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John Sullivan profile
Born in London in 1946, John Sullivan was an intellectually gifted boy who nonetheless wasn't too interested in the academic side of things. Always certain of his own creativity, he left school at 15 to focus on his ambition to be a professional writer.
But, in the traditional, time-honoured way of writers, he ended up shifting from job to job while scribbling away in his spare moments. Eventually he had a breakthrough of sorts when he landed a place at the BBC – as a scenery shifter and handyman in the props department. Well, it was a start.
American sitcoms may be written by big teams of writers, but John Sullivan rolled up his sleeves and single-handedly wrote every single episode of Britain's best-loved sitcom - Only Fools and Horses.
Not bad for a man who started his comedy career with no connections in showbiz.
Power to the people!
The good thing about working at the Beeb – even in a relatively lowly position – was that Sullivan got to rub shoulders (and natter over cups of tea) with some very big cheeses. One of these happened to be Dennis Main Wilson, a veteran comedy producer.Sullivan shyly showed Wilson one of his scripts, which was about a Marxist revolutionary (and was based on a man Sullivan once met in a pub and later described as a "master dreamer"). Wilson – who fully expected it to be as awful as all the other scripts that wannabe-writers shoved under his nose – was stunned by its raw brilliance. He pulled some strings and the script became the pilot for Citizen Smith – the 70s sitcom which made Robert Lindsay a household name. Sullivan had arrived.
Creating a classic
Following his success with Citizen Smith, Sullivan turned his hand to a sitcom about a football manager. A full series was commissioned, but later – while Sullivan was hard at work on the fourth episode script – the BBC abruptly axed the idea because they wanted to make another sports-themed sitcom instead (this turned out to be the boxing-orientated Seconds Out, ironically featuring Citizen Smith star Robert Lindsay).Sullivan was a bit miffed by this, but luckily had another idea at the back of his mind. Something about two brothers working in a London market, inspired by Sullivan's own experience as a street trader. So if it wasn't for the football sitcom being scrapped, Del Boy and Rodders might never have been created.
Peppered with poignancy
Only Fools and Horses started out as a conventional sitcom, each episode neatly self-contained, loaded with laughs but lacking serious depth. However, Sullivan had always wanted to combine comedy with pathos. As he later explained, "Why is it that drama writers can use comedy, but we can't use drama?"In fact, he'd wanted to give Citizen Smith a more thoughtful, emotional aspect but the producers had vetoed the idea. He decided to try it with Only Fools instead, and was given the green light by David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst, who loved the idea. And so the sitcom slowly developed into a very rich series, mingling tragedy (such as Cassandra's miscarriage) and humour to become a true British institution.
Life after Peckham
Although Sullivan regards Only Fools as his best work (and we can't really blame him), he's also immensely proud of Over Here, a one-off comedy-drama set in wartime Britain about pilots from the RAF and American Air Force being forced to share barracks. This was new territory for Sullivan, as it was based on "pure imagination" and proved very liberating to write.The same was also true of Micawber, the 2001 series in which he reunited with David Jason to bring the Del-like Dickens character (a Victorian chancer always looking for golden opportunities) to life. But his greatest series has also proved too pukka to resist, as Sullivan's since created The Green Green Grass, an Only Fools spin-off about Boycie and his wife moving away from Peckham (how could they?!)
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