John Challis: Why performing is my tonic - and why I don't mind people calling me Boycie

The Only Fools and Horses actor, who lives near Ludlow, is about the embark on a nationwide tour to talk about his life. The 77-year-old says he enjoys being on the road, adding that it is good for his mental health.

He said: “I’m a very up and down sort of person and quite moody and mercurial. So I feel very positive sometimes, but can swing to feeling there’s a cloud hovering over me.

“Performing is my best tonic. I can feel 100 years old sometimes, but then I’ll go out on the road with my show, tell my stories and entertain people, and feel young again and totally energised.

“By the time I come off stage, anything that’s been bothering me is in perspective and I feel brilliant. People often will come up and tell me how Only Fools And Horses helped them through their difficult times by making them laugh and distracting them from their problems. It’s humbling.”

Challis has also spoken about how, during the heyday of Only Fools and Horses, he was experiencing a personal crisis.

He said: “In the 80s, my third marriage broke down, so I was feeling at a pretty low ebb and my mother was ill with cancer and my father had Alzheimer’s. Ironically, work was going well in Only Fools And Horses but underneath, John Challis was not doing very well at all.

"My parents weren’t living together and I was an only child, so I was rushing between the two and trying to sort out care, and not so much was known about Alzheimer’s.

Relationship

“Eventually, it got to a stage where my father was a danger to himself and other people and I had to section him and have him taken into care, which was absolutely the worst thing I’ve ever had to do.

“I had a difficult relationship with my father. I craved his approval but don’t remember ever receiving any sort of affection or praise from him as a child. He was a very clever self-made man, who was in the civil service, but he was always very critical of everything I did.

“He didn’t want me to go into acting and claimed he’d never watched me in anything, although I once found out from a friend of his that he was secretly proud of me and had watched me act.

“He died two years after my mother in 1990. I remember when I buried him, I cried like a baby for about two days. I wasn’t really close to him but I think that was part of the reason. I started trying to get to know him too late.”

Challis said the turning point in his life was meeting his fourth wife, Carol, adding: “I’d pretty well resigned myself to being single because I was convinced I was hopeless at relationships after having three failed marriages behind me. She believed in me, grounded me, and was such a steadying influence and we’ve been married 25 years.

“Our passion is restoring and preserving our home, Wigmore Abbey, in Herefordshire, which dates from the 12th century. Some of the scenes in The Green Green Grass were filmed here.”

Challis is taking his life story to the stage in a tour that will take in Birmingham Old Rep, Telford Oakengates, Stourport Civic Hall and Stafford Gatehouse.

He said his character Boycie is “always with me”, adding: “He’s like my shadow, really. People literally come up to me every day when I’m out and about – even when I’m abroad – and say how much they enjoyed him and want to reminisce about him.

“Often they don’t know my name, so they just greet me as ‘Boycie’.

"As a young actor, you dream of being in something that catches on with people, and when it does, it’s extraordinary. It’s wonderful being remembered so fondly for something that’s still hugely loved 35 years on.

“A lot of people expect me to be like the character but I’m honestly not - I’m not in the slightest bit knowledgeable about cars, for a start. I based him on a man I once met in pub who had this very pedantic way of speaking. Also, he’s quite pompous, arrogant and snobbish, which isn’t me.”