There’s a photograph somewhere of the cast of a 1970s production of Under Milk Wood, at the Mermaid Theatre in London. I’m there, with my thumbs in my belt loops and wearing a cravat.
Yes, a cravat. Trust me, it’s what the wry, sophisticated man-about-town was wearing in those days.
Also in the cast was Ruth Madoc, later famed for playing Gladys Pugh in Hi-De-Hi!, and Windsor Davies, the actor known for his role as the bawling sergeant major in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum.
Add me to the pile and the audiences who attended that production were watching three future stars of three big British comedy series together in one place, all speaking in Welsh accents.
David Jason says a friend of Abi had mentioned to her, almost as a joke, that she and David had very similar-shaped noses
David with his wife Gill and his other daughter, Sophie, on the red carpet at the Royal Albert Hall in 2020
Another member of the cast was an actress called Jennifer Hill. During that run the cravat clearly worked its magic on Jennifer. Nature duly took its course and we ended up having a short fling.
I should say that, when it came to relationships in those days, short flings were all I seemed to be able to manage. I was so entirely focused on building my career that I fled instantly from any relationship that threatened to turn serious on me.
Relationships meant ties, you see, and those ties would hold me back professionally in some way. Well, that’s how I saw it, anyway. And for better or worse, that would remain my attitude for many years after this – until, I guess, I had got sufficiently established that I could relax enough to think properly about fully admitting someone else into my life.
And I’m so glad I did wait, because it meant I eventually found the person who was to fill that gap at the age of 64, the wonderful Gill who became my wife in 2005.
So Jennifer and I had our fling and, having flung, ceased flinging. Which, I have to say, was fine by both of us. We separated perfectly amicably, neither of us having misled the other about our intentions or where we were at in our lives. It was just a very nice interlude.
David (far right) with Jennifer Hill (centre right) and the cast of Under Milk Wood in 1970
Soon after this I heard that Jennifer had got together with the TV and stage actor Geoffrey Davion and that they were getting married. I was very happy for her and glad that she had found somebody to make a go of things with.
Nearly 50 years later, I received a letter – the most astonishing letter I’ve ever received.
‘To begin at the beginning,’ the letter said, ‘Well, actually, at my beginning, I wonder whether it has ever crossed your mind, as it has done with Mum and more recently with me, that you might be my biological father?’
I was standing in the kitchen when I read this and… well, shocked doesn’t really begin to convey it. The letter went on: ‘For a considerable time, I have wrestled with the unsettling discovery that my paternity is uncertain.
‘I don’t want Mum to feel guilty. I didn’t want to ‘betray’ my late father and I have worried endlessly about how on earth to approach you. However, I really would like to know.
Playing Del Boy with Grandad (Lennard Pearce) and Rodney (Nicholas Lyndhurst) in comedy classic Only Fools And Horses
David with his great friend Ronnie Barker in TV series Open All Hours
‘I am not asking for financial support, or for you to make any other kind of commitment to me.
‘Please would you agree to take an anonymous paternity test so that I can finally know the truth and let the matter rest? Obviously, this remains entirely between you and me.
‘I am sorry if this sounds rather abrupt but I am trying desperately hard not to waffle. Written explanations would go on for pages, so please could we talk?’
The letter was signed ‘Love and best wishes, Abi x (Jenny Hill’s daughter!)’
You will be unsurprised to learn that my hands were shaking by now. What had I just read? I had to go back and read the whole thing again. And then I had to read it again. And then again after that.
Extracts from David Jason’s new book are being published in the Daily Mail
I have to say that it really hadn’t crossed my mind that Abi Hill was my daughter – that my relationship with Jennifer Hill while we were in that production of Under Milk Wood in 1970 could have produced a child without me knowing about it.
At no point in the half century that had gone by since then had that thought had cause to enter my head. It was only crossing my mind for the first time now, reading this letter, in a bewildering cascade of emotions that seemed to include everything from wonder and amazement, through anxiety and heartache, to fear and outright panic.
I knew that Jennifer and Geoffrey had a daughter – a daughter, indeed, who had followed them into the business and become an actor. That much I knew.
But that was their daughter, surely. That couldn’t be my daughter…
Could it?
Of course, the first person I needed to share this letter with was Gill. She was initially as stunned and as discombobulated as I was. But the more we thought about it and talked about it, and the more we read and reread the letter and absorbed what it was telling us, the more we reached the same overriding emotion about it: sympathy for Abi – for this woman who had obviously been going through a turmoil of uncertainty about her parentage for a long time, yet who had conveyed it so warmly and so sweetly in that letter.
So, naturally, I should agree to do the test. And if the test came back positive, then we should meet Abi and open our arms to her. I am so grateful that Gill was so supportive and understanding about it all.
And in any case, the test would reveal that there was no connection between us, wouldn’t it? That’s what I thought, the more I considered it, in the days leading up to the test. It all just seemed so unlikely.
When the result came back, I got in touch with Abi and said, ‘I think we’d better get together, don’t you?’
We decided to meet on neutral ground at first, in a hotel in London. And in she walked, my almost 50-year-old daughter, the daughter I didn’t know I had.
I don’t think at first either of us knew quite what to do with ourselves. I struggle to describe what it’s like, meeting someone you don’t know at all, who is at the same time your own. I’ve never experienced such a jumble of competing emotions. We were both feeling them. There was a lot of elation – kind of ‘Can you believe it?’ and ‘What an amazing thing!’.
But there was an inevitable sense of distance too, and a pang of sadness for those missing years, all that lost time. So strange to feel this instant intimacy between the two of you, this obvious bond, and, at the same time, to be aware of this gap between you: so much common ground, and yet all that ground uncovered.
I have another daughter, Sophie, now 23. I held her straight after she was born, and I fed her and changed her and walked her to school and watched her grow, and all of those things. And that’s what I think of when I think of Sophie being my daughter.
But Abi and I, of course, never had that chance, which is sad in itself, and now here she was, entering my life for the first time, but as a grown woman. In those first minutes it was such a complicated thing to process, for us both.
But we talked, me, Abi and Gill, and Abi told us her story. She had spent her childhood believing that the father who was raising her, Geoffrey Davion, was also her birth father. Doubts about that had only begun to creep in many years after Geoffrey died, in 1996. She knew that her mother and I had been together briefly around what could have been the time of her conception. Then a friend of hers had mentioned to her, almost as a joke, that she and I had very similar-shaped noses – and Abi had thought: well, hang on – yes, actually we do.
Abi told us about how her mother hadn’t been able to confirm anything, but hadn’t been able to rule it out, either. And Abi had for a long time done her best to live with not knowing the truth, but ultimately came to realise that she really would like to know, if it were possible – not just for her own sake but also for the sake of her son.
Yes, a son – a ten-year-old boy named Charlie.
So, here was a daughter I didn’t know I had, and a grandson I didn’t know I had.
The family suddenly seemed to be expanding at quite a lick.
We waited to tell Sophie at what we thought was the right time for her. She was used to being my only daughter and I was worried about her reaction. I wanted to speak to her on my own and so I took her off into the TV room and sat her down and told her ‘my story’ – something that happened a long time ago. She took it all in, and then said, in a triumphant way: ‘So, wait – I’ve got a sister?’
She showed so much wisdom and understanding beyond her years and, needless to say, Gill and I were relieved and thankful that she had taken it in her stride and was happy to meet these new people in her life.
Abi is lovely, bright and kind, and she too understood the unusual nature of the situation we all found ourselves in. She wanted Sophie to feel comfortable with her new sister. So, all in all, I am proud of them both.
It was nearly Christmas, so we invited Abi and Charlie over. It was lovely: nerve-racking in anticipation, I can’t deny, but then lovely when it happened.
I took Charlie out to the hens to fetch the eggs. And then I showed him round the workshop. Not just anybody gets permission to step inside the hallowed workshop, you know. But he was family, so he was allowed.
I call Charlie ‘the Hair’ because he’s got quite the quantity of it – an unfair quantity of it, I would say, from my position at the, shall we say, thinner end of the spectrum.
Think of me now on these occasions, won’t you? I’ve got Sophie’s boyfriend, who towers over me, making a mockery of me for height, and now I’ve got Charlie, the Hair, making a mockery of me for male-pattern baldness – or, as I prefer to think of it, male-pattern thinning.
Life’s not getting any more dignified for me around here.
We’ve got together numerous times since then – Gill, Sophie, Abi, Charlie and me – and that’s what we’ll keep doing. It’s early and there’s a lot of ground to go over, for all of us. I’m getting to know Abi, and she’s getting to know me, and it’s going to take time. But time is what we’re going to give it and we’ll do it, in so far as we can manage it, in private because that’s the way we’d prefer it.
Jenny, Abi’s mother, died in the summer of 2023, I’m sad to say. I very much hope she was relieved to know that Abi had finally learned the truth of her beginning and so she could rest in peace.
Now Abi and I are finally in each other’s lives – with a lot of catching up to do. We’re beginning at the beginning, you could say. And, as the great Julie Andrews said, it’s a very good place to start.
Adapted from This Time Next Year by David Jason (Cornerstone, £22), will be published on October 10. © David Jason 2024. To order a copy for £18.70 (offer valid until October 19, 2024; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.
Bob Monkhouse in the buff
I have known nobody more dedicated than Bob Monkhouse to the noble and ancient craft of causing his fellow actors to corpse
In my long career I have known nobody more dedicated than Bob Monkhouse to the noble and ancient craft of causing his fellow actors to corpse. Quite simply nobody, surely, has gone to such lengths to put his colleagues off, mid-show.
And I don’t just mean stripping stark naked in the wings where I could catch sight of him in all his glory – though he did do that.
No, I mean booby-trapping the stage with items designed to throw your concentration through a loop. In one play we did together, there was a basket supposedly containing a baby, the role of which was played by a doll, tucked mostly out of sight of the audience.
But the doll very soon stopped appearing in that basket, Bob having replaced it with… well, I tremble to recall the things I saw, peering into that receptacle over the course of that summer. I’ll just mention the sausages. And my underwear, snatched by Bob in a raid on my dressing room. There were other far less wholesome things, trust me.
Ronnie Barker: Farewell to an old friend
We lost my great friend Ronnie Barker in 2005 and there were 2,000 people at his memorial service
We lost my great friend Ronnie Barker – with whom I starred in Open All Hours and Porridge – in 2005, and there were 2,000 people at his memorial service, which took place in the grandeur of Westminster Abbey. Only two other comedians had been commemorated there before Ronnie: Joyce Grenfell and Les Dawson, such was Ronnie’s public standing at the end of his life.
It was never likely to be a strictly serious occasion. There was, of course, a procession of four candles, alluding to the famous Two Ronnies hardware shop sketch.
But I mostly recall Ronnie Corbett, in his eulogy, telling the story of how Ronnie, a fiercely private man, had sought reassurance that the clinic he was attending for his heart trouble was a place of the utmost discretion and unlikely to leak the story.
The person at the clinic told him it most certainly was a discreet place – watertight, indeed. And then he added, in a confiding tone: ‘We had that Danny La Rue in the other week.’
Peter Kay spoke, too. He had once written Ronnie a fan letter – and then got a reply on HMP Slade-headed notepaper, written entirely in the voice of Fletch, Ronnie’s character in Porridge. Kay replied by sending him a nail file.
The sermon at the memorial service was delivered by Ronnie himself – a recording of the sketch he did for The Two Ronnies as a vicar who realises a party of Cockneys is in the congregation for evensong and targets his address accordingly by delivering it in rhyming slang.
And so the magnificent architecture of the abbey reverberated to Ronnie sonorously enunciating the parable of the man whose trouble and strife has run off with a tea leaf and who thus finds himself living with his eldest bricks and mortar, but is short of bees and honey, so is struggling to pay the Burton-on-Trent…*
*Just in case a glossary might be of service: trouble and strife = wife, tea leaf = thief, bricks and mortar = daughter, bees and honey = money, Burton-on-Trent = rent.
The book signing
One of my favourite Ronnie Barker stories revolves around the time the great comedy writer Barry Cryer tried to trick Ronnie at a book signing. Cryer went along in disguise, in sunglasses, with his collar turned up and a hat pulled down, and queued with everyone else to get his book signed.
When he reached the front of the line, he put on an American accent and asked Ronnie to sign the book to John Smith. Ronnie duly wrote in the book, closed it and pushed it across the table to him.
Cryer left in triumph, having successfully deceived Ronnie B, and was looking forward to telling him about it later.
At home he opened the book. On the title page, Ronnie had written, ‘P*** off, Cryer, can’t you see I’m busy?’
