevertheless great comfort in knowing there were two more major shows to be aired; it made one feel that that a key part of one’s life had not yet entirely died.
There was still an enormous interest in Only Fools; the twentieth anniversary had passed but the demand for re-showings seemed, if anything, to have increased. It was now, unquestionably, a television phenomenon.
I was pleased too to be maintaining my acting partnership with Sue Holderness, which, of course, Only Fools had created. After the success of Relatively Speaking, Bill Kenwright, multi-faceted impresario, (ex-Corrie star) and famous for taking chances, had asked us to follow it up with another Ayckbourn play, Time and Time Again, also featuring Robert Duncan, well known from the ’80s hit comedy, Drop the Dead Donkey.
This was a pleasure. I knew the play well as I’d done it in 1970, and here I was, more than thirty years on, playing the same part.
Graham was an intolerant suburbanite who possessed, as it happened, a number of Boycie overtones. I recognized only now that I had first ventured into this character’s hinterland back then, and given him more flesh when I’d met the drinking acquaintance at the St Margaret’
s Hotel on whom I’d based DI Humphreys in Citizen Smith. Humphreys had then morphed into Boycie, the magnificent creature that now bestrides the cultural landscape ‘de nos jours’, as Del Boy would have put it.
Like all Ayckbourn plays, Time and Time was a wonderfully constructed word-spinner, and an opportunity to explore the underbelly of surprisingly resilient, midle-class England. Sue and I dovetailed perfectly and had a lot of fun as a pretentious, nouveau riche couple, airing their paranoia while a cricket match was being played in a field beyond their garden.
The Time and Time Again tour led up to my next significant birthday, the LX, as I prefer to disguise it. Obviously, I’d watched it coming, since the Big Five-O, and I was conscious that I hadn’t played cricket or tennis since coming up to live in the Welsh Marches. Up until then, every time I took to the field or court, I’d increasingly found myself pulling muscles I didn’t even know I had, my reactions were not as sharp as they had been and I began not to enjoy playing either sport. This could have felt very tragic but I’d also found I had a huge amount of physical work to do in getting the garden together and under control.
We’d been living at Wigmore Abbey nearly five years by the time 16 August 2002 came around. Carol evidently felt we had done enough to the place to throw a party there with confidence. She and I had discussions about holding a smallish celebration, mainly with the local people who had been so supportive; we were, after all, a long way from our previous lives.
However, behind my back, Carol had been trawling through the address book and had contacted practically everyone I’d ever known and even a few I hadn’t. Friends and colleagues from the distant past and long lost-relations were sounded out with the promise of overnight accommodation in outlying, friendly B&Bs to keep the whole thing hidden from me.
It was a major feat of subterfuge. I knew she was up to something when suddenly I wasn’t allowed to answer the phone or look at the post, but, at that stage, I thought it was only our friends from the past four years who were coming.
The 16 August dawned fine and clear. I was woken at eight o’clock by the sounds of an army of people arriving to engage in manual activity. I was vaguely suspicious that something wasn’t right when these noises were followed by shouted instructions, the clashing of iron against iron and bellows of laughter. I peeked blearily through the curtains of our bedroom and saw to my amazement canvas marquees being erected, chairs and tables being arranged in the garden and clusters of men and women milling around looking very busy.
I went to the top of the stairs.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ I bellowed.
‘What do you mean?’ Carol’s question floated innocently back up the stairs.
‘What do you mean, what do I mean? There’s a bloody great tent in the garden
‘What tent?’
‘What do you mean, what tent?’
‘Oh that tent! That’s not a tent; it’s an awning.’
‘What’s a bloody awning doing in the garden?’
‘Stop shouting and get dressed. It’s your birthday.’
It was indeed.
The first people to arrive, mid-morning, were Keith Washington and Madeleine Howard. ‘Oh, we just happened to be passing,’ they lied.
It was great to see them; they had been firm friends for ages, through many of my ridiculous personal crises, looking on like parents of a wayward teenager. By lunchtime, I was astonished by the procession of people I simply hadn’t dreamt would have come all this way, waiting in line to say warm, complimentary things while pressing into my palsied hands tokens of their appreciation that I had reached such an age and remained standing. I hadn’t for a moment thought that anyone would bring presents.
I was frankly overwhelmed and not helped in this by having downed several large gulps of festive wine to deal with the trauma of it all. I could see even more people arriving and queuing up to remind me how old I was and I became very emotional when most of the team from Only Fools turned up.
David Jason had come, John Sullivan, Gareth Gwenlan, Tony Dow, Sue – of course, Paul Barber, sporting dreadlocks and a Tshirt proclaiming ‘NORF LONDON’, Roy Heather, who played Sid, the café owner, and Ken Macdonald’s widow, Sheila.
So many people from my past appeared that it was difficult to get round them all. Most of the locals we had asked were able to come and gave a wonderful slant to what might otherwise have been just another show-biz party. The actors – or Max Factors, as a good Cockney might have put it – were all on fine form and engaged brilliantly with the locals. Paul Barber raced around talking to everybody, and Christopher Timothy, always a hit with the ladies, charmed anyone he met.
Pushing the party along were Richard Heffer, who had become a close friend since the emotional fall-out of The Relapse tour and Ray Lonnen whom I’d met at a commercial casting years before in my murkier past.
Sue Holderness and her husband, Mark Piper had stayed in the uplifting surroundings of Oakly Park, the elegant eighteenthcentury pile which was home to Ivor and Caroline Windsor. Lord Windsor had been more than happy to welcome Marlene into his home and was especially entertaining all day, regaling locals and actors alike with his good humour and tall tales.
There were friends from our nearby villages, from the local farming community, county types and long-lost relations from Dorset and Somerset.
David Jason, immensely famous now not just as Del Boy, but also for superb portrayals of the well-loved Pop Larkin and the TV detective, Frost, held court at a table just below the tottering stone finger of the ruined abbey. He dealt happily with his increasingly inebriated audience, unfazed by the unfamiliar tones and demeanour of the local land-owners and assorted rustic toffs. He, Sue, Ron and Paul all joined me for photographs around another of Carol’s brilliant ideas – a birthday cake decorated with the figures of Del Boy, Rodney, Trigger, Boycie and Marlene around the little yellow three-wheeler van.
There were speeches. In reply to Keith’s generous words I became hopelessly emotional, mumbled and fumbled my way through an entirely unprepared effort. ‘Imagine you’re a pair of curtains,’ I scolded myself, ‘and pull yourself together.’
After, through a haze of gratitude and booze, I saw John Sullivan approach. ‘I’ve had a bit of an idea,’ he said. ‘I’ll get back to you.’
I sensed a hint of something exciting in the air, but couldn’t quite focus on it.
After eight hours or so, quite a crowd were still in the garden. It rained, we rushed to cram ourselves under the awning until it stopped. Some couldn’t be bothered and just sat there getting wet.
As the last stragglers meandered up the track to the field which our neighbourly farmer had lent us for a car-park, I was able to reflect on what a great day it had been – unexpected, glorious fun, brilliantly organized by the perfect hostess, Carol, who was now inside, doing the washing up.
I wandered through the garden, and stopped at table full of empty glasses and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette and cigar butts. Around the table were four chairs and I wondered who had sat there and what they’d talked about.
More or less sober now, I thought about being sixty. It was sort of disturbing but I didn’t feel any different, and there was nothing I could do about it. It was a number, a milestone. Unlike The Who, I had never hoped to die before I got old. I was too scared of death, too uncertain of my own immortality and I remembered Kenny Macdonald worrying about dying too young. His father had died at 43 and Ken always thought he had inherited some condition that would mean the same for him. Perhaps he was right, poor soul.
I don’t know why I was asked to appear in a celebrity edition of Anne Robinson’s torture show. My grasp of a broad range of facts, especially the history of the Arsenal Football Club isn’t bad but there are a number of large lacunae in my general knowledge. I had met Anne on less combative terms at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Mulberry fashion company, where I had performed an impromptu sketch with Richard Heffer, an old friend of Mulberry fo
under, Roger Saul. (It was a great party, and Roger became a good friend of Carol’s and mine after that.)
Quite sparky with a notably acerbic wit, as you might expect, Anne was also very friendly and entertaining. When I agreed to do the Weakest Link, friends gasped, shook my hand, wished me luck and referred to it as the Bleakest Stink, although I found I was rather looking forward to it. Needless to say, the idea was that whichever ‘celebrity’ won, being all sitcom stars off the telly, they obviously wouldn’t need the money and would donate it to a charity of their choice. As it happened, I could think of a few old sitcom stars who were in pretty desperate need themselves.
The victims all gathered before the show, nine in all, including Mike Grady, from Last of the Summer Wine, Clive Swift from Keeping up Appearances, Ian Lavender from Dad’s Army, Vicky Michelle from ’Allo ’ Allo and Lesley Joseph from Birds of a Feather.
We chatted, and told each other that as long as we weren’t slung out at the first round, we didn’t mind how we did (although we all wanted to win, really.)
In the first round of easy-peasy questions, poor old Mike got caught by one of those trick mathematical questions, in which you realize you’re wrong even as you’re blurting out the wrong answer.
Mike blurted, got it wrong, and we had to vote him off. I felt inexplicably disloyal in doing it; his face as he trudged off showed his shame and mortification and I felt much as I had when I’d watched my wayward dog, the Prune, go off when I sent him to the vet to have his nuts off.
The rounds went on, and I felt a stab of guilt for every one of my fellow sitcom stars I voted off. I was saved myself by Ian Lavender after a bad round and I was glad to be still there and in with a shout. The problem now, though, was that by the fourth round I’d run out of barbed witty ripostes to Ms Robinson’s waspish sorties and I was feeling rather vulnerable.
