DCI Roy Slater

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DCI Roy Slater is a minor villain character in the British sitcom Only Fools and Horses. He is played by Jim Broadbent.

Slater used to be part of Del Boy's gang at school (they used to next to each other in class), but he was still always an outsider. He was renowned for his slyness. After a gang of lads pinned Slater down, Trigger tried to pour itching powder into his belly button. Del rescued Slater, but Slater later told the headmaster that Del was kissing his sister behind the bikesheds. When they played Pirates, he was always the one who walked the plank. He longed to play Bluebeard but was so widely disliked that the others didn't let him. They eventually did let him be Bluebeard, on the day that Bluebeard had to walk the plank.

Slater never played fair when he became a police officer. He arrested his own father Harry for having a faulty light on his bike while going to the chip shop.

In his first appearance in May The Force Be With You (Only Fools and Horses) (1983), he arrested Del and the family for stealing a microwave, in order to pressure them into revealing the identity of the 'phantom of the market'. Del managed to trick Slater into signing a form that granted Del immunity from prosecution if he grassed the man up. It turned out that the phantom was Del Boy himself. In To Hull and Back (1985), he later attempted to set Del up for smuggling diamonds but he ended up being exposed, and sent to prison for five years.

Upon his release he returned to Peckham in early 1991, claiming he wished to turn over a new leaf after the death of his father. It transpired that (unknown to Del) Slater was Raquel's loathed missing husband and he wanted her to sign a contract giving away her rights to his upcoming "inheritance" (money from diamands the police had never found). Del and Rodney managed to get rid of him (and promise never to return) by bluffing that they had photocopied evidence of his correspondance with the diamond dealer.