A Del of a Life by David Jason

Author:David Jason [Jason, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473579767
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2020-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

There were so many times on Only Fools when we were laughing so hard that we could barely get the scene shot, and, despite all the anxiety about exposure, one of those was that freezing cold night in Bristol. Just the sight of each other in those costumes kept causing Nick and I to go in turns. We needed so many retakes that it was threatening to get light before we were wrapped.

Another was the scene from series three where Grandad shows Rodney and Del the silver cigarette lighter that his own grandfather had carried with him, allegedly, during the Boer War. Grandad explains that a bullet from a sniper would have struck his grandfather in the heart if it hadn’t been for the protection of this piece of silver in his tunic. Rodney is obviously moved and impressed by this influential, life-saving relic.

‘Jeez, it saved his life,’ he says.

‘Not really,’ says Grandad. ‘See, the bullet ricocheted up his nose and blew his brains out.’

Now, that line just set us all going. We could not get the scene down for corpsing. Take after take ensued – to the point where Ray Butt, the producer, who had a shooting schedule to stick to, was getting seriously annoyed with us. I had to say to him, ‘If you think this is easy, come down here and have a go at it yourself.’

And then there was the scene with the urn of ashes and the street-cleaning lorry. Del and Rodney have been charged with the care of Trigger’s grandfather’s mortal remains and have rested them briefly on the edge of the pavement, only for a street-cleaning lorry to come along and suck them up. There then ensues a panicked conversation with the driver in his cab.

‘You’ve just sucked up our urn,’ Rodney and I urgently inform him.

‘Oh my God. What was he – a little kitten?’ replies the horrified driver.

In that case, it was the cameraman, up in the cab and shooting out of the window, who couldn’t control himself. He would get the shakes and then Nick and I would go in response to him, and once again the circle of mirth would be complete and the take would go to waste. We had to haul out the cameraman and replace him for that shot in the end. If we hadn’t, I seriously think we would still be there by the side of that road even now.

But then there were the sequences at the opposite end from those moments of hilarity: the poignant moments in John Sullivan’s writing that not only brought tears to the eyes of the viewers, but also to those of us doing the acting, as well. So many of those come to mind: the shot, for instance, where Del holds the figurine off the top of the wedding cake at Rodney and Cassandra’s wedding and is clearly wondering what might have been if he hadn’t sacrificed so much of his own life to look after the rest of his family.

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