Edward Kitchener "'Ted" Trotter, better known as Grandad,[1] (1905–1985) is a fictional character who was one of the original leads of the BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses.

Grandad stated that his earliest memories were of watching soldiers marching off to World War I and witnessing their return after the Armistice in 1918.

[3] After leaving school, Grandad got a job as a decorator working for the council but was sacked after just two days for wallpapering over a serving hatch.

He then began working as a lamplighter for the London Gas Light and Coke Company, but according to Del, as electricity had already been discovered, this job did not last long.

Fed up with this, he and his friend Nobby Clarke ran away to Tangier to join the French Foreign Legion; however, they were unsuccessful and became gun runners during the Spanish Civil War.

Despite this, in the episode "Miami Twice", Albert mentions that he married Ada before enlisting to fight in World War II, and after the war, as revealed in "Hole in One", he and Grandad would often pull schemes on local pubs by having Albert fall down cellars without hurting himself and claiming compensation whenever they were short of money.

Set in 1960, Grandad has separated from his wife Vi after being kicked out of his flat in Deptford, and is unemployed and subsequently homeless after she finds out about his affair with Alice Ball.

The Trotters are at that time squeezed into a two-up two-down terraced house and Grandad is forced to share a bedroom with his grandson Del.

In "Yesterday Never Comes," Del suggests that he watches The Chinese Detective in his bedroom in order to remove him from the sitting room.

In the first episode, when Rodney came home after a week's absence, he declined a meal cooked by Grandad despite being ravenously hungry.

When Lennard Pearce died in 1984, writer John Sullivan chose not to recast him but to write the character's death into the series.

[5] A funeral was held for Grandad in "Strained Relations", which saw the Trotter brothers trying to come to terms with the loss of a man who had been such an integral part of their lives.