It wasn't always LOVELY JUBBLY!

Fresh from filming the Only Fools and Horses TV reunion, actress Tessa Peake-Jones reveals the nerve-shredding reality of making Britain's most beloved comedy, the wardrobe item she kept from the set of Grantchester... and the downside of dating in later life

- Bethany Whittingham

In 1981, the first family of Peckham drove into our lives in a yellow three-wheeler van, with a dream that “this time next year we'll be millionaires”.

Only Fools and Horses, the BBC sitcom that became a national institution, is still entertaining generations more than 45 years after Derek “Del Boy” Trotter (Sir David Jason), younger brother Rodney (Nicholas Lyndhurst) and Grandad (Lennard Pearce), welcomed us to Nelson Mandela House.

But speaking today, Tessa Peake-Jones, who played Del Boy’s partner Raquel Turner, reveals that the reality for the cast and crew preparing for live audience studio scenes was no laughing matter.

“It's really frightening because you have got several hundred people watching you,” admits Tessa, 68, who has just filmed Only Fools and Horses: The Lost Archive for comedy channel U&GOLD to mark the show’s milestone 45th anniversary.

“It's a very peculiar thing that I never quite got used to. If people had seen us backstage before the show, they’d have seen people pacing up and down the corridors with nerves, including David [Jason] and Nick [Lyndhurst]. We cared so much, and we wanted to get it right, but one slip-up of a word could ruin that laugh.”

Before the Bafta-winning cast stepped into the studio, they spent countless hours in rehearsals, often leaving them struggling to see the funny side of things.

“If you're doing comedy, you find you don’t want to laugh because then you break the reality of it,” remembers the actress. “Usually, we’ve seen it all in rehearsals so many times, it’s not that funny anymore anyway.”

The two-part special out later this year will feature interviews with cast and crew, and includes archive material from more than 10 classic episodes, including Christmas specials The Jolly Boys’ Outing, from 1989 and 1992’s Mother Nature’s Son.