Sir David Jason made a heartbreaking confession about getting older live on BBC Radio Leeds, admitting to presenter Gayle Lofthouse there are simply things he “can’t do” these days. David, 86, was promoting his string of live shows, An Evening with Sir David Jason, which begins in September 2026 and runs until next year.

Gayle asked whether Sir David remembered performing some of his most iconic Only Fools and Horses moments – such as falling through the bar – or if he has “just seen them so many times on the telly”. Sir David replied: “No, no, no, no. What happened was John Sullivan wrote that piece, but the way he wrote it, he said, ‘I was in a wine bar the other night and I saw this bloke leaning on the counter, and then the barman came through and left the lid open, then the bloke thought it was still down and went to lean on it. But he just recovered himself’.

“What fascinated John was he knew I could do all that, ‘I did that on purpose’ sort of thing.

“I said to him, ‘No, I want to fall through the bar. I will fall.’ He said, ‘No, I didn’t see that’. And I said, ‘If you’re going to write it up you’ve got to let me fall through the bar’, and the reason for that I will explain on the night if you come and see the show. I’m not going to give you that on the radio!

“But the point being I had spent so much time in the past in the theatre, working with an audience, and I learnt from the audience what all the tricks are that make that fall work, and make it funny and amusing for the audience.

“There are things you are probably not aware of that are very important to make that work. Because I knew that trick, because I used to do it every night in the theatre just to amuse the audience, I took things from my past to explain to the audience why it works. Little moments like that are part of putting it all together.”

He added: “Of course what that does to me is it jogs a piece of memory and makes me think, ‘Yeah, I remember, I used to do that 10 times a week in the summer season at Weston-Super-Mare’. Those days are no longer!”

Gayle mused: “I was going to say, how did that impact on the old body over time?!”

Sir David replied: “You’re absolutely right, I couldn’t do it nowadays! But I’m not going to tell you that! Come and see the show.”