Del Boy, Granville, Pa Larkin, Jack Frost, Mr Toad, Dangermouse...
Respected and adored English actor Sir David Jason has spoken and written in-depth about playing his long-running roles in TV programmes including Only Fools and Horses, Open All Hours, The Darling Buds of May and A Touch of Frost.
David Jason Photo: ITV Studios
So this is not that interview.
For our allotted 20 minutes on a shonky phone line, we mostly chatted about his new TV show that takes him across America’s West Coast learning about its history and people through its planes, trains and automobiles.
The qualified helicopter pilot had already filmed a series along the same lines in the UK.
The new US five-part documentary series – Planes, Trains and Automobiles – premieres in NZ in May on Sky’s Living channel.
Mr Toad, a character David voiced for a 1983 stop motion animated film followed by a long-running TV series, would no doubt, have been just as excited as the British actor was to head to the US.
Full disclosure – I’m not the target market for a series about the thrill of driving dune buggies, drag racers and mustangs.
But as I mentioned earlier, this is really a story about American history and about people’s passions. The history is fascinating, but even more so are the characters who devote their lives to saving, restoring and preserving old vehicles, trains and airplanes and the stories behind them.
I was curious, as a reluctant driver at the best of times, about the exhilaration of being behind the wheel.
“It’s not so much that, it’s being in control,” Jason tells me. “It’s controlling something that seems to have a life of its own.”
He says it took an awfully long time for him to gain his helicopter pilot’s license.
“I had to do it in short bursts and the problem with that is that you have a couple or three days to learn quite a lot, then you go away to work which I had to do. It means when you come back you’ve forgotten what you learnt on those three days and so you have to start all over again. So it took me much longer than it would take if you did it all in one go.”
So was flying a helicopter a safety valve given his intensely busy acting career?
“What it does is it concentrates the mind. If you want to do something that is very challenging and learning to fly a helicopter certainly is, you have to basically clear your mind of everything else”, he says.
“That means that all of your day-to-day worries and problems tend to be put to the back of your mind, so it does, it helps.”
In the opening sequence on the new TV series, Jason, who’s 80 this year, describes it as a dream come true.
What was he most excited about ahead of the five-week shoot across the USA?
“I’d been to America a couple or three times on holiday in Florida, so I was quite interested and excited in seeing part of America that I’d never seen before and I’d heard very little about,” he says.
“Everybody knows about Los Angeles and Hollywood …..so that journey from Seattle all the way down that West Coast was such an exciting moment for me because you saw different people and there were different landscapes to be explored.
“I also felt – aren’t I lucky? This was something to be grabbed at with both hands. How many people in their lives have the chance to accept a challenge like that? It’s something that I shall treasure always.”
He must have been relieved not to have done the whole trip by stagecoach, I suggested, after seeing him dressed as John Wayne riding in one and his face expressing exactly how it felt.
“Oh dear, oh dear! That was probably one of the most uncomfortable things that I’ve ever had the displeasure of being on board. As you could probably tell, I wasn’t acting any of that, that was reality, I tell you. That seat was one of the hardest things you’ve ever sat on in your entire life. It was interesting but my God it was uncomfortable!”
David Jason Photo: ITV Studios
But it did make him appreciate what those early settlers went through. He was sitting in a stagecoach for an hour or two, but they were often on board for weeks at a time and paying handsomely for the privilege.
The way it’s depicted on screen is very much romanticised, he points out.
“One of the things I learnt was that when they were opening up the West, people travelled on wagon trains not so much the stagecoach that I was on. The children and the wives mainly walked. Because the wagon was pulled by horses you had to keep the horses as fresh as possible, so you had to reduce the weight. The man of the house would be driving and the wife and children walking even in the rain over the muck and the mud and the slime.”
One of the most moving moments in the series was when Jason flew over Oregon in a Warbird.
“Whenever I have the opportunity to fly in an old war fighter aircraft like a Spitfire, I get quite emotional and feel very ‘at one’ with the aircraft and the young men who flew in them,” he says. “A lot of them, as you know, didn’t come back. I have a tremendous love of flying so when I get in an aircraft, I imagine what those guys felt. I get really choked up about it.
“That comes with being an actor I suppose, my emotions are very much on the surface.”
What also comes with being an actor is the ability to fit in with a whole range of people in all kinds of situations. This was very handy for Jason filming this series where he came across some real characters who had all often sacrificed a lot to own and maintain their vehicles or aircrafts of choice.
David Jason Photo: ITV Studios
“I didn’t realise until I started the journey that there were so many people with these passions and could afford to indulge them,” Jason says. “Like the guy with a huge barn full of motor vehicles that he’d restored. There are hundreds of them. His passion to save all of these cars and restore them is mind-blowing.”
“Being a collector of books or pictures is one thing but motor vehicles, well that’s quite another. I was amazed.”
We ended the interview by reflecting on the irony of talking about his dream trip across the USA, while the octogenarian is in lockdown in the UK. His trademark bright yellow helicopter is grounded, his beloved cars in the garage.
“Because it is a worldwide problem, I hope it might bring us all together, to understand each other and to realise that we’re all on the same planet," he says.
So when the lockdown ends, what are his plans?
“We have a number of hotels with helipads here in the southern England countryside so I will fly in on my helicopter and treat myself to a sandwich and a cup of coffee, then I will get in my helicopter and fly home again.”
Planes, Trains and Automobiles premieres on Sky’s Living Channel on May 16.
