Only Fools and Horses. Graham McCann
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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