Yuppy Love

Yuppy Love is an episode first screened on 8 January, 1989. With a running time of 50 minutes, it was also the first regular episode of the time to be longer than 30 minutes.

Having seen and been strongly influenced by the film Wall Street, especially its lead character, the ruthless corporate high-flyer Gordon Gekko, Del Boy has decided to adopt a new "yuppy" image, donning a striped shirt and red braces, and carrying a filofax and a silver briefcase. Rodney in turn has joined an evening computer class, where he meets Cassandra Parry. He later meets her again at a nightclub, where she offers to give him a lift home. She first drives to her house and Rodney feels upstaged by Cassandra's luxurious lifestyle. Embarrassed at the thought of Cassandra seeing their council flat in Nelson Mandela House, Rodney instead leads her to The King's Avenue, an expensive and very up-market road, implying that he lives there. Despite soon finding out that he actually doesn't Cassandra still phones and agrees to meet Rodney again.


The episode also features a now-famous British comedy scene; Del, leaning against a bar flap in a local bistro, moves away from it and then leans back again, unaware that the bartender has just lifted it up, and he promptly falls straight down. On 21 December 2006, this scene was nominated in the UKTV Gold Top 40 Greatest Only Fools Moments. It was voted in as the most popular scene of the entire programme. It was also named 7th Greatest Television Moment of all time in a 1999 Channel 4 poll, beating the likes of JFK's assassination, the Queen's coronation and Winston Churchill's funeral. In 2008, Empire placed Only Fools and Horses 42nd their list of "The 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time" and cited "Yuppy Love" as the show's best episode.

The new image for Del Boy was based on Gordon Gekko from the movie Wall Street (Rodney mentions that his brother saw the movie "Wall Street" six times), as part of the yuppy movement that was popular at the time. The episode also introduces Cassandra into the series.