The Two Ronnies- what a team, double the fun.

The Two Ronnies- what a team!

British TV never had it so good. British TV was like a pampered pet. It had been spoilt something rotten. 40 years ago another superb British comedy double act graced our living rooms and stayed there for another 40 years which meant that we were all very privileged. At exactly the same time as Morecambe and Wise, the Two Ronnies were performing before millions of people on the BBC. Surely Auntie Beeb has never felt quite so humble and smug. The Two Ronnies, two of comedy's most eloquent of word masters, were quite literally painting word pictures.

Back in the now hazy days of black and white TV comedy Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett were learning their trade alongside the intellectuals and academics. Barker and Corbett were serving their apprenticeship at the coal face of British TV. Alongside the esteemed likes of John Cleese, David Frost and Michael Palin, Barker and Corbett were honing their craft and stitching together their unique brand of wonderful observational comedy and great sketches that will stick in the mind for ever more never to go away.

We can probably remember where we were when Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker started out. They were those two characters who featured in that famous sketch where the the very core of the English class system was ridiculed and held up to account. Ronnie Barker stood proudly next to Ronnie Corbett  while the tall, imposing John Cleese. complete in upper class City bank attire, turned up his condescending nose at both Barker and Corbett. Cleese maintained that he was far superior than both Corbett and Barker.

Now the turning point had been reached for Ronnie Corbett. and Ronnie Barker. It was a memorably seminal moment in British double act land. Both men promptly grabbed hold of the baton and ran with it as far as they could. Soon they would become British comedy's most articulate act of all time. Up until then we'd had Flanagan and Allen but none had seemingly possessed that special quality, that indefinable something that made them just stand out from the rest.

Before embarking on a distinguished and well garlanded career on the telly, Barker had worked very diligently and confidently in a bank. But privately he'd been harbouring an ambition to use his considerable vocabulary to a most constructive use. Then it all began to fit together. Find a partner to share your love of words with and then create the most splendid tapestry of comic sketches that were both witty and hugely intelligent.

By the early 1970s both Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker were sitting next together like two very earnest newsreaders ad libbing and improvising as if it were going out of fashion. There were the wonderful news items spiced with more word play. Then there were sketches which depicted everything from posh office parties and ice- cream parlour tomfoolery with a definite emphasis on the use of words.

Then there were sketches that imprinted themselves on our consciousness for ever more. What genius, what perfection, what a memory and how did they remember that? You know the one I'm talking about and then the others come flooding back to me and you. They were some of the most brilliantly conceived and executed comedy sketches, fashioned and tailored by two of the most creative minds in the world of British comedy. Even now they leave you with the broadest smile on your face.

It was the Fork Handles sketches where the Two Ronnies find themselves in a haberdashery. Ronnie Barker, in what looked like a village idiot's clothes, bumbles and blunders his way into a shop and requests every day household appliances. He wanted garden forks, hoes, plugs and everything that begged for hilarious responses from Ronnie Corbett. But then it all went disastrously wrong because communication had got slightly muddled and then there was misunderstanding. Fork Handles of course became lost in the translation and ended as Four Candles, the garden water hose assumed another life form as the letter O and everybody just crumpled into helpless laughter.

Now the Two Ronnies were established family favourites with spectacular song and dance acts and much more. How we'll miss them.