Hours of unheard Only Fools and Horses jokes lost forever, actor of BBC sitcom claims

dailystar.co.uk:

Only Fools and Horses jokes are feared to have been lost forever, a show star has revealed.Actor Michael Fenton Stevens said the late writer John Sullivan wrote every episode 10 minutes longer than needed to ensure there were enough gags.Michael, who appeared in an Only Fools episode as Alan Fenton, said all the extra scenes and lines from Del Boy and Rodney Trotter were filmed only to be cut in the final edit.The actor, 63, said: “Every half hour script has 10 minutes of material which was cut.“If you can find the original scripts from before they were printed to be used in the studio, if you can get them from when he was writing – and they must be somewhere, his family must have them on record - I think it would be brilliant to read through all those bits that were cut.“I don’t remember there being anything in it that was worth cutting, we just cut it because we had to, which was a shame.”Michael starred as a holiday rep in the 1989 episode The Unlucky Winner Is...where Rodney has to pretend to be a 14-year-old boy after Del wins a holiday to Mallorca by entering his brother’s painting into a kids’ competition.Rodders has to take part in activities like skateboarding and a junior disco while his wife Cassandra and Del pretend to be his father and stepmother.Michael added: “It was a very big programme by then.“I was in Series 6 and it had just gone to 40 minutes so they had the extra time to do things.“That was the point by which they had turned into mini plays, they were just beautiful.”Michael, 63, also revealed that Sir David Jason - who played ‘Del Boy’ - would have to calm the live studio audience down during filming because they would laugh so much.He said: “By Series 6 of it the audience just loved it, they loved.