A “lost” scene from a beloved Christmas episode of Only Fools and Horses has emerged after almost three decades.
The 1996 episode “Heroes and Villains” famously sees David Jason’s Del Boy and Nicholas Lyndhurst’s Rodney head off to a fancy dress party wearing Batman and Robin costumes.
When their van breaks down on the way to the event, they’re forced to travel on foot, and end up intercepting a mugging along the way.
However, a newly unveiled script has revealed that the mugging sequence was originally intended to be longer than the broadcast version.
In the final version of the episode, Del chases down the thief and knocks him out with a heavy suitcase.
In the script, though, a police officer then arrives on the scene, prompting Del to tell him: “It’s alright, officer, I caught him – he’s over there!”
The officer then mistakes Rodney for the criminal and arrests him.
The script with the “missing” scene belonged to the sitcom’s late star Roger Lloyd Pack, who played Trigger in the BBC series, and is currently up for auction at Bristol’s Auctioneum.
This piece of sitcom history has also been signed by multiple cast members, including Lloyd Pack, Jason and John Challis, who played car dealer Boycie, and is expected to fetch between £2,000 and £3,000 when it goes under the hammer later this month.
Auctioneer Andy Stowe described the artefact as “comedy history, in black and white”.
“As a fan of the show myself, I was flicking through the script and began to read lines of dialogue that I didn’t recognise,” he told The Sun.
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“As I carried on reading, I realised that these were scenes and lines that had been cut from the episode. Some of them are very funny.”
Stowe also revealed that there were further scenes “cut from the episode that focus on the plot of the muggers” in order to “establish the threat of them throughout the episode”.
The script belongs to a private collector who acquired it through the Only Fools & Horses Society, and will go up for sale on 30 June.
Heroes and Villains aired on Christmas Day in 1996 and drew in a record-breaking 21 million viewers.
