Jason - Only Fools and Stories

Sir David Jason was born in 1940 in north London. His acting career has been long and varied: from his theatre work in the West End to providing voices for Mr Toad from The Wind in the Willows, Danger Mouse and The BFG; and from Open All Hours and The Darling Buds of May to his starring roles as Detective Inspector Frost in A Touch of Frost and, of course, Derek Del Boy Trotter in Only Fools and Horses.

He was awarded an OBE in 1993 and a knighthood in 2005, both for services to drama. He has won four BAFTAs and six National Television Awards. Jason is on our screens currently in Still Open All Hours.

In my previous volume of memoirs, My Life, I told the story of my journey from north London electrician with his own van, to television actor with his own car. In this volume, I've largely dwelled on a bunch of other people whose life stories I think I know pretty well the characters Ive played during that journey.

The chances are you know some of these characters, too. Derek Edward Trotter, maybe. Or William Edward Frost. (Funny how those two shared a middle name. They didnt share an awful lot else.) Or Sidney Larkin, perhaps. Or the lad Granville, who, it pains me to say, is not so much of a lad any longer and possibly wasnt much of a lad to begin with, if were being honest.

From their voices to their clothes, their walks to their mannerisms, Ive written about the things that made these characters who they were, and how I helped bring them to life. Ive relived my favourite moments, memories and medallions (or not, as might be the case) both on and off the set, and in both real and surreal life.

And finally, because I always find it endearing when people make the effort to share the wisdom and expertise that they have gleaned down the years, and because I would like this book to have, if nothing else, a small practical application, you will learn along the way how to fall sideways through the hole where a pubs bar-hatch used to be. Apparently Im quite renowned for that

AS I PREPARE to lay down my clammy pen, the film producer who so warmly caressed my earlobes when I crossed the room on my way back to the table that night at the Porchester Hall has yet to call for a second date. Trust me, though, Ill be waiting by the phone. Indeed, be assured that all plausible job offers will receive due consideration. Of course, you have to be reasonable. My days of diving into a sofa are probably over though I reckon I could still drop sideways through a bar-flap if called upon to do so. One thing I do know, is that retirement doesnt yet seem to feature in the game-plan. Indeed, if I could be shot back right now through times misty envelope to my humble beginnings, would I do it all again? As Rowan & Martin used to say, you bet your sweet bippy I would. The whole journey. Point me at it. The paths taken, the paths untaken, the rough, the smooth, and all stations in between. The love of the job is still in there, firing away the same idiotic determination to succeed. Indeed, Ive got this feeling that, even as theyre easing my coffin lid into place, if I were to hear a phone ring, I know Id pop up and say, If thats my agent, tell them Ill do it. I dont seem to be able to stop. Why should that be? No idea. But a very wise man once said it better than I can:

Where it all comes from is a mystery

Like the changing of the seasons

And the tides of the sea

But heres the one thats driving me berserk:

Why do only fools and horses work?

What more can I say?

WHAT A PICTURE . This beautifully composed and subtly lit piece of photographic art is an out-take from an award-winning session that I did with Annie Leibovitz for a cover story in Vanity Fair magazine at the point where my career was really beginning to take off in America.

Oh, all right, then: no it isnt. Its a blurry snap taken in the late 1970s by hands unknown, with a Kodak Instamatic most probably, and then delivered, in all likelihood, to the local chemists for processing, prior to collection from that chemists in a glossy folder a fortnight later, if you were lucky. (Kids: theres simply too much out-of-date stuff to explain here. Ask an adult who has got a free hour or seven.)

However, since then, this photograph has lived with me in various boxes and trays and drawers, growing no sharper or better lit with the passing years, but somehow accumulating meaning, at least from my personal point of view. Every time I come across it, it seems to strike me anew. Its just a quick picture, grabbed behind the scenes in a theatre. Yet theres something about it which seems to get to the heart of the matter and sum a few things up.

A few details about this noble image. We are backstage at the Arts Theatre in Cambridge, a decent, 600-seater provincial venue, and the date would have to be at some point in October 1978. That makes me a willowy thirty-eight years of age a veritable infant, I would argue, in thespian terms. Certainly the most prominent points of my life in the business are all ahead of me.

The play I am appearing in is called The Relapse or, Virtue in Danger a Restoration comedy, written in the late seventeenth century by Sir John Vanbrugh. This was only my second appearance in a piece from that period; as a member of the Bromley Theatre repertory company, in my first proper job as an actor, I appeared as Bob Acres in Richard Brinsley Sheridans The Rivals. These were perhaps not the kinds of roles you would expect an actor with my background to land. I had come out of amateur dramatics and hadnt been to drama school or done a course in acting in which Restoration plays and their customs and techniques might have been part of your studies. So I was going on intuition, direction and what I could pick up from reading a bit around the subject. Which is why Im in a position to tell you that, when he wasnt busy writing plays, John Vanbrugh practised as an architect, during the course of which work (on, I like to think, an idle Sunday), he designed Blenheim Palace, the massive pad in Oxfordshire which has provided a stately home down the years to various Dukes of Marlborough. So Vanbrugh was no slouch, clearly. And on the subject of people who arent slouches, the director of this 1978 production of The Relapse was Jonathan Lynn, who was the artistic director of the Cambridge Theatre Company at this point in his career, but who is probably better known to you as the co-creator of the comedy series Yes, Minister and, later, Yes, Prime Minister. OK, Yes, Minister wasnt exactly Blenheim Palace but it was pretty good, too, and for a decent portion of the 1980s, it was getting many more viewers than Blenheim Palace on a weekly basis.

I know that Jonathan Lynn directed The Relapse because, as well as the photograph reproduced above, I also have to hand a programme from the production one of quite a number of programmes that I seem to have tucked away over the course of time, because a blend of sentiment and pride stopped me from parting with them. That said, its always a bitter-sweet experience to look back at the programme from a show that you were in and run your eye down the cast list. On the one hand, there are the actors who went on to have careers and whose names remain familiar to you. For example, in the case of this 1978 production of