Sir David Jason: ‘You’ve got to make your audience enjoy it’

The actor, 84, talks about memories of the Blitz, surviving through humour, the inspiration of Ronnie Barker and being knighted by the Queen

Near the end of the Second World War, I must have been about four, and we were in a canvas shelter in my house with my mother and father. The bombs were dropping and I was getting frightened and my mother cuddled me and said: “It’s all right, don’t worry, it’s only God moving his furniture around”, and that put me at ease I’ve never forgotten that, and every time there’s a thunderstorm I always remember it and it just calms me down.

As a young boy, humour was survival. I would have been about eight or nine when I met with a load of lads in a pretty tough area, and being very small and slight I had to work out how to not get beaten up. So I quickly observed that if you make somebody laugh, they’ll be more likely to become your friend than your enemy.

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