David Jason

David Jason: Maybe Cameron will make me Laugh Minister

At 70, Sir David Jason tells Daphne Lockyer that he is far from retiring after the final A Touch of Frost.

Sir David Jason blasts BBC 'bonkers'

TV legend Sir David Jason has blasted the BBC - accusing the public-funded corporation of "empire-building" instead of making top shows.

David Jason signs for Five documentary

Sir David Jason has signed on for a new documentary for Five called The Show Must Go On. The programme follows the former Only Fools and Horses star as he mentors an amateur dramatic company.

Rock & Chips Review

Overall, Rock & Chips wasn't a total disaster, but it felt like a pointless excuse for John Sullivan to revisit his biggest success, now that David Jason has called it quits and present-day adventures are impossible.

In its one-off revival last night as Rock & Chips, Only Fools and Horses, the BBC's over-loved hit from the Eighties and Nineties, performed a genre-bend. A broad, sentimental, Cockney sitcom became a comedy-drama of charm and subtlety that did its writer John Sullivan nothing but credit. It is possible, I concede, that as an irregular viewer I missed nuances in the original, but for most part Only Fools stays in the mind - does it not? - for the chandelier smash, Rodney and Del Boy's foggy transformation into Batman and Robin, and David Jason's perfect fall through a non-existent bar, a moment pilloried with splendid unfairness by the comedian Stewart Lee for being repeatedly voted television's funniest moment.

There was almost no physical comedy in Rock & Chips, a prequel set in 1960 (it felt earlier). Del Boy was a teenager, Rodney not yet born and their mother, Joan, not merely still alive but, in Kellie Bright's winsome portrayal, still sexy. (I'll never think of Kate Aldridge, whom she plays in The Archers, in the same way again.) The 90 minutes' broadest point was Phil Daniels's moustache, donned to complete his misjudged turn as Grandad. Joan's boss's lascivious attentions to her bosom would also count as seaside postcard humour were they not undercut by the seediness of his masturbating after each of their encounters.

Instead of big laughs we were delivered a genetic explanation for why Rodney was as he was in Only Fools: melancholy, disappointed, brighter intellectually than his half-brother Del but without his neon-glare personality. His father, an unknown quantity in the series, turned out to be a ruthless jailbird with an artistic streak called Freddie Robdal (pun), who seduced his mother right under the careless supervision of Del's idle father, Reg. Nicholas Lyndhurst who, of course, played Rodney, here played his father, Freddie, and produced a detailed performance that suggested the con's psychotic tendencies could be tamed by the right woman. It was from Freddie that Rodney must have got his brains, for Joan was so thick she did not get a single joke that Freddie pushed her way. From Joan, he clearly inherited his stoical sadness.

As the really boyish Del Boy, James Buckley conveyed during his relatively brief screen time his Oedipal feelings for his mother and an early surefootedness in business, if not in society. Joan, looking down at her new baby, predicts, not unreasonably, that Del will be rich one day. From another high rise Freddie looks down on them. She nods her head. He raises his glass in pride. His paternity has finally been acknowledged. The question posed by Rodney in the last Only Fools and Horses, did his father love his mother, has been answered. Full of astute period details, such as the family planning clinic where a room of Mrs Smiths await their pregnancy tests, and with enough good lines to get by on (a snail looks like "a bogey in a crash helmet"), Rock & Chips was better than the sequel that preceded it.

There are many for whom the words Only Fools And Horses spell comedy gold. The Peckham-based misadventures of Del Boy and co habitually figure in all-time greatest sitcom lists and there can't be anyone left alive who hasn't seen David Jason fall through the bar at the Nag's Head. Like it or not, Only Fools And Horses has become part of British folklore. So as someone who never really got the whole lovely-jubbly lark, it was hard not to approach Rock & Chips without a touch of trepidation. This prequel from writer John Sullivan threatened to be 90 minutes of in-jokes about characters I never cared about in the first place, stuffed with references that would fly straight over my head. But knock me down with a filched feather duster, if it didn't turn out toan understated slice of bittersweet nostalgia.

The first mildly weird thing Rock & Chips had going for it was that Nicholas Lyndhurst was playing the dodgy criminal who turned out to be Rodney's dad. Given that Lyndhurst will forever be linked at the hip to the gormless Rodders, it felt oddly incestuous watching him seduce Mrs Trotter in a liaison that would climax with him fathering himself. Or maybe that was just me. There were more major plus points in the performances of James Buckley (of The Inbetweeners fame) as the young Del Boy and Kellie Bright as his sainted mother. Transcending the clunking staginess and looming sentimentality that threatened to scupper Rock & Chips at any minute, Buckley and Bright seemed beamed in from a classic black-and-white kitchen sink movie of the 1960s. They deserved a show all to themselves.

Though it was strangely unconvincing in its period detail - everything looked squeaky clean and lifted from the BBC props cupboard - and had more than the odd lapse into knucklehead farce, Rock & Chips was more than a mere vanity project for John Sullivan. Somehow it made me care about the Trotters in a way decades of Only Fools And Horses never came close to.

You won't get any clues from the terrible title, but this feature-length chunk of rosy 1960s nostalgia is a "prequel" to the beloved Only Fools and Horses, which left our screens for good in 2003. Doubtless there'll be a ready-made audience of millions for John Sullivan's fond look at the beginnings of Del and Rodney Trotter, and their hopelessly small-time business empire. As for anyone else, it will depend on your tolerance of cheery cockney wide boys and diamond geezers. There's no David Jason - Rock & Chips' Del Boy is a cheeky, mouthy fresh-faced teenager who's already a bit of a wheeler-dealer - as this is really the story of Del and Rodney's sainted mum, Joan (Kellie Bright), a beehived, brassy, hard-working woman who's married to a layabout. But Joan's head is turned with the return to Peckham of the suave crook Freddie Robdal after ten years in Dartmoor. He's played by Nicholas Lyndhurst and Only Fools devotees will be in on the joke straightaway, as they all know that Freddie "the Frog" was Rodders' dad. Don't expect broad Only Fools belly-laughs, though; just gentle smiles of recognition.

A star-studded adaptation of a Terry Pratchett Discworld novel, first shown last year, elaborates on the author's belief that fantasy is not only about wizards but also about "seeing the world from a different perspective". With some impressive special effects, the story tells of Rincewind (David Jason), a failed wizard, who acts as a guide to Discworld's first ever tourist, the naïve Twoflower (Sean Astin). It's a journey that has the pair battling druid mercenaries, bad wizards and trolls as Rincewind tries to get the better of his nemesis, Trymon (Tim Curry). Christopher Lee, Brian Cox and David Bradley also feature in the cast.

Sir David Jason on the set of Sex, Drugs & Rock'n'Chips

Sir David Jason stopped by to give some tips to the young Del, James Buckley.