Classic comedy never goes out of fashion

TV Watch with Dave O’Connell

Perhaps it was the death of one of the finest television comedy actors of all time, Roger Lloyd-Pack, that got the old nostalgia juices flowing – but more likely it was the realisation that classic comedy isn’t down to sophisticated technology. It’s all about timing.

Dawn French’s tribute to her old Vicar of Dibley colleague was short, and in keeping with the man himself,  it wasn’t showy, luvvy or full of gushing tributes – it was all about the man we first knew as Trigger in Only Fools and Horses and more latterly as Owen in The Vicar of Dibley.

So instead of other people’s views of him, we saw him in action to remember him for ourselves – before the BBC followed it with an airing of the very first episode of Only Fools, a half-hour of pure gold that will never lose its magic.

There’s a scene from Only Fools and Horses that involves David Jason as Del Boy and Roger Lloyd-Pack as Trigger and it has regularly been voted the greatest comic moment of all time on the box.

Almost everyone has seen it, but if you’ve watched it a thousand times, it still would take some doing not to laugh out loud.

It’s the scene where our heroes are hanging out in a posh bistro and Del thinks he’s on a winner with the ladies at a neighbouring table.

Del’s been leaning against the counter but looking in the other direction, and as he tells Trigger to play it cool, he hasn’t noticed that the barmaid has lifted the bar hatch to collect glasses – so when he leans his elbow back where the counter used to be, he gently topples to the floor without even trying to break his fall.

Jason’s timing is extraordinary, but so is the vacant reaction from Trigger who doesn’t know where his fellow Casanova has disappeared to, until a dishevelled Del Boy dusts himself off and heads for the exit.

Trigger was a regular right from the first episode – he first appears as a regular in the Nag’s Head where the reason for his nickname is revealed (he has a head like a horse) and the long-running gag, that sees him forever insist that Rodney is actually Dave, begins.

For a man who was highly articulate and opinionated in real life, he was equally gormless in the Vicar of Dibley – but the common connection in both comedies was that they relied on great acting and terrific scripts.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.