The Funny Side of Christmas was an 80 minute BBC1 special featuring 10 separate sketches from BBC shows, linked together by Frank Muir. If you'd read this site before you may remember it being brought up in an article on Last of the Summer Wine Series Seven, as it was one of the shows that got its own short.
David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst actually get to appear twice each in the show, resurrecting old characters as well as their OFAH personas. Butterflies, featuring Lyndhurst as the youngest son, had ended the year before OFAH had begun, so gets a post-series special here. (The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin also got a post-series special in the show, but the difference is that Butterflies eventually got brought back for one more run in 1983.)
David, for his part, got to once more play the teenager(!) Granville in a short special of Open All Hours, which had ended its run earlier in the same year. It too got brought back, this time in 1985.
Both of them are joined by Lennard Pearce for a short featuring Del and Rodney trying to sell "microchipped" Christmas trees in a market. For a short that lasts just 8 minutes (or 8 minutes, 9 seconds if you want to be exact) then there's a lot packed in, including ruminations on religion and Del's lack of ethics. It's a fine short, though very rare, which explains the quality of the screenshot above. It was broadcast on 27th December 1982, reportedly to an audience of 7.2 million.
With bad weather making earning impossible, Del organises a family holiday in Spain, where Grandad ends up being arrested.
This one is probably ranked too high in fairness, seen as it is through Grandad-tinted spectacles. Lennard Pearce is arguably the cast member with the greatest comic timing, and seeing an episode where he's given more to do makes it one to appreciate, even if it is a bit "MOR". A lot of the jokes you can see coming a mile off, and a Spanish jail warden is played by Fred Mumford from Rentaghost. (And I say that as a Rentaghost fan.) Naturally, with the show yet to become a serious hit, the scenes in "Spain" are shot in England.
In his 2013 autobiography My Life, David Jason described how he and Nicholas Lyndhurst would play pranks on Lennard. During one unspecified episode, they'd turned his costume inside out and nailed his shoes to his dressing room floor. "And, at that, I'm afraid to say, he lost his rag. 'Someone's nailed me shoes to the floor. Who would have done such a thing? I think we should get the police in here.' He said he wasn't going to work that day, and had to be talked round by means of a calming chat from Ray Butt and effusive apologies from me and Nick. I have to say it was the only time I saw Lennard lose perspective. It wasn't like him not to see the funny side."
The core cast came from a tradition of posh actors playing "working class", following on from other efforts such as Steptoe and Son. Pearce was, in a sense, the exception to this, as he grew up with a Cockney accent. However, in the days when he became an actor, having a regional voice wasn't so much of an option, so he got rid of his natural accent through drama school training.
Look out for around 18 minutes into the episode, where, as with the scene pictured above, Grandad talks about being in Spain in 1936, with Del remarking: "You know, for a moment there, I thought he said 1936." Nicholas Lyndhurst comes back with: "That's funny that, but so did I" - except for this one line, Lyndhurst appears to have completely forgotten to put on the "Rodney" voice and it comes out in his own RP accent.
A pivotal episode in the relationship of Del and Rodney, whereby Rodney has been dating the wife of a convicted criminal. When Del is confronted in an alleyway by the husband who mistakenly believes him to be Rodney, Del does the brotherly thing and claims that he is Rodney, taking the beating on his behalf.
A similar moment occurred in reverse at the end of The Long Legs of the Law, with Rodney ruefully closing his eyes before deciding to take the blame for all of the stolen property in the flat. This hits deeper, though, as it's Del's turn to close his eyes ruefully and then go back to the Nag's Head bleeding and beaten.
The sequence does also raise the important question… how hard is Del?. He's spoken a good game up till now, and we've seen him win a fight with a low blow in the first series, but when he returns to the pub he tells Rodney he's made the path clear for him and his new girlfriend. Why would he say this if he didn't win the fight? Obviously he took his own licks in return, but we never see what happened to Tommy Mackay (David Daker). The plot suggests Del came off better in the scrap, though as it's unseen and only heard, it does have a suitable air of ambiguity. A later episode (To Hull and Back) sees Boycie state that he wouldn't outright cheat Del as he doesn't want plastic surgery.
A good, strong and memorable episode that adds warmth to the relationship between the two brothers.
Like A Touch of Glass, this episode is very much "back loaded", in that it all revolves around the final moments. However, it works better on repeat viewings, as a broke Del gambles everything against Boycie in a game of poker. While the outcome of the game is the "twist ending" that the whole thing leads towards, the quality of the material getting there is high.
Only Fools was far from the ensemble show it would become at this stage, and so while Trigger makes three appearances throughout this second run, this is the only appearance of Boycie. Boycie trying to rip off Del for everything he owns may seem out of character with the softened, later version, but does tie in with events in the 1985 special To Hull and Back.
As is almost always the case with onscreen depictions of poker, there are errors to make it more dramatic - the old "you have to put in everything or lose" routine, mainly. In a real poker game, if someone put in everything they had, they'd be "all in" for that amount, and wouldn't be bounced from the game if someone tried to up the bet. It's a common trope in TV poker games - so common, in fact, that it's forgiveable here, as it's just one in a long line of shows that repeated such a myth.
It was the first time that John Challis had appeared on the show before a studio audience, with his first brief appearance in series one pre-recorded. In his 2011 autobiography Being Boycie, Challis recalled: "[...] from their response, I had the impression they remembered Boycie and were glad to see him again. It was the first time I'd worked on the show with a live audience, and after their unrestrained reaction I left the set that day knowing, with a bit of luck and good scheduling, this show had legs, and there would be more gigs in it for me."
While Boycie couldn't be trusted, Trigger once again shows his loyalty towards Del, even wanting to put his car in the hat for him. Early Trigger had more of an edge to him, with his "stupidity" perhaps more of an act than he left on; what's notable here is that the "Dave" joke still doesn't get a laugh. They add to it here, with Del also looking over his shoulder at who Trigger is talking to, with Rodney assuring Del with an almost inaudible "No, it's me". Not until the third series would the gag begin to connect with the audience.
Lastly, writer John Sullivan had Irish heritage, and would sometimes drop in some Irish gags here and there throughout the show. Yet look out for the moment when Del discusses his bad luck gambling with Grandad, saying "Now what are the odds on you picking the only genuine weightwatcher in London?" The word "weightwatcher" is post-dubbed, with the original term - supposedly shown on initial broadcast - being "provo". This isn't a case of an edit for modern day repeats or DVD releases... this edit was reportedly created for the very first repeat, where the BBC got cold feet over the show containing a joke about the Provisional IRA.