The Two Ronnies
50 years since the first episode of The Two Ronnies, we remember the much-loved sketches and inimitable on-screen chemistry that made the show so memorable
It was a Saturday night, April 10, 1971, when at 8.15pm a quarter of the UK population sat down to tune into a brandnew comedy TV show. Looking back at us from the screen were two men with the same name and the same genius knack for making us laugh. On that night 50 years ago this month, The Two Ronnies brought us a comedy partnership that made us cry with laughter – and saw the start of a television institution with a lasting legacy.
The very possibility of The Two Ronnies came about after a chance encounter in 1963. At the time Ronnie Corbett was an actor working between jobs behind the bar at the Buckstone Club in Soho. Ronnie Barker, meanwhile, was the well-known star of the radio comedy, The Navy Lark and was enjoying a pint at this popular theatrical haunt when he heard “Evening sir… what can I get you?” from a tiny bartender he later claimed had to stand on boxes to see over the bar. The two men got chatting. Shortly afterwards the two Ronnies found themselves meeting again, this time to work on the BBC’s satirical sketch show, The Frost Report. Among a cast and writing team of mainly Oxford and Cambridge graduates, these two grammar school boys who’d never stepped foot in a university gravitated towards each other and their friendship blossomed. Among the many sketches they performed together for the show, ‘I Know My Place’ in which a working-class Corbett stood next to a mid-sized middle-class Barker and a towering toff in the form of John Cleese, became a well-loved classic. Already TV crews were picking up on the special chemistry between these two comics, but it was a technical mishap at the 1970 Baftas that sealed the deal as the two Ronnies stepped up to the mic with totally improvised comedy gold when things started to go wrong. As the audience howled with laughter, BBC bosses hatched a plan then and there to give these two their own show.
Opening and closing with spoof news headlines, The Two Ronnies sandwiched in each show a series of hilarious sketches, many of which have now gone down in comedy history. There was the serial, The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town about the Jack-the-Ripper-esque madman who massacred the capital with his fatal raspberry blowing. There was the Worm that Turned, which imagined women ruling the world with Diana Dors lording it over pinniewearing men. Mastermind took a turn when Ronnie Corbett’s specialist subject was hilariously giving the answers to the question before last.
And, of course, who can forget the moment slow-witted handyman Ronnie Barker asked the shop assistant (Corbett) for ‘four candles’ – or was that ‘fork handles’?
Rambling monologues in which Ronnie Corbett took endless diversions and round-the-houses tangents to tell a simple story from a battered armchair became part and parcel of what we expected from the show, as well as a comic musical finale.
Over 94 episodes that at its peak attracted audiences of 18 million, The Two Ronnies became a welloiled machine, made possible by a huge range of writers from John Cleese to Spike Milligan and Michael Palin. One writer who stumped everyone was Gerald Wiley, who sent in marvellous sketches but never turned up to meetings.
After lots of head scratching it emerged this Gerald Wiley was actually the self-effacing Ronnie Barker, full to the brim with ideas but never wanting to bully his stuff on the screen.
In fact, for such an endlessly talented writer and comic, Barker always struggled with confidence, hating anything that required him to play himself. While Corbett would often introduce the studio audience to the show with a little warm-up, Barker preferred to hang back until he could hide behind the cloak of one of his characters, whether that was a buffoonish lord or a Welsh coalminer.
In the end, though, it was dressed as a Viking that Barker turned to his mate
Who could forget the hilarious ‘fork handles’ sketch?
in between filming to say he wanted to retire. He was almost 60, had already had a few health scares and was struggling to find fresh material that would grab audiences whose comedy tastes were slowly changing.
So it was on Christmas Day 1987 that the final episode of The Two Ronnies aired on our screens. Barker and Corbett would remain lifelong friends as well as national treasures in the eyes of the public. But apart from a series of The Two Ronnies Sketchbook in 2005, the Christmas episode of which was broadcast after Ronnie Barker’s death that October, we would never again hear those immortal final words: “It’s goodnight from me… and it’s goodnight from him.”