SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — There is an unmistakable air of Peckham these days in Bosnia’s capital, Sarajevo, as the legendary yellow three-wheeled van from the BBC’s long-running sitcom “Only Fools and Horses” cruises the city streets.
The little Reliant Regal was the trademark of the stars of the series — the irresistible Trotter brothers from Peckham, a working-class neighborhood in London. In Bosnia, a replica belongs to the Fatic brothers, local businessmen who are crazy about the show.
The Fatics are dealers in home appliances, running a successful company with dozens of employees and a huge shop on the outskirts of Sarajevo. Building the business, however, has resembled the ups and downs of the Peckham market traders Del Boy and Rodney Trotter, they say.
“We are definitely the local version of the series,” Tarik Fatic, the younger of the brothers, told The Associated Press. “We were always dealing in something, we would buy whatever we can and then sell it.”
The enormously popular BBC sitcom, which began in 1981, follows the lives of the Trotter brothers and their far-from-straightforward path from rags to riches. Over the course of seven series and several Christmas specials, the Trotters tried various get-rich-quick schemes, buying low-quality or sometimes black-market goods and selling them at the market.
Many in Bosnia and in the wider Balkans easily identify with the Trotters’ endless wheeling and dealing. In the region that went through a series of wars in the 1990s, where the economy was shattered and remains deeply corrupt, the Trotter ways of survival are simple reality.
Just like the Trotter brothers, “we always tried to make profit and regardless of how many times we failed, we just moved on,” Tarik Fatic said.
Also from a working-class family, and growing up in a country that was devastated in the bloody 1992-95 ethnic conflict, the brothers tried trading in food, poultry and clothes before settling on home appliances. They are aware there are no guarantees their current success will last.
“The market (in Bosnia) is still disorganized and unstable,” Tarik Fatic, 33, said. “Not a day passes without the two (Del Boy and Rodney) crossing my mind.”
Known here as Mucke, which actually means something like wheeling and dealing, “Only Fools and Horses” became hugely popular throughout what was still Yugoslavia from the 1980s onwards.
Murals with images of main characters have been painted on the walls; many cafes were named after the series, while visiting actors were greeted with frenzy.
The Reliant Regal was made by a British company, famous for its eccentric vehicles, that went out of business in 2002.
In Sarajevo, people wave, take pictures with their phones, honk their horns when they see the yellow van in the streets. The Fatic brothers imported it from Manchester six months ago after a long search. It took a while to register the unusual vehicle, said Mirnes Fatic, 38.
“It is a very nice feeling. It’s a joy every time I go for a ride in the city,” he said, admitting that it also was “a great advertising move.”
And it’s not just the van. The Fatic brothers have also named their company after the series — Only Fools and Horses Brothers Mucke. There have been some doubts how clients and banks would react but it turned out really well, Mirnes added.
“We hope and believe that this time next year, we will be millionaires,” he smiled, using the famous phrase from the show.
