Sir David Jason has recalled how his long lost daughter Abi Harris discovered the Only Fools And Horses icon was her biological father.

The actor, 84, learned of his secret child after 52-years in 2023 following a brief relationship with actress Jennifer Hill during a stage production of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk in 1970.

Speaking on Gyles Brandreth’s Rosebud podcast he said: ‘[Myself and Jennifer] parted our ways and we drifted apart and she got involved with someone else and married him and that was it.’ 

‘And then many many years later her daughter was talking about about where she came from and Jenny Hill said “That chap you call dad is not your father”‘.

‘She said: “What do you mean he’s not my father?” and she replied “I think you’ll find your father is David Jason, because we had a fling together when we did these shows” and that’s [how she found out] she said’. 

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Sir David Jason, 84, has recalled how his long lost daughter Abi Harris discovered the Only Fools And Horses icon was her biological father 

The actor learned of his secret child (pictured) after 52-years in 2023 following a brief relationship with actress Jennifer Hill during a stage production in 1970

Sir David then agreed with Gyles that despite the shock for everyone involved the reunion became a true ‘happy ever after’ with Abi welcomed into his family. 

Opening up on the extraordinary moment in his life and how he wishes he knew Abi sooner, David said in his 2024 memoir This Time Next Year that there is ‘the pang of sadness for those missing years, all that lost time’.

Explaining that he received the ‘most astonishing’ letter from the secret daughter he never knew he had, David recalled sitting down in his kitchen and how his hands shook as he started reading it.

David said he felt ‘wonder and amazement, through anxiety and heartache, to fear and outright panic’, when he knew the possibility that he had a second daughter.

In the letter, Abi wanted David to take an anonymous paternity test because she was uncertain – but insisted she didn’t want any financial support.

He penned:  ‘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.

‘I have to say it really hadn’t crossed my mind that Abi Harris was my daughter – that my relationship with Jennifer Hill while we were in that production of Under Milk Wood in 1970 could have produced a child without me knowing about it.

‘At no point in the nearly fifty years that had gone by since then had that thought had cause to enter my head.’

he said: ‘[Me and Jennifer] parted our ways and we drifted apart and she got involved with someone else and married him and that was it’ 

‘And then many many years later her daughter was talking about about where she came from and Jenny Hill said “That chap you call dad is not your father”‘ (pictured with Jennifer 1970) 

Jennifer (pictured) also starred in James Bond film Octopussy 

David credits his wife Gill Hinchcliffe, whom he shares a daughter Sophie with, for being ‘so supportive and understanding’ about it all, despite the shock they were both in.

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When he met Abi for the first time, David said they both felt an ‘inevitable sense of distance’ due to the lost time they had.

David added that it was ‘such a complicated thing to process, for us both’, after their first encounter.

When he found out about Abi, he also discovered he had a 10-year-old grandson, Abi’s son Charlie. 

Abi said while she had no idea who her father was – she had her suspicions after hearing about Jason’s relationship with her mother.

Her belief grew stronger after realising she shared the same shaped nose as him, and her parentage has now been confirmed.

She had previously thought her father was Geoffrey Davion, who was married to her mother, until his death in 1996.

David credits his wife Gill Hinchcliffe, whom he shares a daughter Sophie with, for being ‘so supportive and understanding’ about it all, despite the shock they were both in

Since the surprise discovery was made, Abi and Charlie have been to visit him and spent a period over Christmas with him and his family at his home in Ellesborough, Buckinghamshire.

She also seems to have inherited some of his famed acting ability, having appeared in an episode of Doctor Who and remarkably a revival performance of Under Milk Wood in 2008 where Sir David and her mother also took part.

Friends who saw the legendary actor and Abi stood next to each other remarked on their similar facial profiles, and as the years went past, she worked up the courage to find out the truth.