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Also lurking in the audience was a certain David Frost who invited
Ronnie to join John Cleese and Ronnie Barker on the FROST REPORT, which
was to become one of the most influential television shows of the
1960's. "David turned my life around," is Ronnie's assessment. The 'I
know my place' sketch in which Cleese and the two Ronnies stood in a
line representing the British Class system is still revered as a comedy
classic.
After subsequent television successes with FROST ON SUNDAY, CORBETT'S
FOLLIES - a variety show, and NO, THAT'S ME OVERHERE - a sitcom with
Rosemary Leach, Ronnie got perhaps his biggest break - thanks to, of all
things, a cock-up at the Bafta Awards. The diminutive Ronnie C and the
well-built Ronnie B, then the resident comedians on LWT's Frost On
Sunday, were hosting the live ceremony when a technical hitch meant they
had to fill in, unscripted, for several minutes. "We managed to hold it
together," says Ronnie, "and Paul Fox (a high ranking executive at the
BBC) is reputed to have turned to Bill Cotton (BBC's Head of Light
Entertainment) and said, 'what about these two for the BBC?' We'd never
have thought of it ourselves, but The Two Ronnies was not a difficult
title to come by." And so a comic legend was born.
The Two Ronnies won the Best Entertainment Show Award of 1972, ran for
sixteen highly popular years on the BBC and for a record-breaking spell
at the London Palladium in 1978. Ronnie puts the success of the
partnership down to the fact that "we got on. We were similar in what we
thought was amusing. And we complemented each other. He has this hugely
wonderful character-acting skill which I didn't. And, I had a
theatrical, vaudeville twinkle, which he didn't. So I brought him on in
that way and he brought me on the other."
"We had a certain kind of material," Ronnie continues, "that was not
dangerously esoteric. It's difficult to be clean and clever at the same
time, but a lot of our stuff was. Sketches like the one set in the
hardware shop were dextrous without being above people's heads. It was
obvious that we'd taken a lot of trouble.
"We didn't quite realise, perhaps you don't when it's all going very
well, just how potent we were," he goes on. "Such was the effect of it
that even though it hasn't been on for eight or nine years, folk still
have the strongest memories of the Two Ronnies." The 'news items',
Ronnie C's celebrated 'chair spots' and Ronnie B's 'spokesmen'
word-plays are certainly fondly recalled, not just in Britain but
throughout the world.
Since Barker's retirement in the mid 1980's, Ronnie has had many
starring roles in the Theatre, (SEVEN YEAR ITCH, OUT OF ORDER, THE
DRESSMAKER), and on television (notably in Ian and Peter Vincent's
well-regarded sitcom, SORRY). His most recent success has been
presenting 3 series of SMALL TALK, a captivating BBC1 programme in which
contestants try to guess how children will respond to set questions. It
plays to Ronnie's strong suit: his twinkley charm. "Phil Harris, who
worked with Jack Benny, used to say 'you must never forget what the
audience first liked you for'," Ronnie muses "That's true. You must
never relinquish that."
In 1996 Ronnie appeared in John Cleese's follow-up to A FISH CALLED
WANDA, FIERCE CREATURES. Ronnie played a sea lion-keeper at a zoo, but
his worst experience on the film was when "I had to carry a very smelly
baby ostrich".
In 1997 Ronnie recorded 'An Audience With…' for ITV which transmitted in
October.
1998 saw Ronnie returning to his famous and much loved armchair, in the
new Ben Elton series for BBC1 and starring in the new Pizza Hut
commercial campaign.
A
naturally modest man, Ronnie has to be cajoled into pinpointing the
reasons for his enduring popularity. "You have just got to hang on in
there and keep pottering away in order to be a name that people don't
forget, to become part of the folklore." If I said to someone, 'could
you describe Ronnie Corbett?' I'd be hard pushed to find somebody,
wherever I went, who could not describe him. That goes not just for
Britain, but for the whole of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South
Africa.
"People laugh when I arrive, without my even having to say a funny joke,
there is something, I suppose, essentially comic in the marriage of the
way I speak and move," he observes. "I can see that people's faces want
to smile when I come in the room. People expect to be uplifted if not
amused. This is coupled with the fact that they seem to like me, which
is perhaps something that some younger performers don't value so much.
Groucho Marx said that if you wanted a long period at the top it was
more important for a comedian to be liked than to be funny." That is the
secret of Ronnie's success - He's eminently likeable.
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