Only Fools and Horses {"The Jolly Boys Outing"}

Harry Nilsson's recording of "Everybody's Talkin'" is heard in the episode 7 of season 6 ("The Jolly Boys' Outing") of the BBC TV show "Only Fools and Horses."

"Everybody's Talkin'" in Only Fools and Horses

In his 2022 memoir, The Twelve Dels Of Christmas, actor David Jason describes the scene featuring "Everybody's Talkin'" as a favorite of the series.

MY favourite episode is a question too knotty to be resolved.

But if I could only keep one it would be The Jolly Boys' Outing, the special for 1989.

And yes, it's partly the exploding coach, because that’s such an enormous comic moment - wonderfully framed by the conversation that Rodney is having with Cassandra from the nearby phone box, defending his brother against Cassandra's accusation that something always goes wrong when Del is around.

"I agree that Del gets a bit out of hand. But I think it's unfair to say that everything he touches goes wrong." Kaboom!

But more than that, even, it’s the sequence where Harry Nilsson's "Everybody’s Talkin'" plays as we see the cast on board the coach to Margate, and the day's high jinks starting to unfold.

[...]

For me, the magic of Only Fools is compressed into this single sequence [...] - the gang of friends that the cast had become, and the sheer fun of it all. And so many of those faces no longer with us, of course.

Nowadays the glimpse of John Challis reaching across to swipe my hat off is so poignant that I practically have to close my eyes, and the whole thing is a world that's gone.

So if someone were to ask me to sum up what, at its very best, it felt like to be in the cast of Only Fools And Horses, I would tell them to watch that sequence.