by David Jason
The reason for Syd’s secrecy was that we were in the middle of preparing a show and it might not have gone down too well with the rest of the cast if the director and one of the actors had come into the rehearsal room yakking about a new project. The next day, back in Acton, during a quiet moment, I returned the envelope to Syd and said, ‘This is bloody brilliant. Really, really good.’
Syd said, ‘If there was a part in it, what part do you think you could play?’
I said, without a beat of hesitation, ‘Derek Trotter.’
Syd looked a little crestfallen. ‘Not the grandfather, then?’
I said, ‘No, no: definitely Del.’
Syd kind of shrugged and said, ‘Well, OK, then. Thanks.’ And that was the end of the exchange.
What I didn’t know was that Syd was on a mission to help out his friend and colleague Ray Butt. Ray had been Syd’s first assistant in the early days of Open All Hours and had risen through the BBC ranks to the position of director/producer. Ray had put together the highly successful sitcom Citizen Smith, with Robert Lindsay, and now he was trying to set up a new series by that show’s writer, a man from Balham in south London named John Sullivan. The working title of the new show was Only Fools and Horses, although there was a feeling that they might have to change that, as it was possibly a bit obscure. Syd was helping Ray by coming up with a few casting suggestions – including potentially proposing me for the senior member of the comedy’s cross-generational trio. My reaction rather changed his mind.
Syd now went back to Ray Butt and said, ‘What about David Jason for Derek Trotter?’
As Ray himself later told me, he thought about this very hard for at least one and a half seconds before saying, ‘No, no – he’s not right.’
But Syd, bless him, persisted. He asked Ray to cast his mind back a couple of years to that location shoot the three of us had been on, for It’s Only Me, Whoever I Am, the ultimately doomed sitcom pilot. ‘Don’t you remember,’ Syd said, ‘how he used to take the piss out of your cockney accent during those snooker games at the hotel?’
Ray said, ‘Actually, I’d forgotten that.’ Ray thought about it a bit longer. He had nothing to lose by seeing me. Eventually, he said, ‘All right. If you think he’s worth a look, let’s get him in.’
I went in to read, on my own, in Ray Butt’s office at BBC Television Centre. Ray was on the top floor, looking out onto the ring created by the fabled ‘doughnut’ building. (Alas, the BBC has, in its wisdom, seen fit to abandon Television Centre. Its rather antiseptic but nevertheless history-steeped walls are now up for redevelopment. In 2012, I was part of a tribute show to mark the Centre’s closing, where I sat on a sofa with, among others, Ronnie Corbett, Miranda Hart and Dara O’Briain, sharing our memories of the place with Michael Grade. Afterwards I had a long and wistful chat with John Cleese about the enduring abundance of Noel Edmonds’ hair. I miss that building and was sad to see the BBC leave it, although, of course, life teaches us that nothing is permanent. Apart, obviously, from Noel Edmonds’ hair.)
John Sullivan was also in Butt’s office that day – and strongly resistant to the idea of having me in his new series. John’s impression was that I was a player of life’s losers – of hapless characters, like Granville and Edgar Briggs and Shorty Mepstead and Peter Barnes. As that list shows, he might have had a point. In John’s mind, Derek Trotter was, by contrast, an upbeat character – a winner. Not that Del Boy ever really won anything: by and large, he only appeared to have won things which it subsequently turned out he had lost. But he was a winner by mentality, and John couldn’t see me playing that.
We hadn’t met before, and my first impression of John was ‘Did he really write this?’ He was very quiet and, I thought at the time, a bit morose – the very opposite of the script, which was bright and full of life. John wasn’t a morose person at all, in fact, as I later learned. Quiet, yes, but not morose. I think on that occasion he was simply worried. They had already tried and failed to get a couple of people for Del – I believe Enn Reitel, the Scottish impressionist and actor, was one of them.
So, I read for them – some bits and pieces from the script, remembering Derek Hockley and employing the accent I’d used to entertain Ray all those nights ago around the snooker table in Doncaster. Ray seemed to enjoy what I did, but it’s very hard to judge what people are thinking on these occasions. By default, there’s a lot of politeness and goodwill in the room. However, John, I felt fairly confident, was still not convinced. I thanked them both and left.
Then I went away and did my best not to think too hard about anything – to try and suppress the appetite that had started up inside me for doing this part. Because the more I thought about Del, and the more I thought about the script I had seen, the more I felt there was something potentially wonderful there for me. I had to make every effort to switch off those thoughts so that I wouldn’t be too disappointed if – no, when – I didn’t get the part. ‘Managing your expectations’, I think they call it in the training manuals. The ghost of my non-selection for Dad’s Army was rising before me.
Stone me, though, if I didn’t get a recall. Ray rang and said, ‘Would you come in and read again?’ So back I went to Ray’s office, and this time I was not alone. I was introduced to a young actor called Nicholas Lyndhurst, who, it was explained to me, had been cast for the part of Rodney, the younger brother, and an older actor called Lennard Pearce, who was going to be playing Grandad.
Lennard was in his late sixties and hadn’t really done much television. He had spent his career slogging around the repertory theatres. Nick, who was twenty, had found fame at seventeen as Adam, one of the children in Butterflies, with Wendy Craig and Geoffrey Palmer. I thought, as we all shook hands, that I had met neither of these people before, but it turned out I was wrong, twice in fact. By a strange twist of fate, Lennard had played Sir Lucius O’Trigger in The Rivals as a guest player when I was in the rep at Bromley, in the production in which I had been Bob Acres. We only worked that out much later, when we started to reminisce. As for Nick, he had been part of the cast of a semi-anarchic kind of Tiswas-style children’s show, where the kids would interview people who were quite well known. When I was doing Lucky Feller for ITV, I had gone on as a guest, promoting the show, and my interviewer in the studio had been … a shiny-faced Nicholas Lyndhurst. Small world – with the usual qualification that decorating it would be a nightmare.
Two of the three key parts in this new show, then, were set in stone. As for the third one, it was now up to me and what I could do in the next twenty minutes or so. ‘So, shall we get started?’ said Ray. He proposed that we simply read through the first script, doing any of the scenes that involved the three of us. We sat round a table with our scripts and a few cups of the BBC’s famously filthy coffee, and Lennard cleared his throat and began to read.
‘That Sidney Potter’s a good actor, ain’t he, Rodney?’
With that, we were off. And, well, what can I say? When the three of us began to put our voices to the lines, the magic was in the room. Nick’s deliberate, slightly dopey tone, my best Derek Hockley, Lennard’s lovely growl – all the component parts just fitted. Within a few moments of that reading beginning, I was saying ‘S’il vous plaît, s’il vous plaît’ and calling Rodney ‘a right dipstick’ and ‘a dozy little twonk’ to his face for the first time, and the whole thing was sounding like it had been written for us. When we reached the end of our read, silence fell on the room. Ray Butt and John Sullivan exchanged looks until Ray finally said, ‘Well, that’ll do for me.’ And with that, I was hired.
Nick, Lennard and I went to the BBC members’ bar to celebrate. We couldn’t order any alcohol because we weren’t members. So the three of us christened the show with a cup of tea. I remember saying, as we sat there chatting, ‘You know, I don’t think this is a sitcom. I think this is a comedy-drama.’ I felt able to say that because of the clear dimensions of the characters: they weren’t Terry and June, they weren’t desi
gned-for-sitcom figures. They were real people who just happened to be funny. I felt very, very excited indeed.
Apparently, upstairs in the higher echelons of the BBC, news that I was being considered for the role as Nick Lyndhurst’s older brother had caused some consternation, on the simple grounds that the two of us looked nothing alike. ‘Isn’t David Jason shorter and darker and rounder of face?’ It had to be pointed out, as politely as possible, that this was the whole point. Two things John Sullivan always knew about Del: 1) that he needed to be shorter than Rodney, to remove any sense of physical intimidation from the interplay between the older and the younger brother; and 2) that he should look nothing like his sibling, to enable that delicious little undercurrent of suspected illegitimacy to run through the scripts, with Del and Rodney being the only two people who completely believe that they share the same father.
Before filming could start, we had to work up our characters – work out a little further who they were and work out how to become them. The way I’ve always thought about it is that you are trying to inhabit the character’s body, not let the character inhabit your body. But what kind of a body was Del Trotter? John Sullivan had seen him with a flat cap and a fat belly, but I said, ‘No, I know just the man,’ and I pressed hard for taking him in the direction of the aforementioned Derek Hockley – this cockney who dressed like a fashion model but spoke like a docker. Derek Hockley became the image I took for Derek Trotter.
Incidentally, years later, I received a wonderful letter from Derek Hockley’s daughter, written shortly after her father had died. She just wanted me to know that he had taken great delight in knowing he was the model for Derek Trotter. (It was something I had mentioned in a couple of interviews.) He used to dine out on the story. I was so relieved to hear that. I took inspiration from him fondly and admiringly, but I had sometimes worried over the years whether being associated with Del Boy had upset him or even ruined the poor bloke’s life, and I was very pleased to discover that it hadn’t.
In the days running up to the commencement of shooting, the costume designer and I went out to dress the character. This would happen at the beginning of every series of the show, when we would step out to the shops again to upgrade Del Boy’s wardrobe for the adventures ahead. I hate shopping for clothes for myself and would generally rather shut my fingers repeatedly in a kitchen drawer than stand in a store on Oxford Street holding shirts up against myself and saying, ‘What do you think?’ Shopping for clothes for a character, on the other hand, was something different. I utterly loved it. It was a total escape. I was through the doors of those Oxford Street shops quicker than the costume designer, picking things out and hauling stuff off the racks, thinking, ‘Would Del wear this?’
On that first trip, I picked out a selection of sweaters which I thought were absolutely right for him – a bit bright, a bit Jack the Lad – and I then wore them in succession throughout the series. It didn’t occur to me that they were all made by the same company – Gabicci – and that the company might take a view on that. Gabicci got in touch with me and said they’d noticed I was wearing a lot of their gear. As I read their letter, I was thinking, ‘This could go either way, really.’ They were either going to be pleased about the publicity, or they were going to ask me to desist forthwith, perhaps even via their lawyers. Luckily, they sounded flattered.
Indeed, in appreciation of my loyalty to the brand, they invited me to come down to their warehouse, just off the North Circular Road. So I did, and I met the managing director and had a chat about the character and the programme. Then they said, ‘Come round the warehouse and help yourself.’ They were loading me up as I walked through – ‘Have a couple of them … and a couple of those …’ I came out with virtually a hamper of shirts and sweaters. I’ve still got some in the wardrobe. I’m not getting into whether these items are good, bad or indifferent, from a fashion point of view, because that’s not really my area of expertise and never has been. I would only say that my wife Gill doesn’t appreciate them anywhere near as much as I do. But I can’t throw them away. It would feel wrong.
So, I had Del’s clothes; now I needed Del’s hair. There was a suggestion at the beginning that he should have a bubble perm, which was very popular among certain kinds of working-class bloke at the time, but which I resisted because I thought that was going over the top. Thick Elvis sideburns were also briefly on the agenda, but I argued against those, too. Ditto the suggestion that Del should have gold sovereign rings on every finger. I reckoned that he should have just two on each hand – otherwise I felt we were overcooking it and taking him towards parody, where he shouldn’t ought to go. I was doing my best to think comedy-drama, not sitcom. In the event, we went for tidy, with a little bit of grease, à la Derek Hockley.
We didn’t know it but the rhythms and rituals of the location shoot and the studio recording would pretty much set the pattern for the next decade of our lives. What would happen on location is that Nick and I would get to share a suite of exclusive leather soft furnishings in the Hollywood-style, luxury carpeted trailer which, in those heady days, the BBC habitually gave to the stars of its sitcoms. Oh, all right, then: we sat in the back of what was essentially a cheap second-hand motor home, but with the sink and the stove stripped out, and in their stead, a battered sofa, a knackered chair and a rack for your clothes. The smell in the place was a heady mix of damp carpet, petrol fumes and the aroma of 10,000 previously smoked Woodbine cigarettes.
Three or four of these motor homes were supplied for the cast, making any Fools and Horses location shoot look like an underfunded housing project, and each of the homes had its own driver. The drivers used to fascinate me. They would bring the van to the location, park it up and then sit in the driving seat, reading the paper. Come coffee time, they’d climb out, get a coffee in a plastic cup from the catering urn, and get back in the driving seat. At some point, they might swap newspapers with one of the other drivers and read that. Then they might nod off. Eventually, it would be lunchtime, over at the chuck wagon, and then they’d be straight back to the van to sit in the driving seat again, until teatime … and so on, through to the end of the day. The thing was, the drivers could never get out and do anything – help someone or move something – because the crew was unionised and the drivers would have got into terrible trouble if they had shown the slightest inclination to do someone else’s work. So what they did was sit. I’m not sure it was a job I could ever have done. I suspect I would have been banging my head against the windscreen in frustration after about forty minutes.
Anyway, in the confines of our mobile home, Nick and I struck up an instant rapport. We had an early bonding moment on the second episode of the series when we were out on location in London with an E-Type Jaguar sports car, purportedly belonging to Boycie. I rather fancied this car and, during a break between takes, I asked if I could take it off for a quick spin. I think everyone assumed I meant a quick blast up the road and back, so no objections were raised. Nick jumped in the passenger seat, and away we went.
About twenty minutes later, I realised that I was, to all intents and purposes, lost. We’d gone left and then right, and then left, and possibly left again after that … or was it right and then left? To be honest, the top was down and we were enjoying ladding about in this beautiful convertible car so much that the specifics had got a bit blurry. However, somewhere behind us lay a BBC film crew on a tight schedule, and an even tighter budget … We began to do our best to retrace our steps. No satnav in those days, of course.
‘Was it left here?’
‘No, it was right, wasn’t it?’
I had just about reached the point of despair when we turned into a road that neither of us recognised and saw the film crew at the far end of it. We got back with seconds to spare before our next call.
That jaunt definitely sealed something between us. Nick and I recognised in each other a kindred urge to mess about, whenever possible. I was delighted to find myself working with someone
who was as ready as I was to stage a mock blazing row behind a closed door and then pretend not to be talking to each other for the rest of the day – to the cast’s and the crew’s deep concern. And I was equally delighted to be the colleague of someone who saw, as keenly as I did, the value of nailing Lennard Pearce’s shoes to the floor. That was the night when – with the wind up us, as it frequently was – Nick and I broke into the wardrobe room, dealt with Lennard’s shoes and, for good measure, turned his costume inside out. We thought we were very amusing. Next morning we came down and started getting changed and all we could hear from Lennard’s side of the room was ‘Who’s been f***ing about with my costume? Look at it!’ And then he went to put his shoes on. And, at that, I’m afraid to say, he lost his rag. ‘Someone’s nailed me shoes to the floor. Who would have done such a thing? I think we should get the police in here.’ He said he wasn’t going to work that day, and had to be talked round by means of a calming chat from Ray Butt and effusive apologies from me and Nick. I have to say it was the only time I saw Lennard lose perspective. It wasn’t like him not to see the funny side.
One day, Nick arrived for rehearsals with a bag of novelty explosives. Essentially, they were thin bangers, with string at each end. You could tie these across a door, for instance, and anybody opening it would be greeted by a bang like a small bomb going off. Quality entertainment. Every morning it was the job of the production assistant, Tony Dow (who went on to become a director of the show), to set out the chairs and mark up the floor in the church hall in Hammersmith where we rehearsed. One day, Nick and I got in early and loaded up the stacked chairs with bangers. We then loaded the cubicle doors in the toilets too, for good measure. As Tony unstacked the chairs, he triggered one shocking explosion after another, until he decided he wouldn’t touch another chair. Nick and I were still laughing about this when there was an explosion in the toilets followed by a female scream of gigantic proportions. We went white. The little old lady who cleaned the church hall had entered the Gents with her mop. It nearly finished her off. No more bangers.
