David Jason: My Life
Read David Jason: My Life Online
Authors: David Jason
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Entertainment & Performing Arts, #Performing Arts, #Television, #General
Contents
About the Book
The long-awaited autobiography of one of Britain’s best-loved actors.
Born the son of a Billingsgate market porter at the height of the Second World War, David Jason spent his early life dodging bombs and bullies, both with impish good timing. Giving up on an unloved career as an electrician, he turned his attention to acting and soon, through a natural talent for making people laugh, found himself working with the leading lights of British comedy in the 1960s and ’70s: Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Bob Monkhouse and Ronnie Barker. Barker would become a mentor to David, leading to hugely successful stints in
Porridge
and
Open All Hours
.
It wasn’t until 1981, kitted out with a sheepskin jacket, a flat cap, and a clapped-out Reliant Regal, that David found the part that would capture the nation’s hearts: the beloved Derek ‘Del Boy’ Trotter in
Only Fools and Horses
. Never a one-trick pony, he had an award-winning spell as TV’s favourite detective Jack Frost, took a country jaunt as Pop Larkin in
The Darling Buds of May
, and even voiced a crime-fighting cartoon rodent in the much-loved children’s show
Danger Mouse
.
But life hasn’t all been so easy: from missing out on a key role in
Dad’s Army
to nearly drowning in a freak diving accident, David has had his fair share of ups and downs, and has lost some of his nearest and dearest along the way.
David’s is a touching, funny and warm-hearted story, which charts the course of his incredible five decades at the top of the entertainment business. He’s been a shopkeeper and a detective inspector, a crime-fighter and a market trader, and he ain’t finished yet. As Del Boy would say, it’s all cushty.
About the Author
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 lives with his wife, Gill, and their daughter, Sophie, in Buckinghamshire.
To my lovely wife and daughter, my family and everyone who has helped me on this journey; this book is for you.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
AS WELL AS
the family members, friends and colleagues who appear in this book, there are some additional people I would like to thank for their support, advice and friendship:
Rod Brown; Ray Cooney; Les Davis; Jack Edmonds; Ray & Gloria Freeda; Suzi Freeda; Don Gatherer; Saleem Goolamali; Lady (Mary) Hatch; Jimmy Mulville; Dave Rogers; Lynda Ronan; Alan & Linda Smith; Giles Smith. A special thanks to Meg Poole.
And anyone else who knows me!
INTRODUCTION
By way of greeting, a brief recounting of my time on a desert island with no discs.
WHICH NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE
shall I begin with? The one involving the thirty-foot drop at Ronnie Barker’s house? The one with the pair of pliers and the bare electrical wire? The one in which the giant polystyrene sugar lumps rained down on me from a great height? Or the one caused by the rogue Flymo in Crowborough?
Actually, let’s get to all of those later. For now, as our little appetiser here, ahead of the death-defying feast beyond, let’s cover the one where I almost cop it on a desert island in the middle of the ocean.
We’re talking 1996 – my first holiday with Gill, who was then my wonderful girlfriend and is now my wonderful wife. I’m fifty-six years old at this point, and we’re in the paradise which is the Virgin Islands, in a lovely remote spot, and I have decided to go diving. (I am proud to be able to call myself a qualified Dive Master, a fact I may mention in the following pages more than once.) A bad hurricane has hit these parts in the preceding stormy season and very few of the tourist operations are back up and running as yet. However, in the little
town I drive to, there’s one diving place open and the girl in the office, who is an instructor, says she’ll get a boat together and take me out for a dive.
So off we go, puttering miles out into the beautiful blue open water, entirely alone there, and the instructor drops anchor and we strap on the masks and tanks and plunge in.
And it’s bliss, as diving usually is. My two favourite activities in the world: diving and flying. I am rarely happier than when deep in the water or high in the sky. Psychiatrists: help yourselves.
Bliss, then. Bit of a strong current down there on this occasion. But even a few minutes at forty feet below – I’d recommend it to anyone. We clamber back into the boat and get ready to head for home, but the anchor has caught and won’t come up. I volunteer to dive back down and free it.
All good. The anchor is now loose and I surface. Except that, while below the water, I must have got sucked into the current at some point without realising, and when I come to the top, I discover I have lost the boat. Or perhaps the boat has lost me. It makes no difference. I’m in high, pitching waves and twisting my head around in a state of increasing disorientation, and the boat is nowhere to be seen. Indeed, nothing is anywhere to be seen. Just miles of pitching waves, and me.
Panic, at this point, is obviously a decent option. But I try not to. There’s a motto we Dive Masters know well: ‘Stop. Breathe. Think. Act.’ I had that thoroughly drilled into me by my instructor in the Cayman Islands, Ray ‘Taffy’ Williams, a former soldier with plenty of stories to tell who became a great friend. ‘Stop. Breathe. Think. Act.’ Any minute now, I think, a wave will lift me and I will catch sight of the boat, or the boat will catch sight of me.
The waves do lift me. But I don’t see a boat. I appear to be alone in the ocean, miles from land, under baking sun and, as I am gradually realising, with increasing dawning horror, at the mercy of a current drawing me ever further outwards.
It’s at this point, anxiously swivelling my head from side to side, that I notice a tiny island. At least, I think it’s an island. It bobs in and out of my view. It’s some distance from me, but it might just be swimmable. Is there any other option? I don’t think there is. I start to swim.
The swim is exhausting. It seems to last for hours and saps all the energy from my supremely fit (obviously) and (if you don’t mind me saying so) highly shapely fifty-six-year-old limbs. But, dragging myself onward, I do eventually reach the island. Relief!
Except not. Perspective has played a foul trick. When I get there, it isn’t really an island. It’s more a broad, high, steep rock. No gently shelving sand to fling myself onto then, like in the movies. Instead, a tall, jagged cliff face, slapped by waves.
This inhospitable crag remains, though, my only plausible saviour. Assuming I can get onto it, obviously. By now my arms and legs are heavier than they have ever been. I have to use the waves to lodge me halfway up the rock. I try twice and fail and get washed back. If I don’t get on this next time, I’m not sure I’ll have the energy to try again. One last desperate effort …
I ready myself, ride the wave onto the rock, and this time manage to cling on and climb up. At the top of the rock is a small dip containing a shallow puddle of seawater flung up by the waves. I lie down in this puddle. And then I pass out.
I don’t know how long I’m unconscious for, but when I come to, I sit up and discover that – well, what do you know, and isn’t this just typical? – it was all a dream and, flooded with relief, I’m waking up back in bed with Gill in the safety of the apartment.
No, I don’t. Because it isn’t a dream. The bit about it being a dream was a dream. I am actually and indisputably on a rock in the middle of the ocean, under the still-baking sun.
But hang on. My eyes focus and there, out to sea, is the boat, plainly visible in the distance. The boat! The instructor is still
out there, on the bright blue water, looking for me. I wave and shout. But the wind carries the sound away and she’s looking down into the water. She’s not looking at the rock.
I’m over here! It’s OK. She’s got to see me in a moment, hasn’t she?
I watch numbly as the boat completes a few more silent circles. And then, with a sinking heart, I see it turn and motor away, growing smaller and smaller, towards the thin ribbon of the coast on the distant horizon.
Abandoned. She’s given up on me.
Well, now I truly am stuffed. Washed up, a castaway. What would Robinson Crusoe do? Seek a source of food among the vegetation, no doubt, and begin to build a shelter. Yeah, well, cheers, Robbie. I’m on a flipping rock. There is no vegetation, nothing with which to build a bijou shack and start a cosy bonfire, and very little altogether in the way of possibilities, short of beginning a new life as a cormorant.
Again, I don’t know how much time now passes. But I do know that, as I sit there, staring mournfully across the wide expanse of totally unpopulated water, I have time to reflect. Just suppose it did end here. Just suppose the clock was now running on my final few hours, the reaper donning his terrible cloak and getting the scythe from the umbrella stand in his hall, prior to setting out. Just suppose I was, indeed, about to die. Well, you’d have to say, it had been a pretty good innings. Cut short, maybe. But a pretty good stretch. A lot of luck in there. A lot of good times, with some truly great people. And some really amazing success.
Only Fools and Horses
,
The Darling Buds of May
,
A Touch of Frost
, a few BAFTAs on the mantelpiece – not too shabby as CVs go. If it should all come to a halt right now, in a hot puddle, well, at the very least you would have to argue that it had been a busy and fulfilling life, and not bad at all for a working-class lad from north London who –