Great TV moments from The Two Ronnies it was good laughs from him and it was good laughs from him!

THE Two Ronnies ruled our TV screens for 16 years like a two-headed bespectacled beast.

More than 20 million of us tuned in to hear what was in store “In a packed programme tonight”.

There would be a side-splitting sketch like the Four Candles routine, a tongue-twisting delight from Ronnie Barker, and Ronnie Corbett resplendent in a Lyle & Scott pullover telling a shaggy-dog story from his famous chair.

Then, once Miss Barbara Dickson had done her bit, it was “Goodnight from me”, “And it’s goodnight from him”, “Goodnight!” We loved it all.

“The success comes from it being the mixture of a comedian and an actor, Ronnie Corbett obviously being the comic,” says Peter Vincent, script writer and editor for the show’s entire run from 1971 until Ronnie Barker’s retirement from showbusiness in 1987.

“At the live recordings, when the people in the show were presented to the audience, it was Ronnie C who could talk to the audience, Ronnie B didn’t do that at all.

“He used to say: ‘Ronnie Corbett will be there with his effusive personality, whereas I have no personality at all!’.

“And in a sense he didn’t, he only had the part he was playing, which was usually brilliant Ronnie Barker was the best comedy player in the country apart from David Jason.

“So when it came to the sketches, Ronnie C was a bit quicker and you relied upon that.

“For example, in the famous Four Candles sketch, which is actually a very ordinary sketch and very old-fashioned, what it did was give Ronnie C a great chance to react as the person who miserably collects the various items Ronnie B asked for.

“What you relied upon was Ronnie B’s silver tongue and his speed, and Ronnie C’s reflexes and reactions.

“So very often in the party sketches, Ronnie B was the middle-class, fast-talking idiot, so to speak, and Ronnie C was the innocent, and that worked very well.

“Also, the whole show was rather well-devised and well-planned.

“They had to have those film items like Charley Farley and Piggy Malone because the Ronnies had to change several times during recordings, so you had to have these pre-recorded items otherwise the studio audience wouldn’t have had much look at.”

The show always began and ended at the newsdesk with the Ronnies as newsreaders reading out spoof items.

“I collected those items and all the short pieces, of which we needed about 18 a show,” recalls Peter.

“It was very difficult getting them because they had to be the right length, the right tone and be funny, which was the big problem!

“There’d always be a musical number and what was interesting was that if you dressed Ronnie B in drag, he looked like Ronnie B in drag but if you dressed Ronnie C in drag, he looked like a diminutive Scottish lady he looked rather good!”

While everything looked perfect on screen, behind the scenes, one of the pair wasn’t easy to work with.

As Peter explains: “We lost a lot of writers and producers as Ronnie B was like Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream basically saying ‘I will write it, I will act in it, I will direct it, I will do everything.’

“When you’ve got some somebody like that, it doesn’t leave a lot for the others to do! It wasn’t exactly perfectionism, he was just enthusiastic and to be fair he was pretty good at it.”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Cz2-ukrd2VQ

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Fittingly for a partnership that ended their show with a joint “Goodnight!”, it was a pair of knights we have to thank for their appearance on our screens Sir David Frost and Sir Bill Cotton.

“The Frost Report was when I first got to know both Ronnies, and it was the most enjoyable show I’ve ever worked on,” says Peter.

“We owe a lot to Frost for the Two Ronnies as he brought those two together. I think Ronnie C was serving behind the bar at the Buckstone Club and Frost asked him to be in the show, which already had Ronnie B.

“After that, they came to the attention of Bill Cotton, head of light entertainment at the BBC. I went on holiday once with him and Dave Allen, whose show I also edited.

“He saw them fill in during a technical hitch at an awards ceremony in 1970 and the rest is history.”