They've been adored as the lovable brotherly duo Del-Boy and Rodney Trotter ever since Only Fools and Horses first aired on screens way back in 1981, and it seems that David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst kept a bond up for many years even away from their on-screen personas.
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The classic British sitcom aired for over 20 years, consisting of 64 episodes including many Christmas specials before the show came to an end in 2003, making household names of the two leading stars in the process.
Both Nicholas and David have gone on to further their careers in acting for shows such as Goodnight Sweetheart (Nicholas) and A Touch of Frost (David), but the two have kept a friendship even 17 years after the final episode.
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Speaking to the Mail on Sunday last year, Nicholas opened up about his and David's friendship, and how they often incorporated similar tactics to each other in order to avoid being recognised in public.
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Nicholas and David have remained friends since appearing in the sitcom
"David had a pork pie hat and sunglasses and I had a baseball cap and sunglasses. It obviously worked, because one day in Bristol we walked right past one another in the street!"
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It wasn't just David and Nicholas that went on to build a close bond from working together, Nicholas explained that the whole cast became a "family". So much so that after the sad deaths of various cast members over the years, watching the show back became too difficult for the leading stars.
David and Nicholas as Del-Boy, Rodney and the late Buster Merryfield
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Nicholas explained: "I don't want to see friends who are no longer with us on screen. We used to go and surprise them on their birthdays. We used to wind them up. We used to tease each other. It was a family. So yeah, it's sad."
David echoed these thoughts, reiterating the family bond in an interview with Gold TV. The veteran actor said: "On Only Fools and Horses, we were very much a family. That included everyone from the writer and the director to the props boy. We were a family working together to try and make a success of it. We wanted to bring John Sullivan's brilliant writing to a wider public."
David and Nicholas in their heyday
Although the two actors remain good friends, Nicholas did admit that the two have only seen each other in recent years at the memorial services for co-stars such as Roger Lloyd-Pack. "That's how it's been over the past couple of years," he told the Mail. "It's horrible."
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