Top 70 David Jason Quotes

I was never good academically. It was mainly my own fault.

I wouldn’t like to get trapped in a long series.

The first series of ‘Open All Hours’ came and went without much fanfare because the BBC, in its almighty wisdom, put it out on BBC2, reasoning that it was ‘a gentle comedy’, better suited to the calms of the second channel than to the noisier, choppier waters of the first.

I hadn’t been to drama school. I hadn’t been to university and acted there. I had no qualifications behind me.

I enjoy the work; I just don’t like the glamour side of it. I find that very difficult to handle.

When you had just three and then four channels, I could always find something that was watchable because the standard of TV was much higher. In those days, they had so much more money to put into so many less programmes.

Ronnie Barker was a man whom I thought more deserving of a knighthood than me.

I was a very shy sort of person, and by acting different characters, I could immerse myself and make them do what, perhaps, I wouldn’t do.

It seems to me that as soon as politicians get in, they become part of this club, and the rest of us, beneath them, are just ants running about. They become besotted with their position.

My father used to say, ‘What the hell are you listening to? Put that bloody rubbish off.’ And it was The Beatles.

A show like the ‘Only Fool and Horses’ Christmas special got 24 million viewers, so practically everyone in the country was watching. But of course it’s a different world now, with so many channels. And those kind of figures are really difficult to achieve.

Despite offers, I have never felt the urge to try to make it in Hollywood.

I was very shy and had low self-esteem; the only way to stop yourself getting beaten up was to turn your hand to being an idiot. At the beginning, it was survival, and after that, it became second nature.

What intrigues me is that there are funny people in the real East End. It’s famous for it. There’d be blokes dressing up as women as a lark, but ‘EastEnders’ seems blind to the fact that they enjoy a laugh. There should be a cheery chappy on there.

One of the reasons that I needed to become an actor was that I didn’t have any self-confidence.

After leaving school, I worked as an electrician before becoming an actor.

People tend to feel that if you’re a comedian, you can’t act.

I’ve met a lot of military men in my time. After they retire, they are still extremely game. They dress perfectly and have impeccable manners. They always end up as secretaries of golf clubs. I have great admiration for them.

You wouldn’t want me to play Frost in a wheelchair, would you? ‘Frost’ is getting a little long in the tooth. I still enjoy doing it, and it’s a great part, but I just think he’s got to retire.

I deliberately decided not to go on Twitter. I’ve read about how much stress it can cause. I don’t think it’s healthy.

My parents, Arthur and Olwen, were honest, working-class people who raised my brother Arthur, sister June, and me with the values of that era – patriotism, stoicism, honesty, concern for your neighbours, and judging a man by what he did rather than what he had.

Miley Cyrus epitomises what we have allowed. She has done it to break the mould. I can understand why, but we have given her the oxygen of publicity and encouraged it, so young girls will think it is the right way to attract men. We’ve lost our standards.

Missing out on ‘Monty Python’ was a real blow at the time. I sometimes wonder how things would have been different if I had been invited to join ‘Monty Python,’ but as the saying goes, one door closes, another opens.

We were taught fortitude by our parents, who had gone through the war. Being a child then was fun. We could go out and play in the street – there were few cars – and we felt very safe.

I go with my wife Gill to the supermarket, but not often.

I won’t let my daughter watch ‘EastEnders.’

My desperation to be on the stage and perform was like a vocation, a religious calling.

While scuba diving off the British Virgin Islands about 25 years ago, our boat’s anchor got stuck. I dived down to release it, but I got separated from the boat and was stranded as it sped away. I had to swim for an hour to the nearest island with all my scuba kit on before I was rescued.

I have no interest in Twitter or Twotter or Twatter. It would never occur to me to use it. People who Tweet during programmes are always asking, ‘What happened then?’ If you’re bloody Twittering away all the time, you miss what is actually going on.

My father, Arthur, was a fishmonger, first at Billingsgate market and later in Camden Town and Golders Green.

A couple of years ago, I bought my own helicopter, a Robinson R44. I use it occasionally to fly myself to sets where I am filming or to business meetings.

I enjoy life so much I don’t want it to end, and dying does worry me. If you’ve got faith, you believe that you’re going to go to a magic land, but unfortunately, I don’t have faith.

I’m a qualified Professional Association of Diving Instructors Divemaster.

I want to encourage young people to get up off the sofa and get out there – as long as you want something hard enough, you can do it.

The ups and downs are part of what has made you.

I always say it is not the arrival; it is the journey.

Good parts just don’t fall off trees. I try to be very careful about what sort of projects I attack. There’s an audience out there that expects high standards from me.

It has taken a lot of persuasion for me to take part in an official documentary about ‘Only Fools and Horses.’ But, as time has gone on, it seems to have been imprinted in television history, and I thought it was only right that I tried to give an accurate insight into how the show was put together.

In 1977, while I was performing in a play in Cardiff, a friend introduced me to a striking redhead called Myfanwy Talog, famed for her appearances on Welsh television with the comedy duo Rees and Ronnie. We were instantly smitten and eventually moved in together, sharing 18 happy years.

John Sullivan’s scripts were always very funny, and cast and crew got on well.

Driving a Model T Ford was extremely difficult. The pedals are reversed from the way they are now. It’s so crude, but that was the motorcar that started it all. It’s an incredible part of history.

We have more and more rules coming out of Europe telling us what to do, and I think people are getting a bit fed up with it. This was supposed to be a common market. I don’t remember them ever saying we would be governed by Brussels and become a satellite of Europe.

‘House Of Cards’ with Kevin Spacey – I love how it portrays humans in power as just like the rest of us – but even worse.

I needed to be an actor more than anything.

I will continue to entertain the great British public. Because that is what I love doing.

I’m really excited to be bringing back ‘Open All Hours.’ I am sure there is an audience out there who would like to see what Granville has been getting up to in the corner shop.

In this business, you have to have what they call an idiotic determination to succeed.

Working on ‘Open All Hours’ had some unexpected perks, not least the attractions of the canteen at the BBC’s rehearsal studios in West London.

I think ‘Mrs. Brown’s Boys’ in particular is very good, though I do find that perhaps the language is a bit strong for a family, but it is very popular, and I think it’s very funny.

I don’t think I would ever have taken on professional acting roles if I hadn’t had the ability to fly. I had quite low self-esteem, and it gave me the self-confidence to believe I could do anything that I put my mind to.

My mum, Olwen, was a bright and talkative woman who loved a gossip and a story and was given slightly to malapropisms. And she was Welsh, so, of course, she sang.

When you see the kids on ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ or ‘The X Factor’ who just want to be famous at all costs, you just go, ‘God, these people just don’t know what it is they’re asking for.’

I’m happier being out of the limelight, at home with the family.

I can be intolerant.

The Christmas of 1965 was a Yuletide with a difference at my parents’ tiny terrace house in North London: it was the first time my family had been able to see me on television.

We seem to have lost our British sense of humour. It’s a great shame. We have to be so careful nowadays; we have lost a lot of humour because people are too frightened of getting too near touchy subjects.

I have a yellow labrador, Tuffy, and a little rescue dog, Bella, who is the boss.

I shall act until I drop. I just want to keep doing it and making it fun.

For me, the making of a documentary to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain was an intensely personal journey. I was born in February 1940, so I was just six months old as the battle raged overhead.

On ‘EastEnders’ everyone’s bitter, angry. Where are the wonderful characters that I lived with, who could find humour even in the lowest form of living?

Don’t get me started on BBC salaries. We were never the big league. Situation comedy has always been the poor relation in the television entertainment business.

I always wanted to fly. When I was in theatre, I used to go up on Dunstable Downs on my day off to watch the gliders, to get away from it all.