Two Rons do make it right
THE TWO RONNIES LAUNCHED ON TV 50 YEARS AGO. MARION McMULLEN LOOKS AT A MATCH MADE IN COMEDY HEAVEN
‘IN a packed programme tonight, we will be talking to an out-of-work contortionist who says he can no longer make ends meet, and looking at thieves who broke into Scotland Yard and stole all the toilets. Police say they have absolutely nothing to go on.’ Quickfire gags, comedy sketches, musical numbers and a rambling humorous monologue from Ronnie Corbett proved a winning formula for The Two Ronnies.
The BBC show launched in 1971 and Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker went on to become a national institution with 17 million viewers hooked on their comedy offerings.
The two friends rarely shared one cross word in the decades they worked together and gave the nation classic sketches like Four Candles – ‘No, fork ‘andles. ‘Andles for forks’. Barker’s handwritten four-page script for the sketch sold at auction in 2018 for £28,000 and he wrote it under his pen name Gerald Wiley. Vergers carried four huge candles at his memorial service at Westminster Abbey in 2006 and four candles were also lit at Ronnie Corbett’s funeral in 2016.
In their TV show, the perfectlytimed jokes never stopped coming from “a juggernaut of onions has shed its load all over the M1. Motorists are advised to find a hard shoulder to cry on” to “police want to interview a man wearing high heels and frilly knickers, but have been told they must wear their uniforms”. Corbett once explained that their families helped them to keep their feet on the ground at the height of their fame. “Ronnie Barker and I didn’t have to knock booze on the head or go to the Priory to overcome drug addiction,” he said. “We’re fortunate we were grown up, family men with children, and lucky with our wives before we had what you might call a touch of fame. “We were never temperamental, fractious or walked out slamming doors. We were fussy though. We wanted everything doing properly.” The duo met in the bar of London’s Buckstone Club in 1963, where Corbett was working as a barman between jobs.
“He (Barker) always claimed that I was standing on a box in order to see over the bar,” said Corbett. “Possibly he came to believe that I’d been standing on a box, but I promise you, I swear to you, hand on knee, that I wasn’t. I didn’t need to. It was a very low bar.”
They both ended up working together on 1960s satirical comedy show The Frost Report with David
Frost and their first sketch saw Barker entering a police station and saying to Corbett as the superintendant “Morning, Super”. “Morning, wonderful,” came the quick reply.
They began their own television double act on April 10, 1971, when The Two Ronnies became a primetime Saturday night BBC show.
The BBC brought them together following an impromptu performance at the 1970 BAFTA Awards when they got up to help compere David Frost when the ceremony was hit by a technical glitch hit.
They improvised for 10 minutes and left the star-studded audience roaring with laughter.
Bill Cotton, then Head of Light Entertainment, turned to BBC 1 Controller Sir Paul Fox and simply asked: “How would you like those two on your network?”
The Two Ronnies was an immediate hit and the pair went on to star in 93 episodes over 12 series. It helped that the show attracted quality writers like Pythons Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Eric Idle, John Cleese and Graham Chapman, as well as Barry Cryer, One Foot In The Grave and Jonathan Creek creator David Renwick, The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin writer David Nobbs and John Sullivan of Only
Fools And Horses fame.
Spike Milligan also wrote the comedy spoof The Phantom Raspberry Blower Of Old London Town with Sir David Jason providing the rip-roaring vocal effects.
Barker also contributed sketches himself under his aforementioned pen name because he wanted the scripts to be accepted on their own merits.
The opening titles to The Two Ronnies included the duo’s spectacle frames and the first section of the show was always made up of spoof news headlines such as “a cement mixer has collided with a prison van. Motorists are asked to look out for 16 hardened criminals”. Corbett used to joke about the secret of their success saying: “When we were filming the principle would be that Ronnie would write a sketch and I would queue for his lunch. A very simple formula.”
And, of course the show would always end with a parting headline to leave audience chuckling with such classics as – “Finally, it was revealed in a government survey published today that the Prime Minister is doing the work of two men... Laurel and Hardy” – and their catchphrase: ‘It’s goodnight from me... And it’s goodnight from him.”
We were never temperamental, fractious or walked out slamming doors. Ronnie Corbett