1 week Ago By Alexandra Bullard
Only Fools and Horses is widely considered one of the nation's greatest ever sit-coms and there were a number of great characters that brought the show to life. Sadly, several actors are no longer with us, including Lennard Pearce who played the role of Edward 'Grandad' Troter. The 69 year old tragically died from a heart attack in 1984, which reportedly left the cast and crew devastated.
However, it was unveiled after his death that his fortune was only estimated to be worth £40,000. According to The Sun , historic probate documents shared that he had an estate "not exceeding" £40K. Lennard played the role of Grandpa for three seasons and fans will re-call the second episode of series four where Del Boy Trotter (played by Sir David Jason ) and Rodney Trotter (Nicholas Lyndhurst) attended Grandpa's funeral.
In reality, the pair were grieving for Lennard and his untimely death became the centre of discussion during a Channel 5 documentary, Only Fools and Horses: Secrets and Scandals. In the programme, editor Chris Wadsworth recalled: "It was terrible, it wasn't just the character who had died, we were saying goodbye to a really nice gentleman and a great character." Lennard reportedly was in bad health when filming Only Fools and Horses, as he suffered from critical hypertension and reportedly was reliant on alcohol.
"He became more frail because of his health as time went on," Graham McCann told Channel 5 viewers. "Sometimes he would have someone help him come to work. "It was a tough life for him in the final couple of years or so.
" Scripts had already been written for season four when Lennard died, which posed a serious problem for the crew. Graham explained that the tragic situation forced them to deal with Grandpa's death in the "best way" possible. "The [director] really wanted Only Fools and Horses to be something with more depth in it than conventional sitcoms," he said.
"With others, you might either write the character out or recast them, [the director] wanted the character to die and the other characters to react to the death.".
