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CHAPTER THREE

If You Want The Best ’Uns . . .

Très bien ensemble.

The most promising of sitcoms can be compromised at the casting stage. The wrong actor in the right role (or the right one in the wrong role) will ruin its prospects of realising long-running success.

What makes the casting process so exceptionally hazardous is the knowledge that some of the best sitcoms in British television history, overseen by some of the shrewdest producers, only stumbled on the ideal actors after the supposed first (and sometimes second and even third) choices had dropped out of contention. In the case of Dad’s Army, for example, Arthur Lowe only came to be offered the chance to portray Captain Mainwaring after first Thorley Walters and then Jon Pertwee had opted not to take on the part, while Warren Mitchell only won the role of Alf Garnett after Peter Sellers, Leo McKern and Lionel Jeffries had passed on the part.¹ Good judgement is essential, but history teaches those who cast such shows that one also needs rather more than one’s fair share of good luck.

Ray Butt, in this sense, was facing a formidable challenge – and he knew it. As the man now appointed to produce Only Fools and Horses, he was still, by the very high standards of the BBC, a relatively inexperienced figure, so the pressure was on for him to gauge not only quickly but also correctly which of the many risks would be worth running. He was, nonetheless, very confident about his ability to prove himself as a senior programme-maker. Having worked under the likes of such masterful producers as David Croft (for Are You Being Served?) and Dennis Main Wilson (for Citizen Smith), he believed that he had received an excellent education and now, in the late spring of 1981, felt ready and eager to shape a sitcom all on his own.

Butt, however, was not the only person who expected to contribute to the casting process. Apart from the writer, John Sullivan (who had been consulted about such matters by Main Wilson during the planning for Citizen Smith, and now expected to be so again), some of Butt’s bosses were also determined to have their say.

It was fairly conventional for certain executives at the BBC to get themselves involved in matters of casting – whether or not their input was expressly requested. This was not merely because of anxiety about how the process was evolving, but also, more pertinently, because many of the key figures high up at the BBC in those days were people who had been programme-makers themselves, knew a wide range of tried-and-tested performers, and could make good and swift use of a long list of top-rated contacts.

When Dad’s Army was being cast back in the late 1960s, for example, the then-Head of Comedy was Michael Mills, a hugely experienced former impresario and programme-maker who could not resist assuming a hands-on role in the selection of actors, nominating John Le Mesurier for the role of Sergeant Wilson (‘He suffers so well!’²) and insisting on John Laurie to play Private Frazer. He also pushed through the idea of putting Frankie Howerd into Up Pompeii!, and put himself in charge of making Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em.³ Mills was simply still too much of a creator and organiser to retreat inside his office and let too many things happen in his absence. The situation had not really changed by the start of the 1980s, when John Howard Davies was the man in charge.

Davies, like Mills, knew all about planning, casting and filming popular comedy shows. The son of the scriptwriter Jack Davies and a former child actor himself (making his debut in 1948 as the eponymous young hero of David Lean’s adaptation of Oliver Twist), and described by John Cleese as ‘a very, very good judge of comedy’,⁴ he was an authoritative figure who already had an impressive track record for picking the right performers for the right roles. While planning Fawlty Towers, for example, he had taken primary responsibility for choosing most of the members of cast (selecting, among others, Prunella Scales as Sybil Fawlty, Andrew Sachs as Manuel and Ballard Berkeley as Major Gowen), and had also brought together the talents that worked so well as a team in The Good Life.

Davies, as John Sullivan would later recall, thus wasted no time in making his own views known on how the casting of Only Fools and Horses should go: Nicholas Lyndhurst was the actor who was going to play Rodney. Others – including Sullivan – were initially concerned that the middle-class boy from Butterflies would struggle to portray a convincing Cockney, but these anxieties would be allayed just as soon as he auditioned.

Lyndhurst was at home, late one Thursday afternoon, when the package of scripts from the BBC landed on his doormat. He was due to go out for a drink with friends, so he put the material to one side, planning to read them the following day. When he returned at 11 p.m., however, feeling somewhat the worse for wear, he glanced again at the covering note and suddenly noticed a line that said: ‘Could you come and see us tomorrow afternoon?’ Lyndhurst sobered up rapidly from the shock and started speed-reading the first script. It did not take long for him to slow down, relax, start laughing at the dialogue and feel the need to read the second script, and then the third, and then all of the rest. It was about two o’clock in the morning when he finally finished, and he was already in love with the idea of the series.

Reflecting on what he had just read, he thought ahead as to how he might bring the character of the lanky and lugubrious Rodney to life, and some ideas came to him rapidly as he prepared for the imminent meeting. ‘I’m six foot plus, and quite awkward and gawky, so I accentuated that for the character,’ he later explained.⁵ He also drew inspiration from the memory of observing, some years before, the younger brother of one of his friends: ‘This young boy was always trying to be older than his years, and so he was always trying to be desperately cool. And he never knew what to do with his hands: he would never stop moving, and the more that he tried to look relaxed the more awkward and gawky he became. And so I borrowed a bit of that.’⁶

He went to the BBC’s Television Centre later that morning and read for what he thought was an audition. The reality, however, was that he already had the part. He was going to play Rodney.

The choice of the actor to play Grandad Trotter, however, came about more through luck than judgement, because no one on the production team had an immediate idea as to who was really suitable. Ray Butt knew who he did not want for the part: Wilfrid Brambell, because, although he was still an extremely able actor who certainly fitted the bill (and, ironically, Brambell had appeared in the episode of Citizen Smith entitled ‘Only Fools and Horses’), his association with Steptoe and Son remained far too strong to make him a serious contender.

Butt called a theatrical agent he trusted, Carole James, explained the role and invited her to suggest some lesser-known names. She replied that, although there was no one on her own books, she did know of an actor called Lennard Pearce whom she felt was well worth considering. Butt duly booked Pearce, along with several other candidates, for an audition. John Sullivan recalled: ‘Lennard came in and he read a bit for us and we just heard that lovely old growly voice of his and when he’d gone I said to Ray, “That’s him.”’⁷

Pearce, so close to ending his professional career, could not believe his luck. After enduring all of his health and financial problems, he would say, it felt as though he had suddenly been given ‘a new lease of life’.⁸

The biggest challenge was casting the part of Del Boy: because he was the character who was going to have to drive the sitcom on, and everyone involved understood how crucial it was to get this decision absolutely right. Ray Butt’s first choice was a thirty-one-year-old Scottish-born actor named Enn Reitel. An increasingly in-demand and exceptionally versatile voiceover artist as well as a reasonably artful performer (although not yet established on the small screen, he would go on later in the decade to supply several impressions for ITV’s satirical show Spitting Image, as well as star in the Clement and La Frenais sitcom Mog), he seemed capable of bringing this new character to life. Jimmy Gilbert had wanted the Trotters to really look like ‘proper’ brothers, and Reitel had a physical similarity to Lyndhurst that therefore made him seem an ideal choice. Butt was forced into a rethink, however, when he discovered via Reitel’s agent that the actor was otherwise engaged (filming another comedy series for Yorkshire TV entitled Misfits).

An alternative suggestion then came from John Howard Davies. He advised Butt to go and see Jim Broadbent, another up-and-coming actor (of a similar age and height to Reitel) who, rather promisingly, was appearing at the time as a brash car salesman in a Mike Leigh play called Goosepimples at the Hampstead Theatre in north London. Butt went, was very impressed, then went backstage and invited Broadbent to play the part of Del. ‘He turned it down,’ Butt recalled, ‘because the play was transferring to the West End. He said he loved the script I’d shown him but didn’t think he could give enough concentration and energy to both things at the same time.’⁹

Two other actors were then considered – Robin Nedwell (an already very well-established actor best known for his starring role in the 1970s ITV sitcom Doctor in the House) and Billy Murray (an intimidating-looking young Londoner who later found fame as DS Beech in The Bill and the crooked businessman Johnny Allen in EastEnders) – but neither, after further reflection, was judged to be quite right for the part. The sound of the clock ticking was thus getting louder and louder, and Ray Butt was beginning to panic.

It was soon after this moment of crisis, however, that a degree of good fortune intervened. Butt was sitting in his apartment off the North End Road in West Kensington when, as he watched television one evening, he came across a repeat of an episode of the Ronnie Barker sitcom Open All Hours, and was hugely impressed by the performance of Barker’s co-star, David Jason. Butt had known Jason for years, and had worked with him before on a 1974 Comedy Playhouse pilot episode of a proposed sitcom, called It’s Only Me – Whoever I Am (a sort of forerunner of the Ronnie Corbett vehicle Sorry), about a young man struggling to break away from the control of his powerful mother. Produced by Sydney Lotterby, with Butt assisting him as Production Manager, the pilot ended up on the shelf (‘It just didn’t work,’ said Jason), but it had been an enjoyable programme to make, with Lotterby and Butt joining Jason for regular games of pool each evening at the hotel where they all were staying. The fondness that Butt still felt for the forty-one-year-old actor (who in the past had delighted in mimicking his strong Cockney accent) helped him focus on those scenes in which Jason’s gifts as a character actor were allowed to shine, and, as he continued to watch, the connection clicked into place.

The following morning, Butt went into his office at Television Centre and called John Sullivan to tell him about his enthusiasm for Jason. The response from the writer was not what the producer–director had expected. The problem, Sullivan explained, was that Jason’s recent work had made him seem so ill-suited to playing the role of the tough but secretly tenderhearted fly-pitcher: ‘I’d only seen him in A Sharp Intake of Breath, and that was all very slapstick, falling over on the floor, opening the washing machine and all the water coming out. I though that was his style and I was saying that Del had to be sharp, very sharp, tough, an aggressive little guy who has lived in the streets and survived.’¹⁰ There was no great aversion to Jason as an actor, as far as the scriptwriter was concerned; he was just sceptical as to how closely such a figure could come to matching his mental image of the indomitably doughty Del.

Some sources would later allege that, while Sullivan pondered this proposal, the BBC’s Head of Light Entertainment, Jimmy Gilbert, expressed his concern that the decision to give David Jason a sitcom of his own might ruffle the feathers and upset the future plans of his Open All Hours colleague Ronnie Barker, who was such a big BBC star at the time that no executive wanted to risk upsetting him in any way.¹¹ This is incorrect. Barker himself, in fact, not only liked and admired Jason both as an actor and a friend but also saw his colleague as his protégé, and was certainly not the kind of performer who resented seeing younger talents rise up the ladder. Gilbert would also later confirm that he had never expressed any such concerns:

I was pleased when David’s name was mentioned. There had been various actors, ever since I became Head of Comedy in 1973, whom I’d wanted to find things for at the BBC. The top five were: Ronnie Barker, Richard Briers, Ronnie Corbett, Leonard Rossiter and David Jason. So I’d been delighted when David Jason joined Ronnie Barker in Open All Hours. Then, some time later, his agent at the time, Richard Stone, who was an old friend of mine, told me: ‘David would love to do some more Open All Hours with Ronnie – he loves it, and loves working with Ronnie – but he would also want us to look for something else, for him, as well.’ And I was happy to take that on board. So when David was suggested for Only Fools and Horses there was absolutely no resistance from me – quite the opposite in fact – and certainly no anxiety about upsetting Ronnie Barker, because, after all, Ronnie had been doing the same thing himself, with Porridge and other shows, and I knew that he and David were such great friends.¹²

One query that Gilbert did express initially was much easier for the team to dismiss. He had argued that David Jason did not look anything like Nicholas Lyndhurst, so audiences might struggle to suspend their disbelief when watching them playing brothers. Apart from the fact that Gilbert appeared to have forgotten that the BBC had already enjoyed great success in the 1960s with a sitcom – Sykes and A . . . – that had relied on the comic conceit that Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques had been cast to play ‘identical twins’, he also seemed to have ignored the fact that, as far as this current project was concerned, such a physical mismatch had already been envisaged clearly by John Sullivan in his scripts. ‘The whole point,’ explained the exasperated writer, ‘is that Del and Rodney are actually the only ones who think they are brothers. Everyone else thinks they might well have different fathers. They had to be counterpoints to each other – one tall, one short, one blond and the other dark-haired. They had to look different to each other and at one point when we casting there was even a suggestion that we had one of them mixed race.’¹³ The disparity in height was also something that Sullivan had planned in order to prevent Del from appearing unsympathetic: ‘In my view, they had to be different. If you had a big, tall Del Boy treating a slightly smaller Rodney the way Del treated his younger brother, people would regard him as a bully. I felt you had to have Del smaller than his brother to get away from the bullying aspect.’¹⁴

Butt was convinced that Jason was, by this time, the best option, so he sent the actor a script via their mutual friend and colleague Sydney Lotterby (the producer of Open All Hours) and, without specifying what role was still to be cast, invited him to respond with his opinions. Jason loved looking through the sample episode – ‘I thought it was one of the funniest things I’d ever read’ – but was unsure of where, if anywhere, he was meant to fit within this fiction. His first guess was that it might be the part of Grandad, because, he reflected, he had acquired something of a reputation for playing elderly characters. It was true: as early as 1968, when Jason was still only in his twenties, he came close to being cast as the septuagenarian Jack Jones in Dad’s Army, then portrayed an elderly patient in both a 1969 episode of Doctor in the House and a 1971 episode of Doctor at Large, as well as a hundred-year-old gardener named Dithers in the 1972 Ronnie Barker sitcom His Lordship Entertains, and then in the mid-1970s he appeared once again alongside Barker in Porridge as the very elderly inmate called ‘Blanco’, so he would have been forgiven in 1981 for wondering if he was now wanted for the part of the Trotter boys’ grandfather.¹⁵

Ray Butt clarified the matter when he called to ask Jason to come in and read for the part of Del Boy. Somewhat ruffled by the revelation that he had only come into contention as a ‘tail-end Charlie’, Jason was tempted to point out politely that, at this stage in his career, he felt he was far past auditioning for jobs. The quality of the script, however, struck him as simply too good to turn down, and, besides, the character of Del Boy seemed to be the role for which he had been waiting throughout his career. After being asked to play a long succession of losers and lonely misfits, here, at last, was something different: a quick-witted, fast-talking, indefatigably ebullient sort of character who was always the centre of attention. The actor therefore agreed to go in for a meeting, desperate to do whatever was needed to secure himself the job.

Jason was asked to return the following day to read with Nicholas Lyndhurst and Lennard Pearce, because Butt was particularly keen to see how well the three actors would interact. John Sullivan was also present, and, as the session progressed, he was very impressed. The instant rapport, particularly between Jason and Lyndhurst, struck the writer as extraordinary: ‘They had this little read and although they’d never met before, it was immediate – just like you see it now. They both went into their characters. It was incredible. They had this wonderful chemistry. David was perfect all along and I didn’t realise just how perfect he was for the part.’¹⁶ The impact of the read-through was overwhelming; Butt and Sullivan simply turned to each other and nodded.

The decision was made there and then, and all three actors – Jason, Lyndhurst and Pearce – were duly confirmed as part of the cast. The Trotter family had been formed.

This, however, was only one aspect of the casting process. While the search for these three key actors had been going on, Ray Butt had also been busy selecting the first few supporting players. The two ostensibly minor characters requiring the most careful casting, because – if played well – they had the most potential to evolve into regular figures, were Del’s permanently dazed-looking roadsweeper friend Trigger, and a competitive local second-hand car dealer with misguided pretensions to social superiority called Boycie.

Ray Butt spotted a potential ‘Trigger’ (RODNEY: ‘Why do they call him Trigger? Does he carry a gun?’ DEL: ‘No, he looks like an ’orse!’) when, a few months before, he had gone to see a West End play (a comedy by Stanley Price starring Penelope Keith and Peter Jeffrey) called Moving. Butt had actually chosen to go there in order to assess the suitability of Billy Murray to play the part of Del, but, once he started watching the action unfold, he found himself drawn instead to another actor in the cast: Roger Lloyd Pack.

Born in Islington, London, in 1944, and educated at Bedales public school in Hampshire, Lloyd Pack – the son of the film and theatre character actor Charles Lloyd Pack – was an experienced RADA graduate who had already appeared in numerous television programmes (ranging from the critically acclaimed Quentin Crisp biopic The Naked Civil Servant in 1975 to an episode of the popular crime series The Professionals in 1978) as well as a steady procession of theatrical productions. Butt, who had worked with the actor’s father, looked at this tall and thin figure on stage with his long and lugubrious face and thought he was ‘just right’ to play Trigger: ‘So I met with him, we had a chat, and he accepted the part.’¹⁷

Casting the character of the shady and snide second-hand car dealer, Boycie, did not take the team too long, either. This was partly because the character was not envisaged originally as a definite regular in the show, and partly because both John Sullivan and Ray Butt soon agreed that the actor best suited to playing him – and perhaps pointing to his full comic future – was John Challis.

Born in Bristol in 1942 and then brought up in south-east London and educated at Ottershaw independent school near Woking in Surrey, Challis had started his adult life as a trainee estate agent before committing himself to an acting career. Moving on to enjoy a spell with the Royal Shakespeare Company as well as making countless television appearances in shows ranging from Coronation Street to Doctor Who, he was, by 1981, a very experienced and versatile performer well respected within the profession, even though his name remained relatively unfamiliar to the average viewer at home.

Sullivan and Butt had worked with him a couple of years before, when he appeared as a police inspector in an episode of Citizen Smith, and Sullivan, in particular, had been so impressed with his performance that the writer had promised the actor he would find something else for him to do in a future project. Challis had heard such things many times before, taking each one with a pinch of salt, so he was surprised when, in April 1981, he received a script from Ray Butt inviting him to take on the part of Boycie.

Challis had only recently returned from America, where he had worked on a number of plays and enjoyed the experience so much that he had been tempted to stay there indefinitely, until a failed romance prompted a sudden change of mind. Resuming his career in Britain, he regarded the Only Fools offer as nothing more than a short-term distraction, as, initially, it only involved a single day’s shooting on the set. Both Sullivan and Butt, however, were hopeful that Challis would make Boycie seem too good a character to leave behind if the first series proved a success.

Other minor characters were also recruited, but, by this stage, the core of the ensemble was safely in place. With Jason as Del, Lyndhurst as Rodney and Pearce as Grandad, the heart of the new sitcom was about to start beating.

It had been, by the normally very eventful standards of the traditional British sitcom, a relatively painless and problem-free process. True, the casting of Del Boy had lured Ray Butt into embarking on a number of brief detours and diversions, but, after that singular shaky start, the proper aim had been achieved: not only finding the right individual actors, but also, perhaps even more crucially, the right combination of individual actors. The talent, the team and the chemistry were now there, and that made everyone involved so much more confident about all of the other daunting tasks that now had to be attempted.