The Only Fools and Horses scene that was so funny crew members ‘stuffed socks in their mouths’ to avoid laughing

Everyone will have at least a handful of scenes which spring to mind when asked to pick out their funniest ones from Only Fools and Horses’ iconic 64 episode run. There are plenty to choose from, whether it’s Del falling through the bar, or Batman and Robin rocking up at a wake.

But there was only one scene that was so funny members of the crew resorted to lengths so extreme to stop them giggling and ruining the shot that they actually began stuffing their mouths with their socks.

The scene in question is another classic, the chandelier drop from A Touch of Glass. One of the most perfect endings to a storyline of any in Only Fools, the episode sees the Trotters get hired to clean the chandeliers of a stately home, only to fumble the priceless light fitting and see it crash to the floor.

It’s a well known detail that the production team only had one prop chandelier for the scene made, costing over £6,000, making the filming of it extremely high stakes as a mistake during the drop would leave the crew with a smashed chandelier and no usable footage.

This tension proved part of the problem though, with the anticipation leaving more than a few members of the production with the giggles.

Recalling the day of filming, Del Boy star Sir David Jason said in a 2015 interview with the Express: “We are gripping everything in our professional bodies not to laugh because we can see the picture in our mind.

“At last, the director shouts cut, well, you never heard such an explosion of laughter from the crew.

“And when I looked around, there were people taking socks out of their mouths, handkerchiefs, microphones, anything they could stuff in their mouth to stop laughing when that chandelier dropped!”

Thankfully they all managed to get through the expensive scene without any slip-ups and the end result went down as one of the most memorable scenes in the show’s history.