Boycie & Beyond

by John Challis

  My quote was simple: ‘They are the Royal Family; they should have the best they can get. I am only too willing to help in anyway I can. I am a royalist.’

  Oh well.

  Carol, when I told her, was inclined to be a tad more assertive.

  Sophie and Edward were with us for a couple of days, and I quite missed their be-suited bodyguards in the lobby, on the stairs and the landing outside our room, with their faintly amused smiles.

  Early in 2010, we thought that there could be an audience for a stage show featuring Boycie and Marlene. As I mentioned earlier, one of the pleasing by-products of The Green, Green Grass had been the opportunity to develop the relationship between Mr & Mrs Boyce. John Sullivan had made good use of this and portrayed an unexpected warmth and softness between the two potentially prickly characters. This had led to a greater interest in them as a couple, so the idea of An Evening with Boycie & Marlene was conceived.

  We developed a script based on our two individual shows that we’d been giving sporadically on cruises which, while focusing on our TV personae, also took in other elements of our two careers. We illustrated the show with live ‘clips’ and archive footage, making use of all audio-visual gadgets available. We had some fresh material and new gags added, some by Steve Walls, an experienced comic who’d played Smee in Peter Pan in Sunderland. We tried it out at Stockport. It worked well and we let it be known that we could be available. The great thing about a twohanded show like this was that it required very little by way of tack, set or anything else to put it on, so we ended up touring it quite extensively and it was fun to be back on the road with Sue.

  More sombrely I became in volved with celebrations of the Battle of Britain that were being played out to commemorate the seventy years that had passed since the RAF fought off the Luftwaffe offensives on London. I had been receiving communications from a Group Captain Patrick Tootal, DFC, inviting me and my spouse to the Battle of Britain memorial event in Capel le Ferne. Twice I had had to decline through other commitments, but in 2010 I felt it was something to which I should give priority.

  Tootals’ name was vaguely familiar to me, although I wasn’t conscious of his identity until I remembered a boy of that name who’d been a pupil with me at Ottershaw School. This Patrick Tootal had been one of those boys who from the day he arrived seemed older and more mature than the rest of us. He always exuded a responsible air of gravitas and I recalled he had been allowed the keys to the ATC hut very soon after joining our fledgling Air Training Corps.

  When finally I made contact with him over the Battle of Britain events, he confirmed that he was indeed the same Patrick Tootal. ‘And, what’s more,’ he added, ‘I made my first and last stage appearance with you at Ottershaw in Two Gentlemen of Verona.’

  When Carol and I went to a moving ceremony at Capel le Ferne in Kent on Battle of Britain Day, we found Tootal looking resplendent in RAF uniform complete with lashings of scrambled egg, ribbons and medals. I hadn’t seen him for fifty years; he looked much the same, apart from the medals.

  Comparing notes, I discovered that about the time I was trying to get my African play on in New York, and being Boycie in Only Fools for the second time, he was a key player in the logistical nightmare of getting the RAF to the Falklands to protect all those sheep from the rampaging Argies.

  In Kent it was a humbling experience to stand among the last remaining members of the ‘Few’ beneath a fly-past of Hurricanes, Spitfires and Lancaster bombers, under the very sky where it had happened.

  Wanting to do my bit for the charity that looks after these old heroes, I made a sealed bid for a trip in a helicopter that was to be chased and harried by a Spitfire over the White Cliffs of Dover.

  When Tootal announced that his old school mate Challis had won the ride, I went into a state if shock, suddenly remembering how scared I was of flying. My reverie was interrupted by Michael Aspel, former newscaster, MC par excellence and Antiques Road Show supremo arriving at our table complaining that I had outbid him. It was something he’d always wanted to do, he said plaintively.

  ‘Why don’t we share it?’ I suggested, and we met up a month later for the flight of a lifetime.

  As the Sikorsky chopper rumbled into the air and sped away from the anxious faces of our friends and families, I reflected on how extraordinary life could be. Aspel and I were like excited schoolboys. We had not met before our encounter at the event, yet here we were, bucketing over the Kent countryside being pursued by perhaps the most iconic aircraft of all time.

  Soon, over the intercom, we heard: ‘Bandits at two o’clock. After looking the wrong way for a while, I spotted the Spitfire drifting lazily alongside us, elegant but deadly, the tilted wings giving it a slightly balletic look. As we looked she suddenly ducked out of sight, and turned up on the other side. I suddenly knew how it must have felt to be the pilot of Junkers 88 in 1940 – bloody nervous! Then the show began.

  The Spitfire did a slow roll, peeled off above us and swooped down from the opposite direction on our starboard side. It was their manoeuvrability at speed, according to the great ace, Geoffrey Wellum, that gave the Spitfires such an edge. All I wanted to do now was fly in one, and looking down at the White Cliffs, I could imagine what a beacon they must have been for the returning pilots, reaffirming the defiance of these brave men.

  We felt very honoured after that when we were also invited to the Battle of Britain Seventieth Anniversary Service at Westminster Abbey. At the reception afterwards, having been introduced to a few bemused dignitaries, we wandered over towards the band, which was playing appropriate mood music from the 1940s. As we approached the music slowed, the conductor paused, smiles broke out and the lead sax took his instrument from his mouth and nodded. ‘’Allo, Boycie!’ A surreal exchange of greetings followed and the music resumed.

  We were joined by Patrick Tootal’s wife, Janet, a considerable opera singer, if you please, who introduced me to the Duchess of Cornwall, dressed in stunning pale lilac. Camilla’s timing was immaculate, fitting us into a small pause as a queue fretted behind her – I felt as if I were crashing the line at Tesco’s checkout. She was very sunny and, surprisingly, seemed to know who I was. She asked me about my connection with the Memorial Fund and if I had been to the Abbey before. I told her I hadn’t but I was used to Abbeys, as I lived in one.

  ‘May I introduce my wife, Carol,’ I inquired knowing what a wigging I would get if I didn’t. I turned to where I assumed she would be, and introduced a completely strange woman as my wife.

  The next few tortuous seconds were spent explaining ham-fistedly that this was not in fact my wife, who was actually over there...

  There was a lot of sighing, and eyes raised heavenwards in the waiting queue. Carol reappeared at the last moment. I introduced her, she complimented the duchess on her frock, then those who had been waiting in line took over.

  The highlight of the summer in the Marches for me was playing in a big charity cricket match in aid of the high profile, successful and thoroughly deserving Help for Heroes. The match was played on a beautiful cricket ground, high on a hill overlooking Ludlow in the grounds of Downton Hall (no relation to Downton Abbey), owned by the Wiggin family (no relation to the Earl of Grantham).

  As a former cricketer of little distinction I was persuaded by Peter Hayter – Ludlow man and Daily Mail cricket correspondent – to captain the home team against an XI led by none other than Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff.

  I was excited, but frankly more nervous about coming out to face Flintoff than I had been about any theatrical performance I’d been in for years. It was so long since I’d lifted a bat in anger, I couldn’t find a box, and I’d almost forgotten how to take guard. I had to borrow pads, gloves (mine had been eaten by mice – why?) as well as a bat.

  At lunch before the game, in a vast marquee over a cow pasture, we were joined by Sue Holderness and her husband Mark, Nick Owen, now heading up the BBC Midlands Newsdesk, with his partner, and Peter Burden with vi
ntage fashionista, Nina Hely-Hutchinson.

  There was a brief moment of lost dignity when Peter, turning round, he said, to listen to a short rambling address I was giving, put one leg of his chair into a rabbit hole beneath the sisal matting that covered the grass, and toppled over backwards, taking Sue Holderness with him – not the most tactful thing to do.

  Young Mark Wiggin’s services as a butler at dinner were auctioned off and won by the auctioneer of the day, ex-racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks and his wife, former News of the World editor Rebekah, who had brought an entourage including a top Page Three Girl from the Sun. They were there, no doubt, to get a nifty paparazzo shot of Flintoff bowling a googly at the opposition skipper’s unprotected goolies but they missed Marlene with her legs in the air.

  When the time came, I stumbled out to bat in a silly- arse cap I had found and was immediately dumbfounded by the fact that every ball was a complete mystery to me. For a start, it was the first time I’d played in glasses, and my varifocals made the ball zoom in and out of focus in a most alarming way. Added to this was the disadvantage that the bowler was Vic Marks, an ex-England Test match offspinner.

  He kindly gave me a couple of runs, but then had me completely tied down. In the next over, when I was called for a quick single by a young blade in a Harlequin cap, I trotted up and fell over my borrowed pads halfway down the wicket. The crowd roared with laughter. Jim Carter, known most recently as Carson the butler in Downton Abbey, had gamely agreed to help the cause by commentating in his rich velvety voice. He now had the generosity to suggest that my falling over routine was a deliberate attempt to inject some comedy into the proceedings. Still, I got to my feet and reached the far end unscathed.

  Facing again, I saw an opportunity to make something of the lollipop bowler at the other end. I charged down the wicket to hoist his next ball over the pavilion for six, missed completely and was bowled. It was, I knew, a pretty feeble performance but I trudged off to sympathetic applause.

  Part of my brief for the day was to sit in the autograph tent and sign anything that moved or was waved at me in exchange for a contribution to the Help For Heroes fund. I assumed that my lieutenant, Derek Pringle – ex-England player – would look after things in my absence when our side came to field.

  There was great disappointment among England cricket fans that my opposite number, Freddie Flintoff, was famously injured and had taken no part in the game so far. However, he was allowed to bat, as long as he stayed fairly still. He strode out to the middle to great applause and started to hit our bowlers all over the place. I knew this would happen, as soon as I was off the field things would start to unravel. Evidently, Pringle just couldn’t handle it.

  I loped out into the field, to be greeted at once by a thunderous Flintoff drive that headed straight at me like an Exocet missile. I knew how to deal with this – bend down and get everything behind it, to set a good example to my team. I wished I hadn’t tried. I obviously didn’t bend far enough; the ball pinged off the end of my fingers and hit me on the shin with a crack like a rifle shot.

  ‘God, are you all right?’ enquired my concerned team.

  ‘No problem! Doesn’t hurt a bit,’ I lied through gritted teeth as a rasping pain shot up my leg. I didn’t want to let the lads down.

  After hopping around for a bit, the pain subsided a little. Meanwhile, Flintoff had got bored with slogging the ball out of the ground and obligingly holed out to a delighted long-off, giving a local lad a chance to go home and tell his family for the next fifty years how he had caught Freddie Flintoff.

  My sturdy lieutenant Pringle congratulated me on my field placing and suggested I should bowl myself and win the game for Boycie’s XI. This was quite a silly idea. I’d never been a bowler at the best of times, but it was for charity and I should show willing. I took the ball and decided to bowl leg breaks.

  The first ball landed with a thud at my feet and gently trickled down the wicket towards the batsman, who sniggered nastily, swung, missed and obligingly picked up the ball to throw it back to me.

  My second ball flew full toss over the batsman’s head, and then the wicketkeeper’s, to carry on for four byes. The third was tonked past square leg for a boundary, but the fourth by some miracle was perfectly pitched, turned nicely and hit the batsman on the pads – plumb LBW. There was a massive appeal, the finger went up, high fives all round. I had taken my first wicket in over twenty years, through an inspired piece of captaincy.

  Unfortunately we still lost. I blamed Pringle, but it was a great day and we raised £30,000 for the charity.

  I finished up with a wrenched shoulder, a septic leg and a promise to myself never to play again. It took me three months to recover.

  I rounded off the year by donning the now customary full-bottomed wig, frock-coat, boots and hook, this time to pay the dastardly old varlet in the lovingly restored art-deco Plaza in Stockport. The locals give tremendous support the charming venue, built in 1932 as a theatre and movie palace and we played to packed houses night after night.

  Whilst I was there on 29 December, the BBC screened a Special episode of Rock & Chips, John Sullivan’s intended prequel to Only Fools & Horses. He had extrapolated the story from two Only Fools episodes, The Frog’s Legacy and the very final one, Sleepless in Peckham, from which it was clear that Rodney had been born as a result of a liaison between the Trotters’ mother Joan, and Fred Robdal. No doubt, Sullivan had spawned the idea partly to explain away the marked physical differences between the two brothers, and partly to leave the door open for just what he was now doing.

  In this flashback to the late 1950s, Rodney’s father, Fred is played by Nick Lyndhurst, and boyhood versions of some of the other characters appear as well, including a young Del Boy and a young Boycie.

  It was an interesting idea and seemed to catch on. We heard that John was in the process of writing more episodes. I found it an extraordinary experience watching Rock & Chips, seeing Stephen Lloyd playing Boycie as a young man. It was difficult for him, too, I imagine, to know how far he should go in terms of impersonation. The Only Fools characters were so well-known that there was always the risk that people watching would think, ‘No... that’s not him. That’s not how Boycie would have done it.’

  The director, Dewi Humphries, who’d also directed us in The Green, Green Grass had briefed them, I was told later, to try and make the characters their own, with a few nods in the direction of the ‘originals’. Stephen did a great job, and I was sure when I first saw it that Rock & Chips had legs.

  It can’t have been easy for John, either, seeing these people he had resuscitated in a time warp. I remembered sitting in one of the location Winnebagos with him during the filming of the epic Batman & Robin sequence in Heroes and Villains. I’d just told him that I thought it was so brilliant it would become a classic for all time.

  ‘Yeah, you’re probably right,’ he said. ‘I jus’ worry I’ll never write anything as good as this again.’ He paused and sniffed. ‘I really love those characters; I really love ‘em.’

  Perhaps in Rock & Chips he was trying to rediscover them, all over again.

  Carol and I returned from Stockport to Wigmore to start 2011 with two big projects to look forward to – finishing and publishing my first book, Being Boycie, and playing Malvolio in Twelfth Night at Ludlow Castle in the open air, for the town’s venerable festival that summer.

  Once we’d got through the bitter winter, which saw temperatures in our valley fall as low as -15C, we were looking forward, like the rest of the nation (and half the world), to celebrating the spring wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Always an enthusiastic monarchist, I’d had a particular soft spot for William since, in December 2005, he’d volunteered to become patron of one of my favourite charitable organisations, Tusk, with which I had become involved after my trips to Africa, particularly with Carol in 1993.

  Since I’d first been introduced to Tusk and its activities, it had been very well directed and was b
y now a major international charity under the stewardship of Charlie Mayhew. With Prince William as its committed royal patron, the future for all Africa’s wild life looks a little brighter than it did.

  However, before the wedding happened, all of us who had ever worked on anything written by John Sullivan suffered a great blow when it was announced that he had died on 23 April, at the age of 64, from an attack of viral pneumonia.

  It wasn’t surprising that we were all hit so hard, particularly those who had been in Only Fools which had become such an integral part of our lives. John had been responsible for effectively hand-crafting these characters with which we had become so strongly identified. We all had enormous respect for his skills in observation, his ability to make those tiny twists that turn everyday activities into hysterically funny events. I had worked closely with several great writers and I was very aware of the different qualities they brought.

  Stoppard used verbal pyrotechnics and a kind of intellectual conjuring; Marks and Gran had keen eyes and ears for satirical and edgy wit. Sullivan had something quite different – a compassion and empathy for the aspirational common man. He wrote about everybody’s life, even the bad bits, with affection and an underlying pulse of humour. People could always recognize their own lives in his scripts. ‘I’ve had that! That’s happened to me!’

  This is why, thirty years after they were written, they still resonate and Only Fools still plays endlessly on UK Gold and all over the world.

  At John’s funeral in Surrey a week later, almost everyone who had ever acted in or been involved in the production of John’s shows was there to pay genuine respects. He had left behind a widow, two sons and a daughter, including, of course, Jim, who had worked with his father on The Green, Green Grass.