Only Fools and Horses was nearly scrapped by BBC after viewing figures plummeted in first series

Only Fools and Horses is one of the best television shows ever, and we refuse to believe otherwise. The BBC sitcom first aired back in 1981 when the episode Big Brother hit the small screen.

The trials and tribulations of the Trotter family entertained the nation, and beyond, for 64 brilliant episodes until the last aired in 2003. It’s hard to imagine a world without it.

Despite nearly 19 years passing since the final instalment Sleepless in Peckham, Only Fools has never really been far from our minds and television screens as we re-watch the show over and over again introducing new generations to all of the humour.

Despite Only Fools, created by John Sullivan, still being widely popular the sitcom nearly fell at the first hurdle and almost didn’t make it past the first series due to poor viewing figures. But thanks to striking action at the Beeb, and subsequent repeats of the show, it was, very thankfully, recommissioned.

During an interview back in 2015 with the Radio Times Festival, John Challis, who played Boycie, said: “The first series went out, and it wasn’t actually that well received. I think it got about 7.9 million or something like that, which today would be very good but in those days wasn’t considered great at all, so it was sort of put on the back burner for a bit – no particular plans for a second series.

“I never thought I’d say this, but luckily there was a strike at the BBC. They started repeating stuff and they put it out again, different time, different place, and word of mouth went around, and the figures went up by a couple of million.”

“They thought, ‘oh, well maybe we’ll do a second series.’ So it could have been that there might never have been a second series, which is an extraordinary thought.”

In the same interview, John also said that he believed that the BBC was ‘embarrassed’ by Only Fools and Horses’ success. Outside of John’s character Boycie, who was a middle-class car salesman, the show also birthed beloved characters such as the wheeler-dealer Del Boy Trotter, played by David Jason, and his onscreen brother Rodney, portrayed by Nicholas Lyndhurst.

“There was sort of something about the BBC, Auntie BBC, who’s bigger than everything really,” Challis recalled., “And it was sort of slightly embarrassing that this show had done so well.

“They begrudgingly said at the end of one particular series ‘oh yes, come and have a party here at the BBC. But can you bring your own wine?’ And Alan Yentob got up and made a speech, and pretended that he’d never seen the show. You know, at least go through the motions! Say ‘thanks guys for making this the most successful comedy the BBC’s ever seen, the country’s ever seen’.

“They didn’t want it to get bigger than the BBC itself, I suppose.”

John Challis played Terrance Aubrey Boyce in Only Fools and Horses from 1981 to 2003, as well as in the Boycie-focused spin-off show The Green Green Grass.nSadly John died aged 79 in September 2021. His family said he died peacefully in his sleep after a long battle with cancer.