They were no ordinary fools and horses

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column

Michael Commane

When I heard the news last week that Boycie had died I was genuinely shocked.

My immediate reaction was that’s both Boycie and Trigger gone.

Actor John Challis played the character Boycie in Only Fools and Horses. How could anyone ever forget Boycie, a crooked second-hand car salesman with the most ridiculous and silly of laughs, who was married to Marlene, actor Sue Holderness. Sue did her damndest to look sexy.

If you are not familiar with the series, it is about the life and times of an East London quasi-hoodlum, Del Boy, played by David Jason, his family and associates. It is the funniest piece of theatre I have ever seen.

Only last week I happened to see one of the series on either RTE or BBC. It was the one where Del Boy, his brother Rodney, played by Nicholas Lyndhurst and Granddad, played by Lennard Pearce, accidentally end up in a manor house. 

It is hilarious. Del Boy does everything that is possibly wrong and the lord and the lady of the manor try to get rid of the three of them. But Del Boy tricks his way into being hired by them to clean the chandeliers in the hallway. 

Some days later they arrive all dressed up in white coats, looking the part, when the lord and lady of the manor are away. Granddad opens the wrong bolt to release the chandelier and it all comes crashing down on top of them.

Before you could blink an eye, the three of them are out the door and the episode finishes with them scrambling into their iconic but ridiculous three-wheeler yellow van, flying out the gates of the manor house.

Watching that episode on my own I found myself roaring laughing, indeed, laughing so energetically that I felt a pain in my stomach.

It’s pure genius. Even the yellow three-wheeler van was spectacular. Written across the side of it is Trotters Independent Trading. You don’t need too much imagination to get the funny side of that. 

Del Boy must have been delighted to see his yellow 1968 Reliant Regal three-wheeler sell for twice the expected price at auction in 2017.

Everything about Del Boy has a story to it. He is perfectly dressed in the style of a nice type of hoodlum or at least how we perceive a hoodlum to look. And that too tells its own story.

He spends his life trying to impress people but all done in the silliest of ways. His stock phrase when things appear to be going well is ‘Lovely Jubbly’.

Nothing has ever made me so laugh and for that I must thank the late John Sullivan who wrote the series. But of course the actors too.

And now I’m thinking of Trigger, played by Roger Lloyd-Pack, who died in 2014.

He plays the council worker, who by changing his brush and the handle at different times claims he has the same brush for many years.

Bye Boycie and thank you. Miss you too Trigger.