The Two Ronnies


The Two Ronnies is a British television comedy sketch show starring Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett. It was created by Bill Cotton and aired on BBC Television from 10 April 1971 to 25 December 1987.
The usual format included sketches, solo sections, serial stories, and musical finales. Their Four Candles sketch, first broadcast on 18 September 1976, was voted their funniest sketch in a television poll. In 2006, the British public ranked the duo number 6 in ITV's poll of TV's 50 Greatest Stars.

Origins

and Ronnie Corbett met in 1963 at the Buckstone Club in Haymarket, London, where Corbett was serving drinks between acting jobs. At the time, Barker was beginning to establish himself as a character actor in the West End and on radio. They were invited by David Frost to appear in his new television show, The Frost Report, with John Cleese, but the pair's big break came when they filled in, unprepared and unscripted, for eleven minutes during a technical hitch at a British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards ceremony at the London Palladium in 1971. In the audience was Bill Cotton, the Head of Light Entertainment for the BBC, and Paul Fox, the Controller of BBC1. Cotton was so impressed by the duo that he turned to Fox and asked: "How would you like those two on your network?" Unknown to the pair, the renewal of their contract had just been declined by London Weekend Television of rival network ITV, freeing them to change channels. Barker and Corbett were given their own show by the BBC.

Production

Writing

The show was based on the complementary personalities of Barker and Corbett, who never became an exclusive pairing, but continued to work independently in television outside of the editions of the Two Ronnies. The show was produced annually between 1971 and 1987. It had many notable writers including Ray Alan, John Cleese, Barry Cryer, Spike Milligan, David Nobbs, David Renwick, Terry Ravenscroft, Eric Idle, John Sullivan, Michael Palin, Bryan Blackburn, Terry Jones, and Laurie Rowley. In addition, Barker used the pseudonym Gerald Wiley when writing sketches. Barker and Corbett would often structure each show themselves, alongside scriptwriters Ian Davidson and Peter Vincent.

Theme music

The main theme music for the show was composed by Ronnie Hazlehurst. Although opening and closing credits appear to use different themes, they are respectively the first and third sections of a longer piece.
Another track associated with the show is the stock track The Detectives by Alan Tew. This was used for the Charlie Farley and Piggy Malone story Stop You're Killing Me.

Format

Newsdesk

The Two Ronnies always opened and closed at the newsdesk, which featured the Ronnies as newsreaders, reading spoof news items. This gave rise to the famous catchphrase at the end of each show:

Corbett: That's all we've got time for, so it's "Good night" from me.

Barker: And it's "Good night" from him.

Both: Good night!

Sketches

The show featured comic sketches in which Barker and Corbett appeared both together and separately, with various additions giving the programme the feeling of a variety show. Barker liked to parody officialdom and establishment figures, as well as eccentrics. Corbett appeared quieter, more often acting as a foil for Barker, but remained an important part of the chemistry. Some of the jokes involved Corbett's height and Barker's weight:
Barker: And now, a sketch about an enormous embarrassment at a small party. Mr. Ronnie Corbett plays the small party.

Corbett : And Mr. Ronnie Barker plays the enormous embarrassment!

Other jokes could be playfully risqué, as found on seaside postcards, for example:

Man : Tickle your botty with a feather tonight?

Woman : I beg your pardon?

Man: Particular grotty weather tonight.

Some of the show's material contained elements of surreal or left-field humour, in the vein of Monty Python. This wasn't surprising, because in the early years of the show many sketches were written by members of the Python troupe themselves and featured eccentric people being comically violent.
Corbett and Barker joined forces some time after their peers, by which time the comedy world had moved toward satire, absurdist surrealism, and the beginnings of alternative humour. This left the field for more traditional comedy open to Corbett and Barker, who freely indulged in puns, wordplay, misunderstandings, and ridiculous situations.

Notable sketches

  • Swedish Made Simple – A Swedish waiter simplifies his customer's orders using subtitles where each word is translated to a letter.
  • Four Candles – A hardware shopkeeper becomes increasingly frustrated while misunderstanding what a farmhand is requesting.
  • Mastermind – A contestant on the quiz show Mastermind answers each question before last.
  • The Sweet Shop – A sweet-shop owner whose motto is "nothing is too much trouble" has to deal with a very fussy customer.
  • Crossword – On a train, a slow-witted commuter struggles aloud with his easy crossword while a serious man tries to complete his own intellectual crossword.
  • Inventors’ Convention - Two inventors sharing a hotel room show their invention to each other before the convention: a hair-growing lotion and an aerosol that makes invisible.
  • Crossed Lines – Two men next to each other at supermarket payphones have their conversations unintentionally answering each other.
  • Courtroom Quiz – Patrick Troughton plays a judge overhearing a cross-examination that takes the form of quiz-show questions.
  • The Sheikh in the Grocery Store – An Arab man struggles to convey his shopping list to the vendor in a grocery store.

    Solo sections

Both Barker and Corbett had their own solo sections on each show. Barker would have his own heavily wordplay-based sketch, often as the head of a ridiculous-sounding organisation. Likewise, Corbett always had a discursive solo monologue in each show, when he sat in a chair, facing the camera, attempting to tell a simple joke, but constantly distracting himself into relating other humorous incidents. The joke itself was normally deliberately corny; the humour came from Corbett's wild tangents, as well as the anticlimax when he finally reached the punchline.
An example of Ronnie Corbett's humour is this short excerpt from a monologue:

Serial stories

It became a tradition of the shows to have a continuing serial story which progressed through the eight episodes of a series. These were often fairly bawdy tales with special guest stars. The Two Ronnies also starred in two spin-off silent films labelled The Two Ronnies Present..., By the Sea and The Picnic, written by Barker, mainly silent comedies featuring a squabbling upper-class family with a 1920s feel about them.

''Hampton Wick'' (1971)

The very first serial of The Two Ronnies was written by Barker, and began as a pastiche of costume dramas about a governess called Henrietta Beckett, played by Madeline Smith. Barker played a sex-starved aristocrat called Sir Geoffrey, and Corbett played his son Edward, but further into the serial, the Ronnies portrayed a wide variety of other characters, including pick-pockets and royals. At the end it is revealed to be just a dream when she wakes up in Hampton Wick Cottage Hospital after having an accident.

''Done to Death'' (1972)

Piggy Malone and Charley Farley are private detectives who investigate a mystery about a murdered family, featuring Sue Lloyd as Blanche Brimstone. As soon as Piggy finds out about the murder in the newspaper, a decision's made that means a trip to the country, and there's a second murder during an unusual gathering. Also featuring are secretary Miss Whizzer and the rest of the Brimstone family, through which the detectives narrow down the culprit. The first seven episodes of Done to Death ended with the words "Only one thing was for certain. There would be very little sleep for anyone that night."

''Death Can Be Fatal'' (1975)

Piggy and Charley's second serial begins when a frogman delivers a note, and the duo are sent in search of the formula for the Clumsy Drug, alongside Cyd Hayman as Madame Eloise Coqoutte. Corbett and Barker also play the two villains, the notorious Mr Greensleeves and his Japanese henchman Bobjob. In the end the mystery is solved as the formula is revealed on a pair of women's knickers. The endings for Death Can Be Fatal were based on more, as Corbett put it, 'exaggerated Dick Barton lines', such as "Is this the end for our two heroes? What of Madame Cocotte? Is she in some bedroom somewhere, lying in wait with a silencer? Or lying in silence with a waiter? Find out next week in another exciting episode, Villa of Villainy."

''The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town'' (1976)

Written by Spike Milligan and Ronnie Barker but credited as "Spike Milligan and a Gentleman". Set in Victorian times, it is a Jack the Ripper parody in which a mysterious figure goes around blowing raspberries at members of the upper classes. The raspberries were done by Barker's friend David Jason. This entire section of sketches was included in Milligan's book "I Told You I Was Ill".

''Stop! You're Killing Me'' (1977–78)

Piggy and Charley return as Devon's yokels are murdered and dumped in London, with support from Kate O'Mara as the gypsy temptress, Lucy Lee.

''Sid and Lily, George and Edie'' (1978-79)

This is not so much a serial as a series of sketches with the same characters that spanned series 7. Sid and George enjoy pints while discussing their wives Lily and Edie.