Only Fools and Horses legend David Jason’s first role in hugely successful soap opera that was bigger than Corrie
Acting legend David Jason was so fundamental to Only Fools and Horses that it’s impossible to imagine the sitcom without him. The same can be said for Open All Hours, another early cult comedy from the BBC which Jason starred in before Only Fools, and which is said to have landed him his big role in the later show.
But everyone has to start somewhere, and before his career really took off, Jason had a significant role in a hit drama which ran for 25 years and has probably been forgotten by modern audiences. Although he had trained and worked as an electrician, Jason’s real passion was always acting, and he managed to segue into a career on the screen by landing his first acting role in Crossroads, which began back in 1964.
Set in a motel in the fictional village of King’s Oak in the midlands, the early ITV soap opera revolved around the dramas and comings and goings of characters who travelled the midland road. Crossroads ran from 1964 until 1988, with a short revival from 2001 to 2003, and drew in massive audiences of 15 million viewers at its peak, coming second only to Coronation Street.
In 1967, Jason joined the show in the role of handyman and boxing promoter Bernie Kilroy, who planned to rob the motel, before he was caught red-handed and forced to flee – only to return several months later to show he was a changed man. In total, he appeared in just 18 episode of the show, which ran for an astonishing 4,490 episodes over 25 years. Despite critics having slammed the show’s “visibly cheap production values,” Jason has always spoken fondly of Crossroads.
In his official autobiography, My Life, Jason defended the series against accusations of “bad acting” and “wobbly walls,” when he insisted: “Of course that’s a terribly sweeping generalisation about a series which a lot of the performances and storytelling was really good.
“In defence of the production staff and the cast most of the shows ‘failings’ to hit the mark were the result of hitting everything in a blind hurry, the series was running at a heart-attack rate of five half-hour episodes a week… And yet, for all that, it was a big hit. A television juggernaut, massively popular, the ITV network’s second watched show after Coronation Street and sometimes even capable of nudging ahead of it in the ratings.”
Jason was right that Crossroads was a huge hit with audiences. It was also a brilliant stepping stone for many of its actors, who went on to become stars of Coronation Street and EastEnders. Other celebs who have appeared in the show include comedy legends Bob Monkhouse and Ken Dodd, former England footballer Billy Wright, and star of ‘Hair’ Elaine Paige.
