In September 1981, British television audiences were introduced to two brothers living in a council flat in Peckham.

They did not have money.

They did not have conventional careers.

And they certainly did not have much luck.

But Derek “Del Boy” Trotter was convinced that none of that mattered.

“This time next year, we’ll be millionaires.”

Beside him was his younger brother Rodney, usually suspicious of Del’s latest scheme but somehow destined to become involved anyway.

There was Grandad sitting quietly in the flat.

Later came Uncle Albert with another story beginning “during the war.”

Trigger wandered through life calling Rodney “Dave.”

Boycie laughed at Del’s failures.

Marlene endured Boycie.

Raquel changed Del’s life.

Cassandra changed Rodney’s.

And at the Nag’s Head, Mike watched the chaos unfold from behind the bar.

Only Fools and Horses eventually became far more than another British sitcom.

For generations of viewers, these characters became almost like extended family.

More than four decades after the first episode, however, the cast’s story carries a very different emotion.

Some of its stars are still performing.

Some have chosen quieter lives.

Others are no longer here.

And looking at the actors in 2026 reveals just how much time has passed since Del Boy and Rodney first tried to become millionaires.

David Jason was approximately 41 when he first appeared as Del Boy.

Born in 1940, Jason faced the enormous task of turning a dodgy South London market trader into someone viewers could love.

On paper, Del was hardly an obvious hero.

He exaggerated.

He manipulated.

He sold questionable merchandise.

He constantly dragged Rodney into disastrous business ventures.

He wanted people to believe he was more successful, sophisticated and wealthy than he really was.

Yet beneath the gold jewelry, sheepskin coat and mangled French was something more important.

Del cared deeply about his family.

He could tease Rodney mercilessly, but when life became serious, Del was there.

That emotional core allowed Only Fools and Horses to move beyond straightforward comedy.

Some of its greatest episodes could make audiences laugh uncontrollably and then become unexpectedly moving only minutes later.

Jason was central to making those shifts believable.

His physical comedy became legendary.

Del falling through an open bar remains one of British television’s most famous comic moments.

But Jason could also play loneliness, disappointment and grief.

As the series developed, Del stopped being merely the fast-talking older brother with another scheme.

He became a man afraid of being left behind.

Then Raquel arrived.

Damien was born.

And suddenly the eternal bachelor had a family of his own.

Only Fools and Horses made Jason one of Britain’s most recognizable performers, but his career extended far beyond Del Boy.

A Touch of Frost showed audiences a completely different side of him.

The Darling Buds of May became another major success.

Still Open All Hours allowed him to revisit another beloved part of his television history.

In 2026, David Jason is 86.

He appears more selectively now, but Del Boy remains inseparable from his legacy.

The yellow Reliant Regal.

The camel coat.

The suitcase.

The confidence.

The belief that fortune was always one deal away.

For millions of viewers, seeing David Jason still brings Peckham instantly back to life.

Nicholas Lyndhurst faced a different challenge.

He was only around 20 when he became Rodney Trotter.

That youth mattered.

Rodney was supposed to be the brother who might escape.

He was taller than Del.

More educated.

More cautious.

And perpetually embarrassed by his family.

He could see exactly why Del’s schemes were ridiculous.

The problem was that he usually ended up participating anyway.

That relationship gave the series its heart.

Del needed Rodney.

Rodney needed Del.

Neither particularly wanted to admit how much.

As Lyndhurst grew older, Rodney grew with him.

The character married Cassandra.

He tried to build a career.

He struggled with expectations of adulthood.

And the series allowed his life to include genuine pain alongside comedy.

Lyndhurst later became closely associated with another major British comedy, Goodnight Sweetheart, and continued working in television for decades.

More recently, he surprised some viewers by joining the revival of Frasier, bringing a familiar British face into another legendary sitcom universe.

But his private life was marked by devastating tragedy.

His son Archie died in 2020 at only 19.

Lyndhurst subsequently maintained a much lower public profile for a period.

In 2026, he is 65.

For audiences who first saw him as the nervous younger brother trapped in Del Boy’s schemes, the passage of time can feel almost impossible.

Rodney was the young one.

Now the actor who played him has been part of British television history for more than four decades.

Before Uncle Albert, however, there was Grandad.

Lennard Pearce was born in 1915 and was about 65 when Only Fools and Horses began.

Grandad was not flashy.

He did not need to be.

Pearce could create comedy through exhaustion.

A pause.

A look.

A perfectly dry observation from an old man who had already seen enough of the Trotter family’s chaos.

He helped establish the atmosphere of the earliest episodes.

The flat did not simply contain two young brothers.

It contained generations.

That gave the comedy a sense of family history.

Pearce had spent decades working in theater and television before Only Fools and Horses finally made him nationally recognizable.

Then tragedy struck while the series was still growing.

Pearce died in December 1984 at the age of 69 after suffering heart attacks while the fourth series was in production. His death forced writer John Sullivan and the production team to confront a painful decision about Grandad’s future.

They did not simply replace Pearce with another actor playing the same character.

Grandad died too.

And from that loss came another character.

Uncle Albert.

Buster Merryfield’s route to sitcom fame was extraordinary.

Born in Battersea in 1920, Merryfield spent much of his working life outside professional acting.

He had been a bank manager.

Then, relatively late in life, acting transformed him into a household name.

When he joined Only Fools and Horses as Albert Trotter, he faced a difficult situation.

Viewers loved Grandad.

Replacing that presence with another elderly relative could easily have felt forced.

Instead, Albert quickly became his own character.

The enormous white beard helped.

So did his naval history.

And then there were the stories.

“During the war…”

The phrase became so predictable that Del and Rodney could almost feel another Albert story approaching before he had finished the first few words.

But Albert also gave the family something important.

Continuity.

He connected the Trotter brothers to a past that existed before the flat, before the market stalls and before Del’s dreams of becoming rich.

Merryfield remained part of some of the show’s most celebrated years.

He was there when the series reached enormous audiences.

He was there when the Trotters finally became millionaires.

His own rise to fame had come unusually late.

That made his success even more remarkable.

Merryfield died in June 1999 at the age of 78 after being admitted to hospital with a brain tumour.

But Uncle Albert’s stories survived him.

Then there was Trigger.

Roger Lloyd-Pack created one of television’s great examples of a character who could steal a scene while apparently doing almost nothing.

Trigger spoke slowly.

He stared.

He processed information at his own unique speed.

And for reasons that became increasingly funny with every passing year, he insisted on calling Rodney “Dave.”

Rodney corrected him.

It did not matter.

To Trigger, he was Dave.

Perhaps the greatest Trigger moment involved his famous broom.

He had owned the same broom for years.

It had received multiple new heads.

It had received multiple new handles.

Yet Trigger insisted it remained the same broom.

The logic was ridiculous.

And somehow completely perfect.

Lloyd-Pack’s career extended far beyond Peckham.

He played Owen Newitt in The Vicar of Dibley.

He appeared in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

He maintained an extensive stage career.

But Trigger became the role audiences instantly associated with him.

Roger Lloyd-Pack died in January 2014 from pancreatic cancer.

He was 69.

Even years later, a photograph of Trigger standing at the Nag’s Head can make fans anticipate the joke before he has said anything.

John Challis achieved something similarly distinctive with Boycie.

Terrance Aubrey Boyce was everything Del Boy wanted people to believe Del Boy was.

Successful.

Sharp suits.

Money.

A business.

A sense of superiority.

And that laugh.

Boycie’s laugh could announce him before the character even entered the center of a scene.

He was Del’s rival, acquaintance and friend, depending on what was happening.

The tension between them worked because they understood one another.

Boycie could mock Del’s lack of success.

Del could puncture Boycie’s pretensions.

Neither was ever completely safe when the other was nearby.

Challis eventually carried Boycie beyond Only Fools and Horses into The Green Green Grass, where Boycie and Marlene became the center of their own story.

He also discovered that the show’s popularity had traveled much farther than Britain.

Challis developed a particularly memorable connection with fans in Serbia, where Only Fools and Horses achieved remarkable popularity.

He embraced that affection enthusiastically.

John Challis died from cancer in September 2021 at the age of 79.

Boycie’s laugh, however, requires only a few seconds of old footage to make the character feel present again.

Beside Boycie stood Marlene.

Sue Holderness gave the character the confidence required to survive marriage to him.

Marlene had been discussed before audiences properly met her, which allowed the series to build a mythology around her.

Once Holderness arrived onscreen, she gave Boycie something his character needed.

Someone who could handle him.

Marlene was glamorous and warm but never merely decorative.

She understood Boycie.

She could tolerate him.

She could also puncture his ego when necessary.

Holderness later joined Challis in The Green Green Grass, allowing their fictional marriage to continue after the original series.

She also maintained a long career across television and theater.

Born in 1949, Holderness is 77 in 2026.

She remains one of the surviving performers who can immediately reconnect viewers with the show’s classic ensemble.

Then came Raquel Turner.

Tessa Peake-Jones joined Only Fools and Horses later than many of the original cast members.

But Raquel changed Del Boy permanently.

For years, Del could always return to his usual formula.

Another woman.

Another deal.

Another night at the Nag’s Head.

Another claim that everything was under control.

Raquel complicated that.

She saw the man behind the performance.

Their relationship gave Del something he had rarely possessed.

Emotional vulnerability.

Suddenly the possibility of losing someone mattered differently.

Raquel eventually became his partner and the mother of his son.

That transformed the Trotter flat.

The family was no longer simply Del, Rodney and whichever older relative was living with them.

It was expanding.

Peake-Jones continued working extensively in British television and theater after the series.

Her credits included appearances in programs such as Doctors, alongside substantial stage work.

Born in 1957, she is 69 in 2026.

Raquel remains important not because she produced the loudest jokes, but because she revealed something Del Boy spent years hiding.

Behind all the confidence was a man who wanted someone to stay.

Rodney’s life changed in a similar way when Cassandra arrived.

Gwyneth Strong first appeared as Cassandra Parry in 1989.

She was intelligent.

Ambitious.

Professional.

And she represented a world outside Del Boy’s constant schemes.

Rodney fell in love.

Then he had to learn that marriage was more complicated than escaping his brother’s flat.

Cassandra and Rodney argued.

Their careers created tension.

They separated.

They reconciled.

Their story also confronted painful subjects that pushed Only Fools and Horses far beyond uncomplicated sitcom territory.

Strong gave Cassandra enough independence that she never felt merely like “Rodney’s wife.”

She had ambitions of her own.

Her frustration with Rodney could be justified.

And the relationship forced Rodney to mature.

Born in 1959, Strong is 66 in 2026.

She continued acting in television and theater after Only Fools and Horses.

For fans, Cassandra remains inseparable from the later version of Rodney—the young man who had finally begun creating a life beyond his brother’s shadow.

And then there was the Nag’s Head.

A sitcom like Only Fools and Horses needed somewhere outside the flat where everyone could collide.

That place was the pub.

And behind its bar stood Mike Fisher.

Kenneth MacDonald began playing Mike in 1983.

Mike was rarely the loudest person in the room.

That was exactly why he worked.

Del arrived with another story.

Trigger misunderstood something.

Boycie laughed.

Rodney looked embarrassed.

Mike reacted.

His presence helped make the Nag’s Head feel less like a television set and more like a real local pub filled with the same familiar people week after week.

MacDonald had already built a substantial television career, including his well-known role in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum.

But Mike became another enduring part of his legacy.

His story ended far too early.

Kenneth MacDonald died suddenly of a heart attack while on holiday in Hawaii in August 2001.

He was only 50 years old.

For viewers, Mike remains behind that bar forever.

That may be the strange emotional power of returning to Only Fools and Horses in 2026.

Television preserves everyone at once.

Grandad is still sitting in the flat.

Uncle Albert is still beginning another wartime story.

Trigger still thinks Rodney is Dave.

Boycie is still laughing.

Mike is still behind the bar.

Del is still certain that wealth is coming.

Rodney is still worried that his brother has made another catastrophic decision.

Yet outside those episodes, more than four decades have passed.

Lennard Pearce is gone.

Buster Merryfield is gone.

Roger Lloyd-Pack is gone.

Kenneth MacDonald is gone.

John Challis is gone.

Their characters remain untouched by time.

The surviving cast has grown older too.

David Jason is now 86.

Nicholas Lyndhurst is 65.

Sue Holderness is 77.

Tessa Peake-Jones is 69.

Gwyneth Strong is 66.

The young brothers from Peckham are no longer young.

And perhaps that is why watching the series today can feel both comforting and surprisingly emotional.

Only Fools and Horses was supposedly about people trying to get somewhere else.

Del wanted to be rich.

Rodney wanted independence.

Boycie wanted status.

Everyone wanted tomorrow to be slightly better than today.

“This time next year…”

That was the promise.

But what viewers ultimately loved was not the destination.

It was the time they spent together before reaching it.

The disastrous deals.

The pub conversations.

The arguments in the flat.

The broken chandelier.

The open bar flap.

Trigger’s broom.

Batman and Robin running through the fog.

Uncle Albert’s stories.

Grandad’s exhausted expressions.

Rodney’s endless humiliation.

And Del Boy refusing to believe that the next scheme could possibly fail.

Eventually, the Trotters did become millionaires.

But the money was never what made them unforgettable.

It was the family.

More than 45 years after Only Fools and Horses began, that family is incomplete.

Several of the actors who created it are no longer here.

Others have entered quieter chapters of their lives.

But switch on an old episode and something remarkable happens.

Peckham returns.

The Nag’s Head opens.

The yellow three-wheeler starts moving.

Del has another idea.

Rodney already knows it is terrible.

And for half an hour, nobody has aged at all.