OHMYGOSSIP — Hours of unheard ‘Only Fools And Horses’ jokes could be lost forever.
Actor Michael Fenton Stevens, 63, has revealed the beloved sitcom’s late writer John Sullivan deliberately wrote an extra 10 minutes of material for every episode to make sure they still had enough gags left after editing.
He told the Daily Star newspaper: “Every half hour script has 10 minutes of material which was cut.
“If you can find the original scripts from before they were printed to be used in the studio, if you can get them from when he was writing – and they must be somewhere, his family must have them on record – I think it would be brilliant to read through all those bits that were cut.
“I don’t remember there being anything in it that was worth cutting, we just cut it because we had to, which was a shame.”
Michael – who appeared as a holiday rep in 1989 episode ‘The Unlucky Winner Is…’ – had a great time appearing on the show, and by that point the writers had a bit more freedom.
He explained: “It was a very big programme by then. I was in series six and it had just gone to 40 minutes so they had the extra time to do things.”
Meanwhile, he admitted Del Boy actor Sir David Jason even had to try and calm down the live studio audience because they were laughing too much during filming – even when the cast weren’t cracking any jokes.
He added: “By series six of it the audience just loved it, they loved every moment of it and, of course, were extremely excited about being in the audience of Only Fools and Horses.
“Then the first scene happens and they roared with laughter at every line, even the lines that weren’t funny.
“I think David Jason did stop halfway through the scene and said, ‘You can’t laugh at bloody everything! Go back to the top. Calm down, calm down, you lot.’ ”
Source: VacationHunter.Online