Only Fools And Horses: 10 Times Del Boy Was ALMOST A Millionaire

The scheme:

Now this one remains a real highlight to this day, and shows Del at his craftiest.

In 'Mother Nature's Son', one of the later specials, Del manages to produce yet another miracle. He invites an organic retailer to his Grandad's old allotment, where he shows him a natural spring coming up in the middle of the land. After it's confirmed as a pure source, the pair decide to bottle and sell it to the public.

What went wrong:

The whole thing's another major con from Del. Realising he could make some serious money from selling bottled water, he sticks a hosepipe through the allotment which comes out via a man made rock pool. Then he starts selling tap water to the public for a premium rate.

Now we never ever actually see the end of this play out - Del by the end of the episode actually seems to have made a success of it - but as the Trotters are back to square one by the following special, we can assume he was either caught, or was forced to stop due to environmental reasons.

It does transpire that the selling of Peckham Spring leads to a local water drought, due to the thousands of galleons the Trotters are taking from the local reservoir. That in turn leads people to go out and buy more bottled water. There's also some concerns over the actual quality of the water in the reservoir, after Del dumps some toxic waste from the allotment there earlier in the episode (see above clip).