EDITOR’S CHOICE
Truck & Driver August 2019^11
Cushti: Who else but Del Boy and Uncle Albert?You plonker!
Only Fools and Horses almost
didn’t get made. The late
writer John Sullivan already
had a foot in the door at
the BBC when working in
the prop department, and
managed to get the attention
of an executive, along with TV
star Ronnie Barker. Sullivan
got his break writing a show
called Citizen Smith, starring
a very young Robert Lindsay,
which came to the end of its
run after three series, and
Sullivan set to work on a
new project about a hapless
football manager. This didn’t
get past the pilot stage and,
with bills mounting, John
Sullivan was struggling.
He credited ITV’s Minder
with opening the door to
a modern, multi-cultural
London that helped get
Only Fools made, which was
originally titled Readies.
Based around charactershe grew up with in London,
Sullivan came up with the
concept of having two
brothers with a big age
difference. Some inspired
casting got the TV show off
the ground and it proved
an immediate hit. Nobody
could have believed just
how popular the show would
become, or the journey the
characters would go on over
the years. Only Fools broke
records, unlikely ever to be
beaten, for viewing figures.Denzil’s Daf
One interesting footnote.
Fans of both Only Fools and
Horses and trucks will no
doubt recall that Denzil
worked as a lorry driver and
that his Daf 2800 made a few
appearances in the show –
probably most notably in
the episode To Hull and Back
where Del, Rodney and Uncle
Albert get hold of a boat and
attempt to sail to Holland.S730 is pretty much standard inside (who needs more?) and Lee says the big cab is not really needed...