Only Fools and Horses

Only Fools and Horses was very nearly given a completely different name because BBC bosses hated the original

They can't have known how iconic the title would be

Only Fools and Horses is such an iconic name in the television world now that it’s easy to forget how much of an odd name for a sitcom it really is. When you look at the most successful shows through history the one common theme among the names is keeping them nice and simple, whether it’s Friends, EastEnders, The Office, or Blackadder.

With this in mind it becomes much easier to see why during the process of preparing Only Fools and Horses for screen, executives and bosses in charge of programming at the BBC were so disdainful for the name.

In fact, according to the Sun, in a bid to prove their point a poll was held in the BBC bar asking what people thought the saying (shortened from Only Fools and Horses work) meant.

In reality John Sullivan had lifted the unusual idiom from American culture (Image: BBC)

The results came back showing some people thought it was a quote from Shakespeare, while others thought it was the title of jockey Lester Piggott’s autobiography.

In reality John Sullivan had lifted the unusual idiom from American culture, and more specifically the Vaudeville variety theatre days of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Those at the top of the BBC actually wanted John to stick to his more simple original name for the show of Readies, referring to cash in hand, no doubt seeing the struggle that shows with longer names have to make an impact in the popular consciousness.

Who knows, had the bosses got their way, maybe the show wouldn’t have stood out in the way that it did, and would never have gone on for 23 long years.

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