by David Jason
Still, I had plenty of grounding. I was in my forties when Only Fools took off. Jack Nicholson said that nobody should be famous before they’re forty. He didn’t say that to me personally, I hasten to add. He said it to someone else, in an interview somewhere. He was absolutely right, though – and I would have happily said as much: ‘Jack, mate, you’ve slapped it smack on the nose there.’ Clearly fame can mess you up if it comes at you too fast or too young. But neither of those things applied in my case and, accordingly, my feet were fairly firmly on the ground when attention eventually did come barging through the door. I had been through my jobbing actor phase, plugged away on tour, done summer seasons – been Mr Nobody in every provincial theatre going. I had grabbed at any part that was offered to me and tried to make it work. I had gone out in mediocre productions of mediocre farces, taking the roles that Derek Royle had made hay with in the West End and flogging them around the country. (Royle was the king of the West End farce, in my view. Brian Rix used to get all the credit, and grew, indeed, to be the outstanding legend of the genre. But I always found him a bit too heavy-handed. Royle was the one I looked up to and borrowed from.) I wouldn’t go so far as to say I bore the scars of those touring experiences, but I certainly bore the memories: of the six-day weeks, with Sunday for travelling; of the gloomy bed and breakfasts with the starchy landladies and their bri-nylon sheets, which were permanently on the brink of setting fire to your leg-hairs. Not to mention their nit-picky rules. You had to be out by 10 a.m., but you weren’t due at the theatre until late in the afternoon, so there was nothing for it but to go walkabout, wandering around Bradford or Hull or Aberdeen or Stirling or some other town you didn’t know, in the tipping rain, trying not to spend money because you didn’t really have any, homesickness and loneliness creeping up behind you and sometimes catching up with you, to the point where you thought, ‘Just what the hell am I doing with my life, frankly? What can ever come of this?’ I’d had a long time to work out who I was, what I was doing and why I was doing it, and I had paid a few dues along the way. Consequently, success wasn’t in a position to ambush me. Indeed, I would have been more inclined to say, ‘What kept you?’
I also had behind me the sobering experience of Two D’s and a Dog. My first adventures in television had been littered with misfires, and this was surely the one which fired widest. It was the series that came my way in 1970, after Do Not Adjust Your Set, when, instead of sticking around for another series of a semi-anarchic kids’ comedy show on ITV, my fellow cast members Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Eric Idle went off to form Monty Python’s Flying Circus. (What were they thinking of? And, more importantly, why didn’t they take me? The latter was a question which, I can’t deny, festered away inside me for quite a while.) But no worries, because ITV were offering me and Denise Coffey (who had also been left behind by Palin and co.) the chance to make our names in another show for children, in which a pair of plucky detectives would solve mysteries ably assisted by a gigantic Old English sheepdog. It was a lacklustre idea, in truth, but my head was turned sufficiently by the prospect of a starring role to ignore the fact that I would be playing second fiddle to a mutt who was most famous for having done a paint commercial for Dulux. Fundamentally what the producers were looking for was a vehicle for the dog – and I don’t mean an estate car, which would have been most people’s solution. The scripts were poor, though I wasn’t experienced enough to know it – and the show duly flopped, more floppily than a floppy English sheepdog at his floppiest. Only the dog came out of it with any credit, in fact, and he didn’t come out of it with much. Deep down, I think I realised that there was more to me than this stuff, and that there was work somewhere out there which might be a better match for my capabilities. But I was seduced by the thought of a prominent role on television and making my name – as who wouldn’t be? Television would get you known. This much you thought you knew. And once television had got you known, the calls would surely start to come, until eventually the finger of Hollywood would graciously beckon and you would be made a star. This much you thought you knew, and you were wrong.
So that was a chastening experience, and a valuable one in the long run. It caused me to set a few things in the right order: put the quality of the work first, and be very sceptical about all the rest of it. Plus it taught me to avoid shows with Old English sheepdogs in them, a rule which I have managed to abide by ever since.
But no amount of grounding and perspective could have entirely prepared me for the impact that Only Fools and Horses would have. It reached people in ways I had never anticipated and to depths that I am still being surprised by. Even now I am still being made aware of what Del and the show mean to people. They still come up to me to report the laughs it has given them, the escape it has provided them with, the release it has offered during bad times. There were two occasions when people got in touch with me and asked if I would tape a message, in the voice of Del, to play to somebody in a coma in the hope that it might get through to them, help bring them back, because this person had loved the show so much and … well, you would try anything, wouldn’t you? I put forty-five seconds of my best Del on a cassette tape and sent it off with my sincerest wishes. ‘Del Boy, here. Listen – it’s no good you lying there. I need somebody to help me carry the suitcase …’ Did it work? Well, in one case, apparently so. In the other one, maybe not – I really don’t know. I’m not mentioning this in order to big up the restorative powers of Del. I’m relating it to try and convey how much this work of silliness came to mean to people. I had no idea about any of this stuff at the time – in the rehearsal room, on the set, on location. None of us did. We were just … making a comedy programme. The distance between the show as we regarded it while we were making it and the show as it was eventually perceived, out there in people’s sitting rooms, was something that all of us would struggle to measure in the ensuing years.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A date with royalty
FAME, ONE QUICKLY realises, leads to so many openings. Supermarkets, fairs, craft shows, film festivals … you would possibly be startled to know how many things I’ve been asked to open since I became famous. Fetes, bazaars, car boot sales … ‘And if you could come dressed as Del …’ Really? Wouldn’t it be just as good if you hired a lookalike? Some people convert this spin-off work very successfully into an arm of their business. Ronnie Corbett had it down. If people wanted him to pitch up and show his face at something, he would tell them, ‘I’ll give you an hour,’ and charge accordingly. He would arrive, and an hour later he would leave. The ground rules were in place and everybody knew where they stood. Very professional. But it’s not really for me.
Fame also means invitations. Film premieres, theatre openings, charity bashes, awards dinners … If I had ever wanted to measure my life in lengths of red carpet and subsist on an exclusive diet of free vol-au-vents, then after Only Fools, I probably could have started doing so. But, again, it had never really been an ambition. Plus I don’t especially like vol-au-vents.
Sometimes, though, invitations would come which you simply couldn’t refuse. Such as on that fateful morning when I found myself tremulously holding a thick and lustrously embossed card inviting me and my wife Gill to Highgrove to dine with Prince Charles. Dinner with Prince Charles! I mean, realistically, how many times in your life? Unless you’re Camilla, of course. But I’m not Camilla, and I’m under absolutely no illusions about that.
This was in 2001, and you can well imagine the levels of excitement and anxiety occasioned in your author’s kitchen by the arrival of the postman that day. My wife Gill and I immediately had so many questions to ponder – not least of all, why? Why would Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles (as she then still was) invite us to dinner? I suppose I was, at this point, an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, or OBE as we more gently refer to it, and had been so since 1993. But I wasn’t aware that being an OBE came with any princely dining rights. Indeed, if Prince Charles had to dine priva
tely with everyone who was made an OBE, he would practically never get up from the table. So maybe Charles and Camilla were Only Fools fans. That wasn’t completely out of the question. Charles famously like the Goons, didn’t he? It was one of the things that he and I had in common – and it seemed we’d be finding out very soon what the other things were.
While the big ‘why?’ question hung in the air, tantalisingly unanswered, we fell to discussing other pressing aspects of the rare evening that now lay ahead of us, most particularly: how big was this dinner going to be? How many people would be there? We very quickly dismissed the notion that it would just be a cosy foursome. That seemed just too implausible. Even if Charles and Camilla loved Only Fools a lot, there would have to be some others there, surely. But on what scale? Six people? Twelve? I hadn’t seen Downton Abbey, because at this point it hadn’t been made. But I had seen Upstairs Downstairs, which was sort of the same thing, and I could easily envisage one of those very long, polished tables, all silver cutlery and white china and candles – seating, what? Twenty people, maybe? It couldn’t be any more than that, surely, because a larger number would constitute a party rather than a dinner, and the invitation was very clear that we were being asked to come to dinner.
It was also clear about the dress code: black tie. So that was me sorted. No need to trouble Issey Miyake on my account, or even Mr Marks and Mr Spencer. I would just get the old DJ out, as usual. For Gill, and for Gill alone, lay in store the fraught and draining task of selecting an outfit suitable for an evening of intimate dining and breeze-shooting with the future king and his consort. I did what I felt was the best thing I possibly could do to help in the circumstances: I mustered all the knowledge that I possess of occasion-appropriate fashion choices for women, and left her to it.
The great day grew near amid rising intrigue and excitement, and, of course, mounting nervousness on our part. Our entire family (in particular my sister, June, and Gill’s mum, Burley, whose real name is Shirley, though I call her Burley because it rhymes) had been on tenterhooks about this night of royal intimacy since pretty much the day the invitation arrived – to the point where it was a mild surprise, in fact, not to find a small delegation lining the route with flags to wave us on our way when we eventually departed, soon after lunch on that cherished summer Saturday. Highgrove being a fair way from our house, we had booked a room in a hotel nearby. So we headed there first and checked in, so that we could change into our finery before setting off again to cover the remaining six miles. Naturally, we left in what I had carefully calculated to be very good time for the 7 p.m. arrival (for an 8 p.m. dinner) stipulated on the invitation. Let’s face it: when you get invited to break bread with the future monarch, you don’t want to pitch up late and have to come barging through the door shouting apologies.
Imagine our delight, then, when, about a minute into this last leg of the journey, the traffic in front of us slowed to a standstill. It was unbelievable. By what ghastly joke on the part of the cruel gods would we find ourselves stuck in a jam on this of all days, and at this of all times? As we sat there in the barely moving queue, with panic slowly beginning to rise, I briefly considered veering out onto the other side of the road, putting my boot down and overtaking everybody – honking my horn and flashing my lights in the hope of being mistaken for a doctor on call. But I realised that doing so would almost certainly result in either death or arrest, neither of which would get us to our dinner any quicker. Instead I resigned myself to sitting and fuming, hiccuping forwards at a speed which I estimated through my fury to be about fourteen yards per hour.
The traffic we were locked in with included a couple of coaches, stuffed with people. There must have been some kind of big event in the area that we hadn’t reckoned on. My bet was that it was showjumping, which was very big around those parts. What was both maddening and baffling was that we didn’t seem to be getting free of it. Surely at some point the traffic would have to unclog and release us. But no. Every time we needed to turn, so, apparently, did the traffic ahead of us and behind. We reached what was the last turning for Highgrove and we still didn’t seem to have lost a single car along the way. ‘Where are they all going?’ I asked Gill.
We soon found out. The trail of traffic led through the gates of the Highgrove estate, where we were guided by stewards into a giant field set aside for car parking, beyond which a massive marquee was visible, looming on the horizon like a canvas Taj Mahal.
Guess who’s coming to dinner. Everybody. Or certainly the entire contents of our traffic jam were, including coach parties. In our grassy space on the rapidly filling field, I switched off the ignition and as the car fell silent Gill and I exchanged a look of mutual humiliation. Our tête-à-tête supper appointment at Prince Charles’s country residence was a stonking great gala dinner for four hundred, held in honour (we discovered in due course) of the Spanish tile firm Porcelanosa. I don’t know how we hadn’t gleaned this in advance. I can only tell you that we genuinely hadn’t.
Biting down a mixture of disappointment and mild relief (me) and a mixture of disappointment and further disappointment (Gill), we allowed ourselves to be guided through the throng to a kind of dedicated VIP reception area, whereupon we discovered that also among our exclusive number that night were Alan Titchmarsh, the gardener and television presenter, Richard Whiteley, the host of Countdown, Carol Vorderman, also from Countdown, and the radio presenter Sarah Kennedy. Had Alan, Richard and the rest of this little gang also arrived in the expectation of something a little smaller? I suspect not, though I felt it prudent in the circumstances not to ask. Instead, we drank and exchanged chit-chat. I liked Richard Whiteley a lot – a funny, jolly man, and sadly no longer with us. All of us in the VIP conclave were gathered up at one point and taken outside for a tour of Highgrove’s new Islamic-style garden, which was rather lovely and put my own Buckinghamshire-style effort somewhat in the shade. Then we returned to our VIP area and did some more drinking and some more exchanging of chit-chat.
Time was clearly wearing on by this stage, yet supper hadn’t been served and nor was there any sign of the royal party, which seemed odd. Thinking about it, our tour of the garden had seemed rather artificially protracted, too. I think we ended up making about three circuits of it. I felt I could have played a key role on the panel for Gardeners’ World by that point. Eventually, though, an explanatory message was brought to our gathering: ‘Do bear with us. There’s a slight delay. The Prince fell from his horse during a game of polo this afternoon and has been taken to hospital, so we’re just waiting to hear what the outcome is.’
This didn’t sound promising. Sure enough, a short while later, our messenger returned. ‘The Prince needs to be at the hospital for a while longer, so he won’t be able to join us this evening.’
‘Ah, well. That’s polo,’ I said, trying to sound both upbeat and knowledgeable, but somehow failing on both counts. This was unquestionably a blow – not least for the original dreams of Gill and myself, who had seen the prospect of an intimate dinner with Prince Charles shrink quite rapidly to become the prospect of a very un-intimate dinner without him. Apparently, though, Camilla was on her way from the hospital to join us, along with Prince William and Prince Harry who had agreed to step into the breach and make speeches in their father’s absence. Sure enough, a lot of kerfuffle near the entrance to the marquee soon confirmed the arrival among us of the royal party. I was straining to look along with everybody else when a member of the royal household tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Would you join Camilla for dinner? She needs an escort.’
‘Nah, you’re all right,’ I replied. ‘I’ll stay here with Alan Titchmarsh.’
OK, not really. I left Gill with Mr Titchmarsh and permitted myself to be withdrawn from the security of showbiz corner and thrust without prior warning into the role of Camilla’s consort for the evening. In which job, I should say, I was the exact definition of a fish out of water, though I did my best not to gasp or thrash around on the floor,
which I realised would be frowned upon, as well as undignified.
So, our intimate dinner with Prince Charles now found my wife on a table with the presenter of Ground Force, and me, a couple of hundred yards away, seated to the left of the future Duchess of Cornwall. Which I suppose, in a roundabout way, for the duration of the meal at least, made me first in line for the throne, unless that’s not the way it works. Whatever, I’m not going to pretend that being asked to fill this vacant seat wasn’t an intimidating proposition in a number of ways. (The seat at the dinner, I mean; not the throne.) But I was at least fortunate enough to have picked up on my journey through life some of the etiquette you need on such occasions. For instance, there’s a way of conducting conversation at these formal dinners which is designed to ensure that everyone always has someone to talk to and nobody gets left out. The rule is this: during the first course, you talk to the person on your left, and then during the second course, you politely disengage and turn and talk to the person on your right. And then, when the dessert comes out, you’re free to stand on the table. Actually, I may have got it wrong about the dessert course.
You know what, I may have got it wrong about the other courses, too. Because, now I come to think about it, if you’re talking to the person on your left, and the person on your right is talking to the person on their left, as per the rules, then the person on your right is basically talking to your back, and you are talking to the back of the person to the left of you, because they have turned left to talk to the back of the person next to them, and nobody round the table has got anybody to talk to. Ditto when the beef and potatoes arrive and you all turn right.
