David Jason's hands 'were shaking' as he found out about daughter he didn't know existed

He received a letter from his daughter decades after she was born

Sir David Jason has described the emotional moment he discovered he had a daughter he never knew about. The actor recalled how his hands were shaking when he received the 'most astonishing' letter from his daughter.

He told how he felt 'wonder and amazement, through anxiety and heartache, to fear and outright panic' after realising he had another child. In his new memoir, Sir David describes the joy from learning he fathered a child from his relationship with late actress Jennifer Hill in 1970.

But he also revealed 'the pang of sadness for those missing years, all that lost time'. Writing in This Time Next Year, Sir David said he received a letter from Abi Hill.

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Sir David - best known for playing Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses - was in his kitchen when he read the letter, Mirror reports. It read: "To begin at the beginning, well actually, at my beginning. I wonder whether it has ever crossed your mind, as it has done with Mum and more recently with me, that you might be my biological father?"

Abi went on to say her 'paternity is uncertain' and asked whether Sir David would agree 'to take an anonymous paternity test so that I can finally know the truth and let the matter rest'. Sir David recalled in his book: "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 Hill 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." Sir David told how he spoke with his wife Lady Gill, with the pair re-reading the letter several times.

He said: "So naturally I should agree to do the test. And if the test came back positive, then we should meet Abi and open our arms to her. I am so grateful that Gill was so supportive and understanding about it all."

A test proved Abi is Sir David's daughter, and the pair met in a London hotel last year. Sir David wrote: "I’ve never experienced such a jumble of competing emotions.

"We were both feeling them. There was a lot of elation kind of "can you believe it?" and "what an amazing thing". But there was an inevitable sense of distance too, and a pang of sadness for those missing years, all that lost time.

"So strange to feel this instant intimacy between the two of you, this obvious bond, and, at the same time, to be aware of this gap between you: so much common ground, and yet all that ground uncovered." Sir David - who has a daughter Sophie with Lady Gill - added: "I held Sophie straight after she was born, and I fed her and changed her and walked her to school and watched her grow, and all of those things.

"And that’s what I think of when I think of Sophie being my daughter. But Abi and I, of course, never had that chance, which is sad in itself, and now here she was, entering my life for the first time, but as a grown woman.

"In those first minutes it was such a complicated thing to process, for us both." The pair are now close and regularly meet up along with Abi’s son Charlie - Sir David's first grandchild.

During a BBC Breakfast interview, Sir David joked: "I call him Charlie the hair, yeah. He’s a good looking lad. Unfortunately, he’s got a lot of hair.

"I’m not sure that he’s quite as amused as I am, with calling him Charlie the hair, but he has, he’s just got so much long hair, and I get jealous. I’m terrifically jealous of him, and it’s all brown and everything, and mine’s not brown, and there’s very little of it."

He also praised his wife and said: "My wife has been a tremendous help in this direction, and she’s been extremely supportive. Without that I don’t think I could have managed, quite honestly.

"But because of Jill’s reaction and her ability to understand, it’s been a remarkable achievement on all our behalf. It’s positive and it’s the journey, not the arrival, and it’s the fun of the journey.

"And that’s just another part of life’s rich pattern, or life’s rich journey that it throws at you." In the memoir, Sir David tells how late actress Jennifer died last year a few months after he was revealed to be Abi's dad.

He wrote: "I very much hope that she was relieved to know that Abi had finally learned the truth of her beginning and that Jenny could rest in peace."

Sir David and Jennifer’s relationship began in 1970, when he was 30. They both starred in Under Milk Wood at London’s May Fair theatre. Jennifer appeared in Doctor Who and Bond movie Octopussy.

On BBC Breakfast, Sir David recalled: "It was a girlfriend, and that part I never knew about it. I went off to work in the theatre, and the girlfriend went off to work in her theatre, and that was the end of it really."

Jennifer was married to screen star Geoffrey Davion, who appeared in Miss Marple and The Stars Look Down, and Abi believed he was her father until his death in 1996.

*This Time Next Year, the 2024 memoir by David Jason, is out now, published by Penguin.