'Only Fools and Horses' star John Challis has had to cancel his one-man tour due to ill health.
John Challis
The 79-year-old actor - famous for playing used car salesman Boycie in the classic sitcom - had started his spoken word tour but after one date he was "advised to cancel further engagements".
A post from the official Twitter account of the Playhouse Theatre in Whitley Bay - which was one of the venues hosting the comic star - read: "We are sorry to announce that due to ill health, John Challis' tour has been cancelled with immediate effect. John completed the first show of his present tour, intending to continue. However, he has been advised to cancel further engagements."
The tour was to run for 30 dates throughout September, October and November.
John's alter ego Boycie is one of the most beloved characters in 'Only Fools and Horses', which follows the misadventures of Peckham wheeler-dealer Derek 'Del Boy' Trotter and his brother Rodney who were portrayed by Sir David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst respectively.
The 'Citizen Smith' actor recently claimed it was him who invented Boycie’s iconic machine gun laugh which featured throughout the series.
Speaking on the 'Eyes & Teeth' podcast, Challis said: “It was a complete accident really. I nicked it from somebody else I knew, who was actually a woman.
"She had this extraordinary machine gun laugh, she would be in the pub and was one of those ladies who you sometimes used to see who was always on her own and would have a bottle of stout or something and she didn’t say anything to anybody really but every now and again she would laugh and it then made everybody else laugh, people used to come to the pub to hopefully hear her laughing.
“It said in the script, ‘Boycie laughs at one of his own jokes.’ And I just did it and everybody laughed and [John] Sullivan said, ‘Keep that in.’ It got into the scripts, ‘Boycie does one of his laughs.’ And I’ve been doing it ever since.”
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