I think Only Fools and Blackpool are a good mix says Paul Whitehouse ahead of shows

Comedian and actor Paul Whitehouse is reprising his West End starring role as the lovable Grandad in the UK and Ireland tour of the smash hit show Only Fools and Horses The Musical which is on at the Blackpool Winter Gardens from April 28– May 3 2025.

Before his arrival in the seaside town, we sat down for a chat with Paul to discuss all things Only Fools and Horses, Blackpool and his career so take a look at what he had to say.

Q) How are you feeling about bringing Only Fools & Horses to Blackpool

“Very much looking forward to it. I've played Blackpool before and I think Only Fools and Blackpool are a good mix, don’t you? So yeah I'm really looking forward to getting all the cast and crew up as well. We're quite a tight knit little unit, we get on - most of the time! You know what, we've been around quite a few venues now and it's especially lovely to be by the coast.”

Why do you say that?

“I don't know why but all the shows that we've done, where we've been around by the sea, there's always a sort of special feel about them when you're there. And I think obviously at Blackpool as well, there's that carpet, that pavement, about comedy so it'll be nice to go see that - I've seen it a long time ago, but it’ll be nice to go back and have a visit.”

How would you describe the audiences in Blackpool?

“They've always been great for me when we've done things like the Fast Show and me and Harry Enfield, and I think, as I say, Only Fools and Horses and the Blackpool audience will have a really good connection. Even though I say so myself, I'm not bigging myself up because John Sullivan did all the work really for us, but it's the way we kind of condense John's brilliant script into two hours.”

So what can we expect from the musical?

“I was talking to Jimmy Carr yesterday and he said he does three gags a minute. I said oh well we’ve got more than that in Only Fools, mate! Yeah, we're coming at you with all the characters that people love from Only Fools and all the best gags, and obviously we've added a few new ones as well. But what we do is take that 20 years worth of brilliant material and connect it into one story as well. So we see Del meeting Raquel and Rodney and Cassandra getting married, and granddad is there, Uncle Albert pops up, Boycie, Marlene, Trigger - all your favourite characters. You're never a few minutes away from a laugh or a tear.”

You helped write the musical so why was it a project you got involved in?

“Well, John Sullivan's last project was to write a musical of Only Fools and Horses but sadly, he died very soon after he started. In fact, there were only a few notes and one song that he'f written with Chas Hodges -’This time next year will be millionaires’ - and that's where we end the show as a kind of unspoken tribute to John. I think a lot of people were quite surprised that he would have contemplated doing it as a musical, but believe me, I wouldn't have thought of doing Only Fools and Horses as a musical or got involved with it unless the Sullivans, you know John Sullivan had started it, and the Sullivan family were keen on me to help create it. I mean, it's a lot of collaboration because I'm not a musical writer, I have no idea but the director and the producer had a lot of faith in me and encouraged me to collaborate with Jim Sullivan and our musical director, Stuart Morley, and between us, we have created some funny songs and some poignant ones, but I couldn't have done it without them.”

So is it fair to say you were a fan of the TV show?

“Very much so, and also of Chas and Dave as well. In fact, the first song that I wrote for the musical was in collaboration with them. I had this idea of like ‘Where have all the cockneys gone’ and it was basically a Chas and Dave idea that I sold back to them. I wrote that song with Chas, I sent him the lyrics and then he sort of mucked about with it, sent it back, then I sent it back, you know that kind of process. We met a few times and we got very close, because we're both Spurs fans, we grew up in the same part of London and, …we both have a love for fishing. Writing that one song made me realize ‘oh yeah, there’s potential here, I'm not going to be out of my depth, I've got some good support around me’. But then, sadly, Chas died as well so it was a difficult time that, because he was my friend but also a larger than large character in British music, I think he's one of the best. I mean, Chas’ family are close now and Dave Peacock has come and seen the show a few times as well so we kept that sort of family tie with the Sullivan family and the Hodges so it's been a lovely thing to do.”

How did you tread the line between keeping true to the source material and ensuring you’re still offering something new?

“That's a good question actually because what we did is we set it in 1988- 1989, you know when mobile phones first came in and personal computers were just starting to take hold. I think it's an important time in our development as a species so it made sense to set it there when people were talking about yuckies and, you know, actually, Harry and I were making loads of money at that point, and Del had loads of money, very similar sort of characters. So we set it in 1989 but we've got some nods to other times. As I say, ‘Where have all the cockneys gone’, granddad is lamenting the world that's lost for him already, even in 1988, and then we look through Trigger’s nan’s crystal ball at what Peckham is like today, and it’s all coffee shops, vintage clothes and artisan bakers. None of those things existed, nobody knew what a macchiato was in 1988. So we have a little sneaky look at the contemporary.

“I suppose the one other thing -with a musical, you have to have bigger female characters than really existed in Only Fools. Marlene and Cassandra were there but in a musical you have to have those lovely female moments, you know humor and doubt and poignancy so we've got some great solo songs for the female characters. That would be the major difference.”

You’re playing grandad so what drew you to that role and how do you play the character?

“I always liked that character, Grandad, Leonard Pierce, because I thought he was more sympathetic than Uncle Albert, he's a bit more vulnerable. So I thought, as I'm going to be on stage for quite a while, grandad’s the character that I would like to do. Don't get me wrong, I do a cameo with Uncle Albert at the end and it is a laugh so it's great to do Uncle Albert as well but the more sad stuff fits better with Grandad. But he's quite rude sometimes. He says sort of gauche things, embarrasses people, and he's got no filter. He also dances -well, I say dances, I use that term very loosely - but, yeah, he just boings around the stage quite a bit. He ain’t winning Strictly anytime soon though.

Do you relate to him in any way?

“No, I'm a young, dynamic person, obviously in the prime of life! But no, I did see more in him, I saw more to do on stage in terms of the vulnerability of the character. So yeah, I'm lucky, really because I get to do him but then I come on in the end as Uncle Albert. But Uncle Albert- all I've got to do is come on and start wiggling my beard and going ‘through the war’ and it usually gets a response, so yeah, looking forward to doing it in Blackpool.”

Why should the people of Lancashire get tickets to come see you?

“Because it’s a right laugh and it’s lovely jubbly!”

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You were in London for a while with this musical, why was it important that you took the show to places like Blackpool?

Well, it's quite straightforward really. Our audience is primarily a working class audience and to go to the West End and pay for three or four tickets and food and travel or maybe AN overnight stay, it's astronomically expensive. So we always thought Only Falls is exactly the type of show to go on the road and go to the people, rather than asking people to come to it.

Have you got anything else in the pipeline for after the tour ends?

“Yeah. We're doing a Fast Show tour in the autumn. I don’t know how many tickets are left but we'll be back again! There's no getting rid of me is that? Just when you’ve kicked me out of your town, your like ‘eugh, there he is again’. But yeah, looking forward to that immensely, because that's our thing and people still love it. We're immensely proud of it. We tried it out, we didn't kill each other so we're coming back!

“I also do a podcast with my wife called ‘I'm ADHD! No, You're Not’ And we've had some fantastic names from the world of comedy and academia. ADHD is such a topical thing and it's quite nice to explore it, like she's an early years brain development expert and a doctor in that field, and I'm a clown. So when we get another comedian, it's quite a good formula and maybe next year we'll try a couple of live versions of it. Yeah, there’s enough in the pipeline for now!”