THE Only Fools And Horses costume department deserves free drinks at The Nag’s Head for life after saving a classic episode from being axed before it was even broadcast.
It has been revealed that a batch of blow-up sex dolls that Del Boy wanted to sell had to have a facelift to make them look more family-friendly.
Writer John Sullivan, who died in 2011, was so worried about the BBC canning the footage he kept details of the plot secret from comedy chiefs.
The show’s art director Alison Rickman reveals in a new documentary: “That whole episode was kept hush-hush because they were very frightened of being censored and then being told they couldn’t do it.
“Most blow-up dolls have an open mouth.
“But we couldn’t show that, so somebody altered the faces to make them more suitable for television because we knew we wouldn’t be able to broadcast it, and we wanted to do the gag which involved the dolls and them being inflated.
“That was an important for part of the whole story.” In the 1989 episode, called Danger UXD, the knock-off dolls that market trader Del hoped to flog were, unbeknown to him, filled with toxic gas.
Del Trotter and brother Rodney, played by Sir David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst, try to sneak them out of their flat in Nelson Mandela House before they explode, disguising them in their late mother’s clothes so they don’t look like a “couple of perverts”.
Del nicknamed two of the dolls Pepsi and Shirlie after the Eighties pop act who started out as backing singers for WHAM!
And one half of the duo, Shirlie Kemp, says it was one of her career highlights. Speaking on Channel 5’s We Love Only Fools And Horses, which is available on catch-up, she said: “My house phone did not stop ringing.
I had so many people telling me ‘You’re on Only Fools And Horses’. I had more calls than when I had a hit record.
“In a funny way I felt really proud that I was on Only Fools And Horses — even if I was a blow-up doll.” There are certainly a lot worse claims to fame.
