An original version of an Only Fools and Horses episode was reportedly banned by the show's creators due to how it portrayed Derek 'Del Boy' Trotter in a negative light.
A festive special episode written and created by John Sullivan saw Rodney Trotter meet the daughter of a duke while brother Del Boy proceeded to help him make a good impression. Originally broadcast on Christmas Day in 1986, 'A Royal Flush' had 18 million viewers at the time, but was often regarded as one of the show's worst episodes.
In fact, the late creator Sullivan was said to have "hated it" himself due to how Del Boy was portrayed out of character. The episode, which was reportedly completed just hours before broadcast and had no audience laughter, saw Del Boy belittling Rodney at a posh dinner and threatening an audience member at the opera.
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The Daily Star reports that the original version of the episode was released on VHS almost a decade later in 1998 with another issue on DVD in 2005. However, the DVD version was supposedly heavily edited at Sullivan's request, now including audience laughter and around 18 minutes of footage cut out.
The original version was apparently banned by Sullivan at one point, because of how Del Boy was portrayed to the audience in some scenes. Chris Wadsworth, who had been an editor for the BBC sitcom, said in a recent Channel 5 documentary: "It's quite a cruel, dark episode. John said: 'This is not a good episode'."
"Some 20 years later he said 'Can we do anything to take out Del being nasty?' The episode was shown to an audience to get a laughter track." Also commenting on the controversial episode, TV producer Richard Latto said: "The original where Del Boy is being quite cruel to Rodney [...] is a hard watch."
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