Sir David Jason, 85, opens up on staggering moment he discovered his long-lost daughter: ‘Hands were shaking’
Sir David Jason has revealed on Gyles Brandreth’s Rosebud podcast how his long-lost daughter Abi Harris discovered he was her biological father after 52 years.
The 84-year-old Only Fools and Horses actor learned about his secret child in 2023, following a brief relationship with actress Jennifer Hill during a 1970 stage production of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood.
Speaking on the podcast, Jason recalled: “[Me and Jennifer] parted our ways and we drifted apart and she got involved with someone else and married him and that was it.”
The extraordinary revelation emerged decades later when Abi questioned her mother about her origins, leading to a family reunion that Jason described as a “happy ever after” story.
The actor described how the truth emerged when Abi confronted her mother about her parentage many years later.
Jennifer Hill told her daughter: “That chap you call dad is not your father.” When Abi asked what she meant, Hill explained: “I think you’ll find your father is David Jason, because we had a fling together when we did these shows.”
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Abi had previously believed her father was Geoffrey Davion, who was married to her mother until his death in 1996.
She had grown suspicious about her true parentage after noticing she shared similar facial features with Jason, particularly the shape of their noses.
Friends who saw the legendary actor and Abi standing together had also remarked on their similar profiles over the years.
Jason described receiving what he called the “most astonishing” letter from the secret daughter he never knew he had.
Writing in his 2024 memoir This Time Next Year, he recalled sitting down in his kitchen as his hands shook whilst reading it.
“You will be unsurprised to learn that my hands were shaking by now. What had I just read? I had to go back and read the whole thing again. And then I had to read it again. And then again after that,” he wrote.
The actor said he felt “wonder and amazement, through anxiety and heartache, to fear and outright panic” when he realised the possibility that he had a second daughter.
In the letter, Abi requested an anonymous paternity test but insisted she didn’t want any financial support.
Jason admitted: “At no point in the nearly fifty years that had gone by since then had that thought had cause to enter my head.”
Jason credits his wife Gill Hinchcliffe, with whom he shares daughter Sophie, for being “so supportive and understanding” about the revelation, despite the shock they were both experiencing.
When he first met Abi, Jason said they both felt an “inevitable sense of distance” due to the lost time they had together.
The actor described their first encounter as “such a complicated thing to process, for us both.” Alongside discovering Abi, Jason also learned he had a 10-year-old grandson, Charlie.
In his memoir, Jason expressed “the pang of sadness for those missing years, all that lost time.”