Only Fools and Locations

When it comes to Only Fools and Locations we are all aware that you will generally end up in London or Bristol. We recently caught up with a complete Fools and Horses anorak Rick Clark. Rick told us about his keen eye for locating Only Fools and Horses outside locations and how this has become a popular hobby growing on his Flickr account.

So Rick tell us about yourself and how it all started?

“I’m based down in Bristol, and my interest in the locations started when they started filming OFAH in my home town during the latter series. In 1999 my cousin Richard and I did an article on the Bristol locations for the society fanzine ‘Hookie Street’ and it just started from there”.

“90% of the Bristol and Weston Super Mare locations I just know from recognising them from my own local knowledge, and one or two of the others I got from Richard Webber’s 2002 book ‘The A-Z of OFAH'”.

Only Fools and Locations in London

“However a lot of the London locations needed a bit of research and I tracked down several of them by using some old Kelly’s Directories (purchased from ebay) from the 1980’s”.

“For example, in the episode ‘Go West Young Man’, Del and Rodney drive the E-Type jag back from the club past a shop called ‘E Gilbert Butchers’. So I looked it up in my Kelly’s directory, and sure enough, in 1981 there was an E Gilbert butchers trading at Pitshanger Lane in Ealing, which is an area where a lot of the early filming took place. The directory gave the postcode as W5 1RH”.

“I then went to multimap (this was before google streetview), clicked on ‘locations’, then searched for W5 1RH, chose the ‘Bird’s Eye’ option, zoomed in on the view and hey presto, its still there. I’m often up in London visiting friends and whilst up there, made a pilgrimage. Its now called Village Pantry, but definitely still the same place. At the end of that same episode when Del and Rodders are chased down the road by the Aussie they run past a shop called Bella Ballet Boutique, and this place is still trading today as the Ealing Dance Centre”.

“A lot of London locations however were just found by sheer luck (eg Vimmal Malik’s hotel), after spending ages scouring areas such as Acton, Ealing, Southall, and Hammersmith on the ‘Bird’s Eye’ option on multimap”.

“Over the past couple of years, I’ve visited most of the non Bristol and London locations. In the summer of 2008 I was on holiday in Weymouth and whilst driving down from Bristol, I stopped off at the villages of Sutton Waldron and Iwerne Minster to photograph some of the locations from ‘A touch of Glass’ and ‘Friday the 13th’. ‘Ridgemere Hall’ is actually a posh school, and the police station is residential housing. Next it was down to Studland to find the swimming pool at the Knoll House Hotel from ‘It never rains’. I just pretended I was a guest and wandered in”.

“In September 2008 I was in up London, so I took a train over to Margate and mopped up most of the Jolly Boys Outing locations. Although I enjoyed tracking down the Coach Park, the Police Station, Rodney’s Flat, the Railway Station etc – it was sad to see the Dreamland Funfair in such a derelict state and I was also gutted to find the Villa Bella had been demolished. Weirdest moment of the day was when I walked into the yard at the Ramsgate branch of Wyevale Garden Centre and started taking photos in front of the puzzled staff and customers. As I understand it, the Greyhound Stadium closed in 1996, and was subsequently demolished, and Wyevale now occupy the site”.

“The market scenes from the start of The Jolly Boys outing were filmed in the old stadium’s car park, which still survives today as part of Wyevale’s premises”.

More from Rick  in Only Fools and Locations part 2