Only Fools And Horses stage show cast hope for TV special

The Sun reports that Paul Whitehouse, who played Grandad in the production, said: “We’d love to do a TV version of the stage show and we think it would work well. Our story involves both Granddad and Uncle Albert, Del Boy meeting Raquel and Rodney and Cassandra getting married so we basically condense the seven television series into two hours and 10 minutes.”

He added: “While we can’t compete with the original show, you do get the whole story of Only Fools And Horses. It would be lovely to see our version adapted for television.”

Only Fools and Horses The Musical, which co-starred Tom Bennett as Del Boy and Ryan Hutton as Rodney, launched at London’s Theatre Royal in 2019, and went on to run for a record-breaking four years at the venue, notching up over 1,000 performances.

On announcing the end of the show in January, Whitehouse said: “It’s been an unbelievable four years for the whole cast of the Only Fools musical. We’ve consistently played to packed houses and received standing ovations night after night – the audiences have been incredible. I’m committed to six months filming from May onwards, so it felt the right time to say ‘Bonjour’ to Del and the gang… for now. But we are planning a UK tour – more details to be announced later this year – and we hope to bring the show back into the West End at some point in the future.”

Nicholas Lyndhurst has previously ruled out returning for any more episodes of the original sitcom. He and David Jason last reprised their characters in 2014, for an 11 minute special for Sport Relief, co-starring David Beckham.

Speaking about creator John Sullivan, Lyndhurst said: “We can’t. John is no longer with us. John was the driving force of the show and we have also lost quite a few cast members now. I don’t think I could do it without them and I certainly couldn’t do it without John.”