DCI Roy Slater

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

DCI Roy Slater (born May 15, 1948 in Fulham [1]) is a 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 sit 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 repaid the favour by telling the headmaster that Del was kissing his sister behind the bicycle sheds. 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 fish shop, his father was borrowing the bike, from Slater himself.

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), Slater later attempted to set Del up for smuggling diamonds but he ended up being exposed by his sidekick Terry Hoskins, and sent to prison for five years.

Upon his release Slater returned to Peckham in "The Class of '62" (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 diamonds the police had never found). Del and Rodney managed to get rid of him (and promise never to return, as well as give Raquel her divorce) by bluffing that they had photocopied evidence of his correspondence with the diamond dealer.

The last time we see Slater is in the series finale "Sleepless in Peckham". We see a photo of the original Jolly Boys Outing to Margate in 1960. The photo is a composite picture of Del and some of the other characters (Boyce, Trigger, Denzil ect.) as teenagers. We see a young Roy in the photo.