Ten years on: Ronnie Barker, Pismonouncers Unanimous founder, remembered

Double act

But Barker was now an acknowledged writer and performer. He was thus able to “write”, and perform, the wordless Futtocks End (1970) comedy – and get it made into a film, as well as fronting Hark at Barker (1969-70) and Six Dates with Barker (1971) TV shows.

Things seemed to be going from strength to strength but a minor disaster was about to strike – that same year London Weekend Television controller Stella Richman decided to sack Frost, and terminate all the contracts with Paradine. And so Ronnie Barker, and Ronnie Corbett, were out in the cold again, albeit a bit more famous than before.

Their break, as a duo, came at the 1971 BAFTAs Awards and it was partly due to luck. They were performing a short Henry VIII sketch with sitcom queen Josephine Tewson. The skit was funny enough in its way but would no doubt have been swiftly forgotten if it hadn’t been for technical problems that forced the two Ronnies to ad-lib for more than eight minutes.

Although Barker had always claimed that he himself was “incredibly boring” without a script, he and Corbett kept the crowd more than entertained through the whole episode… and afterwards BBC light entertainment boss Bill Cotton was more than glad to sign them as a duo. They could also perform individual one-off shows, as this was not to be the traditional Abbott and Costello type line-up that could never be separated.

And so The Two Ronnies comedy series was launched on the BBC TV in 1971, with endlessly inventive gags, Barker-penned sketches, Corbett’s monologues and its infamous newsreader sign-off – “So it’s goodnight from me…and it’s goodnight from him!” It became a series that was to last an amazing 16 years while regularly hitting audience peaks of 15 to 20 million in the UK alone.

Barker now had the perfect vehicle for his tongue-twisting scenes – as well as excellent contributory writers such as David “Reggie Perrin” Nobbs. The results were often comedy classics. Even those acted out in the unlikely setting of a builders’ merchant, for a sequence that was later to be voted into fifth place in Channel 4’s 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches show:

”That” Fork Handles sketch

And then there were the loving parodies of TV programmes such as the BBC’s own Mastermind (with topical broadsides at both union leaders and the then-Tory government…)

The Two Ronnies: Mastermind

But Barker had not forgotten his other great love – music – and so MOR and pop acts were regularly, if gently flayed, on The Two Ronnies. And on more than one occasion the hallowed institution that was Top of the Pops was given a roasting. The duo renamed it Crop of the Flops and fronted it, hideously, with not one but two babbling Jimmy Saviles…

The Two Ronnies: Crop of the Flops