David Jason feared being eaten by real alligator in iconic Only Fools episode

Sir David Jason feared he was going to be eaten by an alligator when shooting classic Only Fools and Horses episode Miami Twice – because no one told him he’d be filming with a live man-eater.

The 84-year-old actor and his co-star Nicholas Lyndhurst, 63, travelled to Florida to film the two-part 1991 Christmas special which saw Derek and Rodney get mixed up with a Mafia don who is a doppelgänger for Del Boy forcing them to flee to avoid Del getting shot.
One famous scene sees Del and Rodney running through the Everglades and coming face-to-face with an alligator who walks up behind them.

Sir David has now spilled that no one told him and Nicholas that they would be filming with an actual alligator and they both feared for their lives when they found out an armed ranger was the only thing preventing them from getting bitten.

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Discussing the famous storyline, David said: “What's interesting about that is that we didn't realise, when we read the script we thought this is probably going to be one of those dummy things with a bloke who just sits in it and waves the mouth about. But they provided a real, live alligator.

“The thing was we didn't know until we got there that it was going to be a real, live alligator and they said sit there and we're going to get the real one in and be behind you. We said, 'Does health and safety know about this?' They go, 'Don't worry we've got a ranger here, he's in charge of the alligator and he's got a loaded handgun.' He had two or three guns. It’s like, 'I'll keep him well over here and if there's any trouble I can instantly get my gun out of somewhere here.' By that time he's bloody swallowed me!”

David’s cast mate Sue Holderness starred as Marlene in the episodes and previously revealed that she narrowly escaped being attacked by the alligator, with the supposedly tame reptile escaping its handler and going to bite her.

She said: “I was nearly eaten by that alligator. The alligator was tame and it was a baby, but this thing was 16ft long and didn’t look terribly tamed to any of us. I had recently got a video cam and those old video cams were huge, I was trying to video this because it was a moment I wasn’t in. So I got the camera crew getting the first take and then the second take with this alligator.”

“The chap, he was called Sean, who was in charge of the alligator when he said ‘action’ the alligator would go to a bowl of food, that was the plan. It worked very well the first time "Then on the third take I was filming away and suddenly this alligator was not interested in the food anymore, he was more interested in the camera crew.”

“So suddenly the alligator shot off over to us and I lost him in my viewfinder, I couldn’t see this alligator, I was looking round and round and as I looked down the alligator was right by my feet and the chap looking after him had jumped on it and grabbed its jaws and taped its jaws up six inches from my feet, it was the most alarming thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.”

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