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As the
old adage goes: you can choose your friends but you can't
choose your family - although there have more than a few times
when for Del and Rodney
Trotter they really wished that it was the other way round.
Born twelve years apart, that age gap has proved to be a wide
chasm more than once as the brothers attempted to carve out
their own lives, but really knowing that they needed each
other more than they'd like to admit.
To
the 16-year-old Del Boy, the task of looking after a four-year-old
brother following the death of their mother Joan and the desertion
by the father Reg, must have seemed daunting to say the least.
They
still had Grandad but even though
he was only in his fifties, he was hardly the dynamic type.
Del became the family breadwinner and his fledging entrepreneurial
skills began to develop.
But
making money wasn't Del's only raison d'etre. He soon discovered
women and, soon after, learned that having a kid brother around
didn't always play well with his dates.
But
family meant everything to Del Boy and he sacrificed a great
deal, not least his chance of getting married as a young man,
to bring up Rodney rather than let him go into care.
"Del
wasn't prepared to leave his family," says David Jason. "So
if the girl didn't love him enough to take on the rest of
the family then as far as Del was concerned she wasn't good
enough for Del Boy and he'd elbow her."
Clearly
though Del is no angel. The price Rodney has had to pay for
Del providing for him and Grandad, and later Uncle Albert,
is his overarching controlling influence - and Del's done
it so long he just can't help it.
Read
on to part two of The Brothers
Trotter... » »
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