MANGE tout, Rodders, it may be hard to take in, but Only Fools and Horses is celebrating its 30th birthday.

Believe it or not it’s three decades since Messrs Derek and Rodney Trotter first appeared on our screens, ducking and diving and bequeathing us a whole new world of catchphrases, cultural references and characters.

Britain’s favourite comedy was famously based in Peckham’s fictitious Nelson Mandela House but it was filmed in Acton and Bristol and, on occasion, the West Country.

So, to help celebrate the show that’s given us our best comedy moments ever, we present... Only Fools and... Dorset.

After Del Boy and Rodney, the biggest character on the show was Uncle Albert, the bushy-bearded, simple-minded old salt whose utterance of the phrase ‘during the war’ struck fear and boredom into his fictional great-nephews. In real life Albert was Buster Merryfield, former bank manager and resident of Verwood, who came late to professional acting.

In an interview with the Echo following his death in 1999, daughter Karen explained how her father was amazed to be recognised in the street, even after his first episode.

She said: “He loved Albert but he wasn’t like him, he kept fit and played the piano very well.”

• Uncle Albert’s funeral was staged in great secrecy in Weston-Super-Mare and one of the hearses used (which involves Del and Rodney attending the wrong service) was supplied and driven by Woods Funeral Service of Dorchester.

• A Touch of Glass was the first episode to attract more than 10 million viewers and no wonder – it featured the infamous moment when a Louis XIV chandelier crashes to the floor in a stately home, after Del Boy persuades owner Lord Ridgemere to let him clean it.

Ridgemere Hall was Clayesmore Boarding School in Iwerne Minster and the auction house at the beginning of the episode is the village hall of Sutton Waldron.

The moment where Grandad Lennard Pearce loosens the wrong chandelier has been voted Britain’s second funniest comedy moment, the first being when Del Boy falls through the bar trying to impress the ladies in Yuppy Love.

• The series 2 episode It Never Rains was meant to be filmed in Benidorm after Del cons his way to a reduced family holiday in Spain. But production costs didn’t stretch to the Costas, so Studland beach stood in for them, explaining the complete lack of high-rise hotel blocks in the piece.

• West Moors wedding hire boss Clive Harvey evoked the Del Boy spirit by adding a yellow Reliant Regal to his fleet of cars.

“It’s our way of helping to dispel the doom and economic gloom,” he says.

“There’s even a blow-up doll to keep nervous bridegrooms company. I wore my cap and dark glasses to purchase a Vinyl Vera look-a-like from a Bournemouth sex shop.”