Only Fools and Horses: Secrets and Scandals
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00:00Only Fools and Horses was truly la crème de la monthe.
00:04It's just, like, legendary.
00:06Well, lovely jubbly, really, you know.
00:08We know Dellen Rodney better than some of our own family.
00:11It became a national institution.
00:13You saw real people there, a spectre of people.
00:16But this is the story of some of the bits you don't know.
00:19I nearly died of fear. Nearly died. In fact, I nearly died.
00:22It's the story of lost episodes.
00:24When it was transmitted, John said, no, this is not a good episode.
00:27Lost friends and lost jobs.
00:30It's a story about Christmas.
00:32Half the country sat down to watch the trotters.
00:35Moving moments.
00:36Everybody was in tears.
00:38And Maggie Thatcher.
00:39Many, many, many, many.
00:41It's about money.
00:43And the story of some proper ducking and diving.
00:45A little bit, a little bit, wait, all that sort of stuff.
00:47You don't know me too well, but I've just written your next sitcom.
00:50We'll reveal some surprising secrets and scandals
00:53behind Britain's most pucker sitcom.
00:56Action.
01:02It's the start of the 80s.
01:04The fairy tale marriage of Charles and Di is off to a great start.
01:08There's war in the Falklands.
01:10And in London, the writer of a newish BBC sitcom
01:13has been called in for a meeting with his boss.
01:15The first series of Only Fools and Horses
01:17hadn't been particularly popular with either viewers or the press.
01:22Series 1 and 2 weren't the biggest success that we'd hoped for.
01:26It wasn't one of those sort of must-see things
01:28marked out in the Radio Times or whatever.
01:30It just sort of slipped into the schedules without much fanfare.
01:34Luckily, at the time, most shows were given a couple of series
01:37to see if they'd hit their stride.
01:39But in a rare interview from 2002,
01:41writer John Sullivan was refreshingly frank
01:43about the BBC's initial lack of enthusiasm
01:46for what would later become the most successful sitcom of all time.
01:50John Howard Davis invited me to his office and talked about the future
01:54and the first thing he said to me basically was,
01:56you don't want to make any more of them, do you?
01:58And I said, well, actually, I do.
02:00We all enjoyed it so much and we thought we had a great favour now.
02:04Despite lacklustre support from his bosses,
02:06John Sullivan got his way
02:08and was soon given an unexpected helping hand from the competition.
02:11I think it had a bit of a help from the series Minder on ITV
02:15because Minder had shown streetwise people
02:19multi-racial London action
02:22in sort of lock-ups in strange places like Camden
02:25at railway archways and things like that
02:27and the BBC realised that the background of Peckham
02:30could be equally as popular.
02:32And the show also got a nifty bonus thanks to a very timely strike.
02:37It wasn't until the second series of Only Fools and Horses
02:39was repeated because of a technician strike
02:41where the BBC couldn't make new programmes
02:44so the second series was re-shown and that gathered traction
02:47and the series slowly became a much bigger success.
02:50Nobody knew it at the time, but those repeats included a scene
02:53which would still be voted the funniest sitcom moment of all time
02:57nearly 20 years later.
02:59But for this particular scene, there could be no retakes
03:02so giggling on set was strictly forbidden.
03:04And as they got into their precarious positions,
03:07a visibly stressed David Jason and Nicholas Lindhurst
03:10looked as nervous as Del and Rodney.
03:12Look, this is the chance I've been waiting for.
03:15Now don't let me down, Rodney, now don't let me down.
03:18All right?
03:20All right, Grandad, we're ready.
03:22You can start. I'm doing it now.
03:25It is coming, Del Boy.
03:29Del Boy and Rodney go to a manor house to repair someone's chandelier
03:33and you know they're out of their depth,
03:35they know they're out of their depth
03:37and you know something funny is going to happen.
03:40It was a complicated and expensive scene
03:42with only one chance to get it right
03:44and the tension was palpable.
03:47One more turn, Del.
03:50All right. Now brace yourself, Rodney.
03:53Brace yourself.
04:05But that eruption of hysterical laughter
04:07meant it had been worth the stress.
04:09Although, as David Jason calmly explained
04:11in a revealing 2015 interview,
04:13not cracking up had been the cast and crew's biggest problem that day.
04:18We are gripping everything in our professional bodies not to laugh
04:25because we can see the picture in our minds.
04:29At last, the director shouts,
04:32cut.
04:33Well, you've never heard such an explosion of laughter from the crew.
04:39And when I looked around,
04:41there was people taking socks out of their mouths,
04:44handkerchiefs, microphones,
04:46anything they could stuff in their mouth
04:48to stop laughing when that chandelier dropped.
04:51Do you have to admit,
04:52it still is one of the funniest moments ever to be seen on television?
04:55As that chandelier crashed magnificently to the floor,
04:58a masterpiece of comic timing,
05:00you might wonder where on earth writer John Sullivan
05:02got such an outrageous idea.
05:05Funnily enough, the chandelier,
05:06the world famous chandelier thing's true.
05:09It happened, it actually happened.
05:11Sullivan's father had been an apprentice plumber
05:13fitting central heating at an old manor house.
05:16And as a safety precaution,
05:17they decided to take down a chandelier.
05:20They were all laughing when he told the story.
05:22They're only going to knock their own thing through.
05:24And they won't put it in the shower.
05:25And he went, oh, I can't, no, I can't.
05:27And he was very nervous about doing it
05:30because people got in a lot of trouble for this.
05:31And they got fired.
05:32After every episode of Fools and Horses,
05:34John Sullivan always awaits the phone call from his dad
05:37just to, you know, just to hear,
05:39hear what he had to say about the episode.
05:41And he was incredibly nervous about a touch of glass.
05:44John Sullivan's dad was very much of the school of thought
05:47that, you know, that's terrible.
05:48People lost their jobs.
05:49It's not something to be laughed at.
05:50But luckily the phone went and John answered
05:53and his dad replied, yeah, you're right.
05:55That was really funny.
05:57Sullivan would use plenty of real stories in his scripts
06:00and he had plenty to tell.
06:01He'd been a messenger boy, a secondhand car salesman
06:04and a plumber amongst other jobs,
06:06all the while sending scripts into the BBC.
06:08Eventually he decided that to get anywhere
06:10he needed to know more about how TV was put together,
06:14literally.
06:15So he applied for a job in the scenic department,
06:18building sets,
06:19the famous Morecambe and Wise singing in the rain sketch.
06:22He did all the plumbing for that sketch.
06:24And he got to work on so many different comedies of that time
06:27from the Morecambe and Wise shows,
06:29The Two Ronnies and Porridge.
06:32He had access to camera scripts.
06:34He had access to really become a student
06:37of how the process works.
06:39Sullivan was watching and learning,
06:41but he was also meeting people
06:42who might give him a leg up if he played it right.
06:45I think it was on the set of Porridge
06:46that he finally plucked up the courage
06:48to present the star Ronnie Barker with some sketches.
06:51He said, do you read sketches from everyone?
06:52And Ronnie Barker said politely, yeah, yeah,
06:54I've read any sketches.
06:55And he read the sketches and he loved them.
06:57It was brilliant.
06:58So John Sullivan was put onto contract
07:00as a sketch writer on The Two Ronnies.
07:02Having started with sketches,
07:03Sullivan's first sitcom script was Citizen Smith,
07:06which he sold to influential BBC producer
07:08Dennis Mayne-Wilson,
07:09with all the chutzpah of Del Boy himself.
07:12And John Sullivan, after doing his usual set-shifting work,
07:16went to the BBC bar and found him there,
07:18cigarette in one hand, glass of scotch in the other,
07:21and said, aren't you the bloke who gives people a break?
07:24And Dennis Mayne-Wilson said, yes, what have you got?
07:27And he wonderfully, with a lot of swagger
07:30and a lot of confidence said, you don't know me too well,
07:32but I've just written your next sitcom.
07:34On Citizen Smith,
07:35Sullivan teamed up with producer-director Ray Butt,
07:38who turned out to be the perfect person
07:40to help come up with his next idea.
07:43Ray Butt, who was the director and producer,
07:45he was talking to him and he had this idea
07:47about people selling stuff in market venues,
07:50street markets, you know, flyer pictures.
07:52Luckily, like Sullivan himself,
07:54Ray Butt had at one time worked on a street market.
07:57They'd watched, fascinated,
07:59in the same kind of way of the Del Boy types
08:02and how they performed as they were trying to sell.
08:05And so that made him very effective as well
08:08in terms of bringing Del Boy to life.
08:11And you'll never guess who Ray Butt worked for on the market,
08:14a young Tommy Cooper, just like that.
08:16Anyway, with all these people and experiences to draw on,
08:19Sullivan would never be short of a story.
08:22But he even found inspiration amongst the cast themselves,
08:25like the origins of Boise's famous laugh.
08:28There was one episode where John, quite out of the blue,
08:31just did this weird laugh.
08:33Just off the cuff, it wasn't in the script.
08:36And then when he came to do the next episode,
08:38I think it was a series later, a year later,
08:41and John Sullivan had written in the script,
08:43Boise does his laugh.
08:44And John said, what laugh?
08:45He said, you know, that laugh you did in that episode.
08:48So he had to go back and listen to it again.
08:50LAUGHTER
08:58It had actually come from a moment in a pub
09:01when he'd heard this woman who had this ghastly cackling laugh
09:05and he had, for fun, copied it.
09:08And everywhere he went, John, all his life until his dying day,
09:12people would say, go on, John, do the laugh. Do the laugh.
09:15Coming up, a rarely seen clip with heartbreaking significance.
09:20And then we got the hammer blow that Leonard Pierce died.
09:24He died during filming.
09:25And we reveal how Marlene got her famous look.
09:28I mean, why not? Don't we all love a bit of liver print?
09:31It's 1984. Torville and Dean win gold at the Winter Olympics.
09:35The miners' strike begins.
09:37Nice music, this, innit? I typed it off the radio.
09:40And the half-p coin is withdrawn from circulation.
09:43Meanwhile, at the Trotters' flat in Peckham,
09:45it's a typical scene with Del and Rodney
09:47gently teasing poor old Grandad.
09:49I were in the RAF. I flew in Wellington.
09:52Why didn't you just wear flying boots like everyone else?
09:55Ah, these old episodes are all so familiar.
09:58I bet Del's going to say that famous catchphrase in a minute.
10:01This time next year, we're going to be millionaires.
10:03Oh, yes.
10:04Does anyone else think that the flat looks a bit sort of off?
10:07You just take a butcher's at that.
10:09You know, like it's been shot on one of Del's Russian video cameras.
10:12Magazine about North Sea oil.
10:14Well spotted.
10:15Hang on, I don't remember an episode
10:17where they're reading a magazine about North Sea oil.
10:20Well, you might think you've seen every episode of Only Fools,
10:23but I bet you haven't seen that one.
10:25In fact, that episode was made as a promotional film for schools
10:28funded by a petroleum company
10:30to encourage children into the oil and gas industry.
10:34And it's not the only lost episode of Only Fools.
10:37More on that later.
10:38But we can reveal that it does have a very poignant importance.
10:42Licence to Drill wasn't shown on TV at the time.
10:45But if it had been,
10:46it would have been the viewers' last glimpse
10:48of Leonard Pierce playing Grandad.
10:53The second episode of series four
10:55opened with some moving and emotional scenes
10:58as Del and Rodney attend Grandad's funeral.
11:00We'll leave the car, shall we?
11:04Yeah.
11:06Have a nice little walk, eh?
11:08Yeah.
11:09Can't miss a nice walk, eh?
11:11But in fact, the cast and crew were also genuinely grieving
11:14the loss of the actor Leonard Pierce,
11:16who had died while the series was being filmed.
11:18It was a terrible occasion.
11:20You know, this is Leonard Pierce who died,
11:22not just a character in a show.
11:24We were saying goodbye to a really nice gentleman
11:27and a great character.
11:29Leonard Pierce, he'd always had health problems.
11:31He'd suffered from hypertension.
11:33And later on, he also became somewhat reliant on alcohol as well.
11:37He just became all frail because of his health.
11:40As time went on,
11:41sometimes he'd have someone help him to come to work.
11:44It was a tough life for him in the final couple of years or so.
11:48Pierce suffered a fatal heart attack aged 69
11:51a couple of days after filming some location scenes for series four.
11:55This was late 1984,
11:57so I decided to kind of shelve everything until the new year.
12:00The death of Leonard wasn't just a personal sadness
12:03for John Sullivan and the rest of the team.
12:05It presented a very practical problem.
12:07Scripts had already been written
12:09and some filming had even been completed,
12:11but now one of the main characters was gone.
12:14And then the question had to be, how do they deal with this?
12:17And that again really shows you the distinctiveness of the show
12:21and also the distinctiveness of John Sullivan,
12:25that he really wanted Only Fools and Horses
12:28to be something with more depth in it than conventional sitcoms.
12:33Whereas the old routine might have been
12:35you either write the character out or you recast it,
12:39he wanted the character to die
12:41and the other characters to react to the death.
12:44Nothing ever upsets Del Boy.
12:47I've always played the tough guy.
12:49I didn't want to, but I had to.
12:52And I've played it for so long now,
12:55I don't know how to be anything else.
13:00I don't even know how to...
13:03Oh, it don't matter.
13:06Bloody families, I'll finish with them!
13:09What do they do to you, eh?
13:12Hold you back? Drag you down?
13:18And then they break your bloody heart.
13:23And it brought a darkness to the show
13:26and a different quality to it, another dimension to it,
13:30that really helped to elevate it to the next level
13:33and made it very special
13:35in terms of the acting and the power of the script.
13:38In between Christmas and New Year,
13:41it was decided that the series would continue,
13:43but John Sullivan didn't entertain the thought
13:46of recasting Leonard Pierce's character.
13:48So he had to cleverly write a new introduction episode
13:51and like all funerals, family come out the woodwork
13:54and it was a great opportunity to introduce another character,
13:58a brother of Grandad Uncle Albert.
14:01Buster Merrifield shuffled onto our screens as Uncle Albert
14:04with his Father Christmas beard and endless supply of war stories,
14:07quickly inserting himself into Dallin Rodney's lives.
14:10Morning, son. Morning.
14:14You're back.
14:16Boomerang Trotter always comes back.
14:18What happened? What happened? I'll tell you what happened.
14:22I drove him all the way back to North London,
14:24right through to Bleeding Rush Hour,
14:26and what did we find when we got there?
14:28Stan and Jean have moved.
14:32But Merrifield had inserted himself
14:34just as cunningly into the series.
14:36Having only recently taken up acting,
14:38when he heard that Leonard Pierce had died,
14:40he wrote a letter to the BBC
14:42asking to be cast as a replacement character.
14:45The guy was a bank manager. It was his first professional job.
14:48You know, he'd sent in a photograph
14:51and John just went,
14:53That's Uncle Albert, you know.
14:55It was a move of which Delboy would have been proud.
14:58Lovely jubbly.
14:59But casting the other characters for this funny, sad,
15:02brash, touching sitcom hadn't been quite so easy.
15:05When it came to Delboy, they did go through quite a number.
15:08They looked at Jim Broadbent, for example,
15:11who didn't want it because he wanted to stay on the stage,
15:14and they looked at Enright Tell, who was very famous for voiceovers,
15:17and they went through a few others
15:19until David Jason became an option.
15:23Well, Ray Butt caught a repeat of Open All Hours,
15:26and he saw Granville, this character played by David Jason.
15:29And he saw something in that character,
15:31this little man who was quite vulnerable,
15:33but also quite prickly when it suited him.
15:36And Ray Butt was instantly taken and thought,
15:38That's our Delboy.
15:39And he phoned up John Sullivan and said,
15:41I found him. It's got to be David Jason.
15:43But would this David Jason have the star power for a leading role?
15:47David Jason was really an interesting character
15:51because for a good decade or so,
15:53if you looked at entertainment articles in the newspapers,
15:57at regular intervals they were saying,
15:59Isn't it time for this man to become a star?
16:01David Jason had played opposite Ronnie Barker
16:04in both Open All Hours and Porridge.
16:06And behind the scenes at the BBC,
16:08there was a fear that casting Jason in a starring role
16:11would offend Ronnie Barker,
16:13who at the time was one of their biggest stars.
16:15And John Sullivan wasn't sure that Jason was their man either.
16:18John Sullivan, to begin with, wasn't overly convinced.
16:20He had to take a little bit of convincing
16:22because David Jason was really famous at that point
16:24for playing largely quite slapstick-y type parts, I suppose.
16:28Even David Jason wasn't quite sure
16:30what was going on with the casting.
16:32David originally, when he got the script,
16:34thought, Well, they want me to play Grandad,
16:36which was possibly logical
16:38because he was quite adept at playing old men.
16:41The wranglings about casting David Jason
16:43were made more complicated
16:45because Nicholas Lindhurst was already in place as Rodney.
16:48Nicholas Lindhurst, great actor because he's quite posh, really.
16:51I remember he was in loads of children's film foundation films.
16:54He was in The Prince of the Port when he played both parts.
16:57He'd been in a number of things
16:59and obviously it caught many people's eyes in Butterflies.
17:02It's a sitcom playing a fairly middle-class figure.
17:05But I think enough of the team had seen him in other things
17:08to realise that he could bring this sense of authenticity
17:11and vulnerability to the role of Rodney.
17:13Lindhurst may have been perfect for the gawky, awkward Rodney,
17:17but Head of Light Entertainment Jimmy Gilbert was adamant
17:20that the two trotters should look like brothers.
17:22When it came to Del Boy and Rodney in particular,
17:25I think Jimmy Gilbert thought because they were brothers,
17:28they ought to be quite alike.
17:30And so eventually when David Jason and Nicholas Lindhurst were cast,
17:33he was quite resistant to that at the beginning, I think,
17:36because he said they don't look like each other
17:38and someone had to say, Well, that's partly the point.
17:41The iconic part of Marlene was originally written into just one episode
17:45until Sue Holderness impressed the team with her first scene.
17:48It was a tiny little scene in an episode called Sleeping Dogs Lie.
17:52It was in series four and all I knew about this character Marlene
17:57was that occasionally people would say,
17:59Oh, do you remember Marlene?
18:01And the reply was always, All the boys remember Marlene.
18:05So, you know, I gather she was obviously a bit of a girl.
18:09The director said, Right, Sue, when you hear action, just run out to Del Boy.
18:13He'll give you a bit of a snog, maybe pinch your bum and you'll do the lines
18:16and then back you go into the house.
18:18Hello, Marlene, my love.
18:20Hello, sweetheart.
18:23He did indeed give me a bit of a snog, little bum pinch.
18:27We said the lines and then I went back into the house
18:29and came back out with the dog.
18:31With her massive fur coat and incredible 80s perm,
18:34Marlene certainly made her mark.
18:36Marlene, come along, for God's sake, we do have a flight to catch.
18:40Come on, kiss him goodbye.
18:42Yeah, bye, Del, see you soon.
18:44For God's sake, that dog's Marlene.
18:46She made her mark in lipstick on Del's face.
18:49And at the end of it, I absolutely just thought,
18:51What a wonderful day out.
18:53Pity it's only one day, but hey-ho.
18:55And it was a couple of weeks later that John Sullivan rang and said,
18:58We'd like Marlene to come back.
19:00And he said, Then this is a surprise
19:02because we weren't going to have Marlene back.
19:04Thank you. Thank you.
19:06Marlene's dress sense was about as subtle as a leopard print brick.
19:10And the secret behind that involved some very interesting shopping trips.
19:14Well, when I'd got the call that I was going to be in Only Fools And Horses,
19:18I met up with the make-up and the wardrobe department in Dickington Jones
19:22to choose Marlene's look.
19:25And everything we tried on, the gaudier and the worse it was,
19:29the assistants in the store would say,
19:31Oh, madam looks so lovely in that.
19:33They didn't really get it.
19:35But we did have some glorious times
19:37and leopard print did become a very strong feature of Marlene's wardrobe.
19:41I mean, why not? Don't we all love a bit of leopard print?
19:44As the series got bigger, so did the cast.
19:46And eventually Del and Rodney had their own families.
19:49But one casting decision could have made things very different for Rodney.
19:53Many, many people were considered for the role of Cassandra.
19:55Most notably Liz Hurley.
19:57She auditioned for the role.
19:59And it was felt that perhaps she was probably a little bit too glamorous for our,
20:03how can I say it diplomatically,
20:05our lanky trotter brother.
20:08With Tessa Peake-Jones and Gwyneth Strong joining the cast,
20:12things felt a bit different at Nelson Mandela House.
20:15And if they looked a bit different too,
20:17well, we can let you in on a little secret about that.
20:19You don't really notice unless you look for it,
20:21but with this expanded cast, the set's a lot bigger.
20:24They literally just added like a metre and a half where the window was
20:27and it's like an extra, extra section there.
20:30This once unloved sitcom ended up making superstars of the cast,
20:34including Jim Broadbent, who hadn't wanted the role of Delboy,
20:38but did bring a menacing snideness to the role of bent copper Inspector Roy Slater.
20:43Chief Inspector.
20:45Sorry, I didn't know you'd been promoted.
20:48Do you fancy a cup of tea, Del?
20:50Ah, actually, Roy, we're in a bit of a hurry if you don't mind.
20:52I don't think you heard the question, Del. I said, do you fancy a cup of tea?
20:56Well, now you're coming to mention it, I'm a bit parched.
21:00As soon as you mention the name Slater, or Slater, if you prefer,
21:05immediately we think of Only Fools and Horses, don't we?
21:08And immediately we think of Jim Broadbent.
21:11He was Slater. It was what a role.
21:13And as Jim casually told an incredulous Graham Norton,
21:16it was a role with a much bigger impact than anyone would expect.
21:20You've been in so many films and lots of them big, big favourites.
21:25When people come up to you, what are the ones they always want to mention
21:29or do you know when they approach you, oh, this is a Paddington fan
21:32or this is a Bridger Jones fan?
21:34Only Fools and Horses, really.
21:36Really? Really, more than anything else?
21:38Almost more, and it goes across the generations.
21:41So kids now, young people who weren't alive when I did Only Fools and Horses,
21:46oh, Slater, oh, he's my favourite.
21:49Being famous for being in the nation's top sitcom is a given,
21:52but Boise actor John Chalice was stunned to discover just how popular he was.
21:57It turns out Only Fools is a massive hit in the Balkans,
22:00and after filming a documentary about it in Belgrade,
22:03Boise, well, John Chalice, was actually made an honorary citizen of Serbia.
22:09The cast of Only Fools may have been elevated to godlike status,
22:13but there was one occasion when the production
22:15was a teeny bit careless with some of them.
22:18For Miami Twice, it was decided to really take the trotters transatlantic
22:22to this wonderful kind of big road film,
22:25with the first part being filmed as like a standard 50-minute episode in London,
22:29and the second half would be the Trotter Brothers' adventures in Miami.
22:34The most exciting read-through, I think, probably was when we had Miami Twice,
22:37because at that read-through we discovered
22:39the only people going to Miami were Dale, Rodney, Boise and Marlene.
22:43You can imagine how pleased the rest of the cast were when they discovered that.
22:47A big-budget foreign shoot? Oh, it all sounds very glam.
22:51What could possibly go wrong?
22:52Filming in the Everglades was quite frightening
22:54because we were short of time.
22:56Everybody was pushed for time.
22:58There's one bit where there's an alligator that is walking behind Dale and Rodney,
23:02who are sitting on a log,
23:04and they had a big burly chap called Sean
23:07who was there to try and keep control of this alligator.
23:11The idea was that the alligator would walk up behind Dale and Rodney.
23:16They'd run off, and the alligator would run towards them,
23:19and there was a bowl of food here.
23:21So the alligator was left off its leech.
23:24Very slowly walk away, Dale.
23:28We don't want to alarm it.
23:32Alarm what?
23:34That thing behind us.
23:36All going well. Dale and Rodney on a log.
23:38Alligator turns round. Good work, Sean.
23:44And then the alligator headed towards the camera,
23:47to the bowl of food, and didn't stop at the bowl of food.
23:50Well, the boys were at the other end of the forest by then.
23:53I, in the meantime, was filming this with my video camera,
23:57and I didn't notice that these boys had gone,
24:00and I lost the alligator in my camera,
24:02and it was about two feet from me,
24:04and Sean, the chap who was supposed to be in charge,
24:08had leapt on its tail, grabbed its jaws shut,
24:12and was wrapping the thing around it with me.
24:15I nearly died of fear. Nearly died.
24:18In fact, I nearly died not only of fear.
24:20I could have been eaten by an alligator.
24:22Coming up, the secret behind why we love these characters.
24:26The old boy, terrible man.
24:28He's spoken you what? What?
24:30Fire-damaged walks, rain-damaged umbrellas.
24:32What's all that about?
24:34And the episode that vanished for 20 years.
24:36There were very few episodes that we weren't entirely happy with.
24:39One of the episodes was Royal Flush.
24:42It's Christmas Day, 1996,
24:45and all over the country, people are settling down
24:47for Britain's biggest festive TV tradition.
24:50No, not me, you idiot.
24:52The only Fools and Horses Christmas special.
24:55And this year, there would be three of them.
24:57The series itself had ended five years previously,
25:00but the show was so phenomenally popular
25:02that the Christmas specials continued.
25:04More than 21 million of us were treated
25:07to the surreal and hilarious sight of Del and Rodney
25:10emerging out of a misty evening
25:12to accidentally stop a mugging on their way
25:14to a fancy dress party.
25:16What's that, Emily?
25:18I have the faintest idea.
25:28Go!
25:35Having done a couple of Christmas specials
25:37and they proved popular,
25:39the BBC entrusted us with three episodes
25:43over the Christmas period.
25:44I believe starting on Christmas Day
25:46and working through the Christmas week
25:48between Christmas and the New Year.
25:50Yes, it's staggering when you look back
25:52and think possibly half the country sat down
25:55on an evening of Christmas Day to watch the trotters.
25:59Because it had sort of taken over for more than a while, hadn't it?
26:02It was something you could watch with every age group,
26:04with your children, your grandparents.
26:06It was just an absolute tradition
26:08and a huge gap if it wasn't there.
26:10But, spoiler alert,
26:12the Heroes and Villains episode
26:14was very nearly ruined for the expectant audience
26:16by an overeager BBC publicity team.
26:19In a bid to improve their chances in the Christmas ratings battle,
26:22the BBC wanted to trail a clip of Del and Rodney
26:25in their hysterical costumes ahead of the episode.
26:28David Jason revealed in his autobiography
26:31that behind the scenes,
26:32he and the team were fighting a battle on two departments,
26:35against the press and BBC publicity,
26:38and luckily the show had the clout to tell the BBC
26:41that nothing should be leaked.
26:43The trilogy of Christmas specials that year
26:45ended with what was intended to be the last ever episode,
26:48as Del and Rodney finally become millionaires
26:51in an auction house scene where their reactions say it all.
26:54I'd like to start the bidding at £150,000.
26:58LAUGHTER
27:00APPLAUSE
27:05In the studio that night, when the boys actually...
27:08When they had that wonderful scene in Sotheby's,
27:10honestly, the feeling in the studio audience was so lovely
27:13cos everybody was so pleased for them that they'd actually done it.
27:16They'd been through so much together as actors as well as characters,
27:20but it was also the fact that they'd believed in these characters by now,
27:24they'd created ones that were real to them as well as the audience.
27:28It was a very remarkable moment
27:32that was very emotional and was quite difficult to get through.
27:36APPLAUSE
27:45Time On Our Hands still holds the record
27:48for the highest UK audience for a sitcom episode.
27:51But how did John Sullivan and the Only Fools team
27:54know exactly what 24.3 million people wanted for Christmas?
27:58The secret behind the bond between the audience and characters
28:02goes all the way back to Charles Dickens.
28:05John Sullivan had left school with no qualifications,
28:08but his last in memory of school
28:12was an English teacher with one eye who used to act out Dickens.
28:16He loved it, so he'd act out Oliver Twist into the class.
28:20He'd act out David Copperfield and things like that.
28:22And that captivated John's imagination,
28:25and the characters he created were all inspired by the things he'd seen
28:29and people he knew or people he'd encountered,
28:31and that's why you could feel the authenticity.
28:34You had to be really good to be able to get all the language rhythms right
28:37because generations, people talk differently,
28:39they have different concerns.
28:41It was so complex. It was incredibly complex.
28:44And this is where Dickens comes in, you see.
28:46You'd think, these are people who are grotesque.
28:48Dillboy? Terrible man.
28:50He's flogging you, what, fire-damaged woks, rain-damaged umbrellas?
28:53What's all that about? People are being conned here.
28:55But, of course, when you see the bigger picture,
28:57Dillboy always had that heart,
28:59and that's what he'd learned from Dickens,
29:01that you could have these characters, they could be flawed,
29:03but at the same time, they could be engaging.
29:05I mean, he's a rogue. Dillboy's a rogue.
29:08Now I'm feeling he's a rogue.
29:10With Only Fools and Horses, the audience weren't just seeing themselves,
29:14they were seeing their world.
29:16What was so special about Only Fools and Horses
29:18was it reflected real society.
29:20You saw real people there, a spectrum of people.
29:24John Sullivan was adamant that he was going to write
29:27a working-class programme,
29:29because there were many other comedy programmes on,
29:31but they were all very middle-class to upper-class sort of things,
29:34and they were all very white, to be quite honest.
29:37One of the things he didn't mind about Dickens
29:39in his portrayal of Victorian London
29:41was that he would have Jewish characters and female characters
29:45to really show the full range of the typical communities
29:49at that point in time.
29:51So the idea of having a black figure
29:53amongst these white working-class Londoners
29:55was very important to him to actually give
29:58at least a degree of authenticity
30:00to the community that he was portraying.
30:03Only Fools and Horses' Denzel
30:05was one of mainstream sitcom's first black characters,
30:08and we can reveal it was actor Paul Barber,
30:10while visiting a school drama class in Hackney,
30:13who inspired a young Idris Elba to become an actor.
30:17And when you looked around the various characters
30:19that you saw in the streets, in the cafes, in the pubs,
30:23you saw young, old, and I have to say black people,
30:27black and brown people,
30:29reflecting that they were part of that society at that time.
30:33You go out in your street and see what was on the telly,
30:36and there was a black character, Denzel.
30:39That's what made it particularly special for me.
30:42It wasn't anything to do with tokenism.
30:44It was really to say, here is an individual,
30:48and he happened to be black, like the others happened to be white,
30:51or happened to be very dim.
30:53Only Fools knew its audience and was all about its audience.
30:57Trouble is, when the audience wasn't there,
30:59that's when things could go wrong.
31:01We've already heard about one lost episode,
31:03but here's a story about another one,
31:05which ended up buried in the archives for years.
31:08There were very few episodes that we weren't entirely happy with.
31:12One of the episodes that John certainly wasn't happy with
31:15was Royal Flush.
31:17The 1986 Christmas special, A Royal Flush,
31:20was when Rodney fell in love with the Duke of Mulberry's daughter,
31:24and Rodney and Del and Albert end up staying the weekend
31:27at the Duke of Mulberry's manor house.
31:30And there's the usual predictable comedy moments
31:34of them interacting with the higher echelons of this family,
31:39but it's quite a cruel, dark episode.
31:42It became clear that Del wasn't just being stupid.
31:47He was actually being quite nasty to Rodders.
31:51I mean, he's a future whiskey.
31:53Yeah. Well, he's got two GCEs.
31:58A drunk Del was usually still likeable,
32:00but in this awkward dinner conversation
32:02about Rodney's time at college,
32:04David Jason portrays a much more hostile Del.
32:07How long were you there, old chap?
32:11Three weeks.
32:13Three weeks?
32:16Well, I left for personal reasons.
32:20It weren't his fault, Del.
32:23No, Rodney, no.
32:25It's important that these good people know the whole truth.
32:28They weren't his drugs.
32:31What he was found in possession of.
32:34Right. Well, they weren't.
32:36During the shoot, writer John Sullivan had been away,
32:39working on another series,
32:41but it wasn't just Sullivan's absence that can be felt in the episode.
32:44It's the audience's.
32:46There's some sequences in the Royal Flush
32:48which probably would have been suited better
32:50if it was actually filmed in the studio.
32:52In the episode, David Jason, as Del Boy, is very drunk.
32:56If that scene had been recorded in the studio,
32:59he would have been able to kind of work his performance,
33:02the reaction from the audience, from the laughter,
33:04he'd be able to kind of match the tone to pitch it better.
33:07But because it was on location and filmed like a film,
33:10it didn't really work as well as intended.
33:12Not only was the episode filmed on location
33:14instead of in front of an audience,
33:16but the editing wasn't finished until Christmas morning,
33:19too late to show the episode to a studio audience
33:22and record a laughter track.
33:24Originally, when it was made and broadcast in 1986,
33:27it didn't have a laughter track,
33:29so it was completely silent in certain scenes
33:32where Del is being quite cruel to Rodney,
33:35and it's a very hard watch when you see that original version now.
33:39Even the Trotters' Lounge was shot at Ealing, I believe,
33:43on film cameras, not even at the television centre,
33:47so it had a different feel to it, and that also didn't...
33:51It just didn't ring true, and without an audience, it didn't work.
33:56It felt like a dodgy market stall knock-off.
33:59And we can disclose that John Sullivan was so unhappy with the episode
34:03that it wasn't repeated for years,
34:05and not until it had been extensively re-edited.
34:09When it was all put together and even transmitted,
34:13John said... He just said,
34:16no, this is not a good episode.
34:18It was nearly 20 years later with a DVD release on the horizon
34:22that Sullivan had the opportunity to put right
34:24some of the problems with the episode.
34:26He said, look, what can we do about Royal Flush?
34:28Can we do anything to just take out Del being nasty
34:34or overly stupid?
34:36In this clip from the original version,
34:38Del's trip to get ice creams at the opera
34:40is uncomfortably tinged with aggression.
34:42Trotters, will you please be quiet?
34:45I can't find my place.
34:47Rodney?
34:49We're over here, Del.
34:52Thank you. Excuse me.
34:54Guitar. Thanks, Gil. Excuse me.
34:57Oh, is that your foot? Yes.
35:00Are you going to continue making this noise
35:02throughout the entire performance?
35:04I don't know. I might let you off the second half.
35:06Del, will you please just sit down?
35:08I'm trying to listen.
35:10Why don't you shut up, then?
35:12Will you please be quiet?
35:14I shall come down here and smack you in the eye in a minute, John.
35:16And it just got silly, and it wasn't clever,
35:19so John and I went through it, taking out lines.
35:22I had a terrible job trying to sort of make edits
35:25that both made sense musically
35:28and also from the actor's point of view.
35:31That same episode was shown to an audience
35:35to get an audience soundtrack on.
35:37Yeah, that was difficult.
35:39I don't think we succeeded completely.
35:42Oh, don't put yourself down, Chris.
35:44Here's the new, gentler version of the opera scene,
35:47where Del's got much less of the ump.
35:49Rodney? We're over here, Del.
35:53Thank you. Excuse me.
35:55Guitar. Thanks, girl. Excuse me.
35:57Oh, is that your foot?
35:59Yes.
36:07Coming up, the secrets behind
36:09Only Fools And Horses' most famous scene.
36:12David said, no, we're not going to do it again.
36:14We'll do it tonight, cos he wanted to keep it fresh.
36:17And when sitcom meets drama.
36:19It wasn't just that they could get laughs.
36:21A lot of the time, it was very lump in throat stuff.
36:25It's December 1988, and the world is changing.
36:28America and Europe have been connected by an Internet.
36:31Thanks to the film Wall Street,
36:33sales of braces and Filofax have gone through the roof.
36:36People are drinking wine in bars.
36:38Wine bars, they're called.
36:40And Only Fools And Horses has been extended
36:42from half an hour to 50 minutes.
36:44In Shepherd's Bush, a studio audience is waiting
36:47to watch the first episode of the new series.
36:50And with its new, longer running time,
36:52the show's under pressure to deliver some really big laughs.
36:56The shows were getting bigger and bigger,
36:59and getting a ticket to go and watch Only Fools And Horses
37:02was like getting a Cup Final ticket, it really was.
37:05This is a ticket that the audience would have got.
37:08They got in for free.
37:10They wanted to be there, and they bought in completely to the show.
37:14It's just a great atmosphere, all down to the warm-up man, I might add.
37:18Ah, we all love a warm-up man,
37:20but what this very lucky audience don't know
37:22is that they're about to win us a scene
37:24which would regularly be voted one of the greatest TV moments of all time.
37:28The rehearsal was in the afternoon,
37:30and I remember David doing it, going over and doing it.
37:34And I remember Tony coming down and saying,
37:36Right, can we do that again?
37:38And I seem to remember David saying,
37:40No, we're not going to do it again, we'll do it tonight.
37:43Cos, you know, he wanted to keep it fresh.
37:45And of course we knew what was coming,
37:47but of course the audience didn't.
37:49And when you're working on a Fisher boom,
37:51you're quite high up, above the set.
37:55And we were all just waiting for this.
37:58I can still remember us waiting for this particular stunt to happen,
38:01knowing that the audience would just fall apart.
38:05With some clever use of extras to distract the eye,
38:08the result was a piece of exquisitely timed comic perfection.
38:12LAUGHTER
38:16I think we're on a winner-ish rig, all right?
38:19Play it nice and cool, son. Nice and cool, you know what I mean?
38:22LAUGHTER
38:29It was just the biggest, the biggest laugh.
38:31I've never heard a laugh like that at the BBC.
38:33I've never heard a laugh like it.
38:35The way in which he fell, unflinching, straight down.
38:40It's amazing. It's timing, timing, timing, timing, timing, timing, timing.
38:44Trigger's typically gormless failure to realise what's just happened
38:48is as much a part of the scene as Dale Boy's perfectly executed fall.
38:52LAUGHTER
39:00Drink up, Trigger. Drink up, we're leaving.
39:05Aren't you going to try for them birds?
39:07No, no, you're cramping my style, mate. You're cramping my style.
39:11But, in fact, Trigger was not even originally intended to be in the scene,
39:15and it was only when the team bumped into Roger Lloyd-Pack
39:18by chance at the rehearsal studio that he was written in.
39:22The original script for Yuppie Love,
39:24David Jason's standing at the bar by himself.
39:27And because Roger Lloyd-Pack was in another production at the BBC at the time,
39:31he was appearing in another programme, and he just happens to be around,
39:34he was quickly written into that scene.
39:37And, yeah, it worked so well, because suddenly there's this great reaction shot.
39:40Dale and Trigger's trip to the wine bar was all because of Dale's new image.
39:44Only Fools was moving with the times, and Dale had become a yuppie.
39:48Well, on the surface, at least.
39:50No, I mean, it is. I mean, it's the little things.
39:52You know, it's like me aluminium briefcase there,
39:54me Mercedes keyring, my file of facts.
39:56When people see these things, they know exactly what I am.
40:00It is a bit of a giveaway, isn't it?
40:02LAUGHTER
40:03One of the great things about the organic growth of Fools' Laws
40:06was John was able to weave in social trends, and so you had the yuppies.
40:11Now, in the 80s, you can talk about how much money you make.
40:16Which, as an American, I thought, well, I mean, wasn't that OK with everybody?
40:19But it wasn't.
40:21You can talk about your house, how much it costs.
40:24You can talk about your car, how much you pay for it.
40:28You can talk about your clothes. You can talk about your job.
40:31That was not done in Britain before.
40:33John Sullivan liked to bring in topical things when he could,
40:37when he thought it would be relevant and it would work,
40:40that would reflect very much 1980s Britain.
40:43He writes modern...
40:46..modern history into his scripts
40:49and wrote comedy around how his characters
40:53would react to this new political crisis or fad or fashion.
40:57But bringing in topical themes and contemporary fads
41:00also meant that our own lives seemed to be moving in parallel
41:03with the characters, not something that usually happens in a sitcom.
41:07I think Only Fools And Horses actually went beyond its genre
41:12in a way that it ceased just to be a sitcom,
41:15certainly in a conventional sense,
41:17because, as the saying goes in sitcoms,
41:20what you do is you nail the characters' feet to the floor
41:24and you don't make them change.
41:27John Sullivan and I think the cast, to some extent, wanted to grow,
41:31and so the show really becomes a kind of hybrid
41:35between a sitcom and a soap.
41:38It became a kind of life story,
41:41as dramatic as it was comic,
41:43with all the complexity that comes with it.
41:46As director Tony Dow explained insightfully in a 2002 documentary,
41:50it was the development of John Sullivan's writing itself
41:53which drove the change from pure sitcom to something bigger.
41:56One of the defining moments of Fools And Horses
41:59was when John realised that he always had the ability to make people laugh,
42:03but he probably then realised he had the ability to make people cry.
42:07One of the things about John's writing
42:09is that you can go from circuses to funerals in less than half a page.
42:15It wasn't just that they could get laughs.
42:17A lot of the time, it was very lump-in-throat stuff.
42:20Suddenly, there's a moment where their world comes crashing down.
42:26I mean, Rodney, he could touch people's hearts, couldn't he?
42:31I mean, the whole story of Cassandra and the miscarriage was heartbreaking.
42:36The moving and memorable scene where Del pretends their lift is stuck,
42:40forcing Rodney to confront his deep sorrow,
42:42is an astonishing piece of acting.
42:44Is Cassandra hurting?
42:46Of course she is!
42:48How do you know? You haven't talked to her about it.
42:52No, and you know why?
42:54It's because...
42:56It's because, like, it's almost if...
42:59If I don't talk about it, then it might not be true.
43:04But it is.
43:05I know, I know, but if I don't say it...
43:09If you don't say what?
43:13We lost our baby.
43:15We lost our baby.
43:18With Rodney in the lift, heartbreaking and...
43:24Because that's life, do you know what I mean?
43:26It can't just all be, you know, comedy, comedy, comedy.
43:29And that's good writing, when you can...
43:34When you can bridge it with some real poignancy
43:36and stuff that really gets you, like that show does.
43:40Few of us would disagree that Only Fools and Horses
43:43is an absolute sitcom classic.
43:45Some of the best acting on British TV was in that sitcom.
43:50But its big secret is that it wasn't just a sitcom,
43:53it was part of our lives.
43:55I think that's why people go on being so fond of it,
43:58because we have all grown up together.
44:00It's so accessible to everybody and what they've lived through.
44:05It was a show commissioned on a wing and a prayer
44:07which ducked and dived its way into our hearts
44:09and became part of the family.
44:11The audience felt like they knew Del, they knew Rodney,
44:15they knew Boise, they knew all the characters.
44:18It became a national institution,
44:20something that became part of our culture.
44:23It's an authentic record of Britain at the time,
44:25not to mention a truly quality piece of merchandise.
44:29Bonjour!
44:32Now, whether you loved Neighbours back in the day
44:34or you're a lifelong Ramsey Street regular,
44:36it's going to be a stellar send-off and emotional too.
44:39Neighbours, the finale, next Friday night at nine.
44:42Stick around for The Kinks, Aretha Franklin, Simon & Garfunkel
44:46and Cilla Black.
44:471970 was a strong year in pop.
44:49Britain's biggest hits, next.