Sir David Jason felt 'very sad' watching Only Fools and Horses lost archive clips
Tessa Peake-Jones says her Only Fools and Horses co-star Sir David Jason became maudlin as they watched lost clips from the legendary BBC sitcom together.
Sir David Jason felt "very sad" looking back at lost archive clips from Only Fools and Horses, his co-star Tessa Peake-Jones has revealed.
The 86-year-old actor – who starred as Derek 'Del Boy' Trotter in the beloved BBC sitcom - has sat down with his castmates from the show to look back at long-lost footage for the new U+Gold series Only Fools and Horses: The Lost Archive and Tessa, who portrayed Del Boy's wife Raquel in the comedy, has recalled how he became melancholy after seeing clips of himself at his "absolute peak".
She told the Daily Mirror: "You know, he'd just been knighted, he was in every programme going, The Darling Buds of May, all of them.
"And he said, 'There I am in my prime, and now here I am as an old man sitting watching it.' I found that really quite moving."
The 69-year-old actress continued: "He just said, 'Oh, I'm finding it very sad', and I said, 'What do you mean?'
"I ended up becoming his therapist on the sofa and he said, 'I just look at myself then in my prime as the best I could possibly be', which of course he was then – in his forties and fifties, he was more famous than anyone in Britain on telly.
"And I knew what he meant when he said he felt sad because this is us looking back on what we were, particularly for him because he was at his absolute peak. It must have felt very peculiar. You're not ever going to be what you were then."
Despite his sadness at looking back on the lost clips, Tessa insists that the A Touch of Frost star remains "very vibrant".
She said: "He's still a very vibrant man, he's got a lot of energy, he's doing things all the time, but it was just very poignant and quite sobering."
Only Fools and Horses, which aired on the BBC from 1981 to 2003, remains one of Britain's most popular comedies and Tessa feels that John Sullivan's sitcom has stood the test of time because the characters are kind.
The Grantchester star explained: "John didn't leave anyone out. He really cared about family and he cared about what people shared watching on telly.
"I know we all go, 'Oh, isn't Del awful with all his scams', but at the end of the day he'd do anything for anyone. He was kind.
"Looking at comedy these days, bar the odd brilliant one like Ghosts, some of them are quite cruel. It doesn't make me laugh when you see someone being horrid about someone else."
