Dates (Only Fools and Horses) Dates (Only Fools and Horses) "Dates" is the seventh Christmas special episode of the BBC sitcom, "Only Fools and Horses", first broadcast on 25 December 1988. In the episode, Del Boy joins a dating agency and meets Raquel. Rodney also goes on a date, with Nag's Head barmaid Nerys. The Trotters have been earning a lot of money recently, and Uncle Albert's birthday is approaching, which Del Boy and Rodney pretend to have forgotten. Meanwhile, after seeing a girl Trigger has met through a local dating agency, Del also decides to sign up. Styling himself "Derek Duvall", managing director of
Grandad (Only Fools and Horses) 'ethnic bus tours of old London' - and then failing to deliver the tour's publicity leaflets (a ploy only foiled when Del discovers the discarded leaflets in the dust-chute at Nelson Mandela House). "It wasn't me, Del Boy," Grandad wails on being discovered on this occasion; "It was me brain!" Grandad was also responsible for the spectacular (and noisy) failure of Del's chandelier cleaning business in "A Touch of Glass". When Lennard Pearce died in 1984, writer John Sullivan chose not to replace him but to write the character's death into the series. A funeral was held for Grandad in