He turned an old yellow Reliant Regal into a national icon, and had the country exclaiming “Rodney, you plonker!” for more than two decades, now Del Boy Trotter is returning to TV.

The country’s most famous wheeler-dealer is to be brought back to life in a 90-minute Only Fools and Horses prequel commissioned by the BBC.

Sex, Drugs & Rock‘n’Chips will go back to the 1960s to find Del Boy as a 16-year-old living in a less than salubrious part of south London.

Penned by Only Fools and Horses creator John Sullivan, the show will include teenage versions of Boycie, Trigger, and Denzil, as well as Del Boy’s glamorous mother Joan, and his workshy father, Reg.

Today Sullivan said: "Sex, Drugs & Rock'n'Chips will be set in the real Sixties, before The Beatles and Mary Quant made London the coolest place on the planet.

"The drama will feature south London at its least glamorous, where money was scarce, the staple diet was rock salmon and chips, and the flicks offer the only hint of glamour. And it will give us a bit of an insight into why Del and [his brother] Rodney turned out the way they did."

While David Jason, who played Del Boy during Only Fools and Horses’ long TV reign, won’t be returning for the show, speculation is rife that Nicholas Lyndhurst, who played the original Rodney, is to take the part of Peckham safe-cracker Freddie Robdal.

Only Fools and Horses launched in 1981 and ran through, with intermittent breaks, until 1996. It was brought back for Christmas specials between 2001 and 2003 before finally being put to bed.

Filming for Sex, Drugs & Rock’nChips begins in London next month with the show expected to screen in 2010.

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