Joe Wilkinson is starting Joe and David’s Magical Sitcom Tour with David Earl, and he is doing it with a clear set of sitcom loyalties. The comedian, actor and writer has named five British favourites and tied them to the lines he still repeats in everyday life.
Embarrassingly, Wilkinson said. “I regularly spout lines from some of my favourite sitcoms in my everyday life, which must be unbearable to be around.”
Prisoner and Escort
Prisoner and Escort is one of the five he singled out, and Wilkinson’s attachment runs beyond simple nostalgia. He said he used to watch it every week with his whole family, called Ronnie Barker his hero and said Richard Beckinsale was taken too soon.
He also said he got to meet Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais for Joe and David’s Magical Sitcom Tour, which left him “like a rabbit in the headlights.” That is the practical value of the project here: it is not just a stage or screen outing, but a route back into the writers and performers who shaped the material he keeps quoting.
Only Fools and Horses
Only Fools and Horses is another pick, and Wilkinson’s focus landed on the scale of the writing. He said John Sullivan wrote 64 episodes, then added that the stories and ideas were brilliant and that the show’s characters remain the draw.
His favourite line was the instruction, “Play it cool, Trigger, play it cool.” Wilkinson said Del Boy gives it to Trigger as they eye up a couple of attractive young ladies before Del falls through the bar, and he uses it while waiting to enter a meeting or any gathering. That makes the choice more than a list item: it is part of his working vocabulary.
Father Ted and The Royle Family
Father Ted also made the five, and Wilkinson framed it as a writers’ show first. He praised Arthur Mathews and Graeme Linehan, said he had the pleasure of meeting Arthur a while back, and called the show “bonkers and brilliant.”
He then moved to The Royle Family, saying, “I have to throw in Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash’s The Royle Family.” Wilkinson said he had never seen anything like it, recalled working with Craig Cash and Sue Johnston, who played Barbara, and pointed to the line, “Could she have wafer-thin ham?”
Early Doors and the full five
Early Doors completed the list, with Wilkinson saying he just found it so funny. He added that he did not know how a sitcom could be so funny when it was just people sitting around talking and having a pint, and he named Craig Cash and Phil Mealey as the creators.
The contradiction in Wilkinson’s account is the point: these shows are family comfort and repeatable catchphrases, but they also inspired him to want to go to prison, to quote lines at home and to treat old sitcom writing like a craft he still studies. Joe and David’s Magical Sitcom Tour sits inside that habit, turning private comedy obsessions into a public project. Which sitcoms fill the rest of his wider five is still left hanging, and that gap keeps the list useful rather than neat.
