Sir David Jason

Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth

Gyles Brandreth / Plain Jaine Media

Society & Culture, Unknown

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, Gyles is joined by very special guest Sir David Jason, who talks about memories of his career: how he started out in his local theatre group in north London, and progressed through amateur dramatics, to rep, and finally to the West End and television. There are, of course, a few cameos and helping hands along the way: Brian Epstein, Humphrey Barclay, Ronnie Barker and John Sullivan, to name but a few. You'll know Sir David's television work, because it's legendary: Only Fools and Horses, Open All Hours and Touch of Frost are classics which will be watched for many years to come. But you may not know about his early work on the stage, or his humble roots as a mechanic and then an electrician, or about the impressions he did of his teacher at school, or about the crucial role Ronnie Barker played in getting his career off the ground.

This is a funny and touching conversation with one of the true legends of British stage and screen. Thank you to Sir David for your time, and wonderful stories.

Sir David's book, This Time Next Year, is out now in paperback, published by Penguin.

This episode was recorded at the JW Marriott Grosvenor House hotel in London, thank you to them.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Charles Brandreth and I'm here to offer you a respite from everyday life.
0:06.6	You can forget the cares of the world, turn off the news, stop working for a minute,
0:12.5	don't check your mobile during this, just prepare to immerse yourself in a world of memory.
0:19.8	Yes, we're looking forward to looking back.
0:23.7	Welcome to Rosebud.
0:25.2	Cue the music.
0:27.7	Music. Our guest today on Rosebud is one of Britain's best-loved actors.
0:53.3	It's Sir David Jason. We have recorded this at the Grovenor House
0:58.6	Hotel in Park Lane. And I have to tell you when the staff heard that Del Boy himself was coming
1:04.6	into the hotel, they're normally extremely discreet, but they gathered around corners in the hope
1:10.6	of catching a glimpse of him,
1:11.7	and the bolder ones came forward to shake his hand. This person turns out to be an iconic figure
1:18.1	in British entertainment, and quite rightly, from porridge to open all hours, to only fools and
1:23.6	horses, to the darling buds of May, to touch of frost which I really loved where he played
1:29.5	the detective Frost. Sir David, as he now is, Sir David, Jason, has been at the heart of, well,
1:36.9	many of British television's most loved and most watched programmes. So in our conversation,
1:47.4	well, we're going to cover so much crowd. How he began,
1:51.6	you know, his, well, how he began in the theatre in North London with his local theatre group,
1:58.0	The Incognitos, which he initially joined because he thought it would be a good way of meeting girls.
2:02.2	I'm going to talk to him about his, well, the Amdram, the Rep years, then his time in the West End. That's when I first met him when he was in no-sex-please-we're British.
2:07.6	Oh gosh, must be 40 or more years ago. That's when we first met one another. And, well,
2:13.6	actually, we're going to talk about how there is so much more to him than simply Del Boy.
	...

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