The Two Ronnies are at work, solemnly reading out the news items for the week’s show. Sitting with them are the script editors, Ian Davidson and Peter Vincent.
The scene is a rehearsal room high up in the BBC rehearsal block in Acton. The wind is howling and the building is swaying slightly. Apparently this is as it should be and is in fact a safety feature.
There are lines of tape all over the floor. These represent the walls, doors, stairs, etc. of the sets for the various sketches in the show. This is where the rehearsals will take place. They are not taking place at the moment.
It’s later in the week. Outside, traffic is snaking slowly along the A40. Inside, the Two Ronnies are at work. Or are we? We’re sitting at a table, looking quite serious. In front of us are lots of little cards. Some of the cards are pink, some green, some yellow. We are moving the cards around. Are we playing some kind of game? No, we’re beginning to assemble the finished shows, ready for transmission.
There are still lines of tape all over the floor. This is where the rehearsals will take place. They are not taking place at the moment.
The truth is, you see, that the thing Ronnie and I disliked most about rehearsals was the rehearsing. We loved the rest of it.
We loved playing with our little cards of various colours. They were index cards. They represented the various items in the show, pink would be my chair spot, green would be Ronnie’s lecture item, yellow would be the musical finale, etc.
We were in a powerful enough position at the BBC, or far-sighted enough, or both, to have insisted that all eight shows were recorded before any of them went out, so we did not need to compose any of the finished shows until we had recorded all of them. So by the time we had completed a few of the rehearsals, we were able to move items around in order to create the actual shows that the public would see. We would say, ‘Now this sketch doesn’t quite go with that sketch as we’re cockneys in both, so we’d better move that one out and replace it with that one in which you’re a Scotsman and I’m an American.’ That sort of thing. We fiddled around until we got the balance absolutely right. It was an ongoing process, and we would do all these ongoing processes rather than get to our feet and rehearse. We were quite loth to do that.
The truth was that we didn’t need to rehearse very much. We were very quick learners and the actual mechanism and the putting together of the shows took precedence over the rehearsing. When at last we did rehearse we would decide that we would learn, say, three sketches on a particular night, and the next day we would come in and we would know these three sketches. There was no question of one of us saying, ‘I stopped at the Beehive on the way home, had a few jars, then watched the football match and, bugger me, I wasn’t in bed till one.’ We were totally professional. We relied on each other and we trusted each other. We both also felt that you can rehearse comedy too much. You can rehearse all the fun out of it. You can stop finding it funny and add new bits to keep it fresh. They seem funnier because they’re new, but in fact they spoil the thing.
The only snag, I always felt, was with visiting guests, whose roles would never be big, but despite that they might still be worrying about it and nervous. Our method meant that they wouldn’t get as much chance as they might have liked to go over it again and again. We’d probably rehearse it four times on a Wednesday, and twice on a Friday and once on the Saturday, and then on the Sunday night we would do it.
Busy actors would welcome our light schedule, but it’s an overcrowded profession, and occasionally we might have somebody in a sketch, somebody really good whose first job this was for months. If at half past eleven they were suddenly told, ‘Right, that’s it, you can go. See you ten-thirty tomorrow’, they were really disappointed. They had hoped at least to hang on till lunchtime, go up to the canteen on the top floor, maybe meet a few old chums, be a part of it all for a few moments, but no, they were in the tube train returning to their silent home where the phone never rang. Not many directors understand this.
Towards the end of the week’s rehearsals, shows have a ‘technical run’. The representatives of the various departments – camera, lighting, wardrobe, make-up – watch a rehearsal, discuss with the director what he needs and chat to the actors about costumes.
We didn’t really need to rehearse the items that were done straight to camera – the news items and our two solo spots. And the serial was already safely in the can. So the only items that really needed to be rehearsed were the sketches and the musical finales.
As I’ve said, our particular contribution to the sketch genre was the party sketch. These would usually come immediately after the opening news items. It was good to get straight into the party mood.
Peter Vincent, son of an air vice-marshal, was a prolific writer of party sketches. There was the two-man party with the very mean host and only one guest, and he was a gatecrasher. ‘One tiny niggle, Wilfred. You are rather wearing out the carpet. Would you mind awfully standing on one leg?’ There was the party in wife-swapping circles, car-keys-in-the-middle-of-the-floor territory. ‘I’ve been hearing a lot about you. Still, I don’t believe a word of it.’
Most of the party sketches were two-handers, but ‘Party Names’ involved quite a crowd, as new arrivals poured in, and the host’s efforts to remember all their names foundered, despite his little efforts at helpful mnemonics. For instance, in the gathering chaos Alison Pinrut – that’s turnip backwards – becomes Alison Pinsrap – that’s parsnip backwards.
There was one very curious incident regarding this sketch. Early on in the piece a man is introduced as Neil – Lien backwards, which sounds like ‘Lean backwards’ – and the party guests all say, ‘Oh, all right,’ and lean backwards, then realize their mistake, and laugh. Well, somewhat amazingly, this sketch was bought by Swedish television and recorded in Swedish. A copy of the sketch, in Swedish, was sent over, and one has to say it does lose a little in the translation. However, this might be due to the fact that not one single member of the whole production team spoke even one word of Swedish – what a condemnation of British education. The extraordinary point is that at the moment when, in the English sketch, everybody leant backwards, exactly the same thing happens in the Swedish sketch: all the Swedish actors lean backwards. So what we’ve always wondered, for all these years, is, ‘How on earth can the joke “Lean backwards. Oh, all right” work in Swedish?’ Answers, please, on a postcard, in Swedish.
Another of our party sketches made physical demands on us of the kind that usually only affect synchronized swimmers. We played two total strangers wearing identical ghastly check jackets and uttering identical social chit-chat simultaneously. That isn’t easy, not at all, and it just wouldn’t be funny unless it was done perfectly. Well, we soon fell into a perfect rhythm, but there was one very awkward moment, when we both paused for quite a long while, as if to get rid of this infernal curse of saying everything at once, and then of course we started off again at exactly the same time. And it had to be exactly the same time, or the moment would be ruined. Well, Ronnie could always be trusted to come up with something in situations like that. Out of sight of the camera, he placed his left foot just next to my right foot, we paused, he touched my foot with his, and off we went again, to the end, where we walked away from each other, both muttering in unison, ‘Frightful bore.’
Sometimes our sketches involved amazingly unlikely premises, as in another party sketch, called ‘Repeats’. This had me playing a man who has a compulsion to repeat what the other person has said. He does this three times, then doesn’t do it for one reply, then does it three times again. Likely? No. Funny? Yes. The sketch is really geared to play on our particular strengths, Ronnie’s amazing verbal dexterity and my sense of timing.
Ronnie’s character suspected that my character was making a fool of him deliberately, that I was being a fraud, so after a few examples of my repeating everything three times and then not repeating one thing, he set my character a little test. He said, ‘I’ll fox you. To escort
an orang-utan from Baden-Baden to Wagga Wagga via Addis Ababa or vice versa is enough to make a Ghurka Sherpa commit hara-kiri.’
I repeated it perfectly.
Now he tested me rather more severely, his third remark being ‘Rumanian Dalmatians hate Tasmanian Alsatians and Tasmanian Dalmatians hate Rumanian Alsatians. Tasmanian Alsatians hate Rumanian Dalmatians but Rumanian Alsatians like Tasmanian Dalmatians. Tasmanian Alsatians hate Rumanian Alsatians. So Tasmanian Alsatians hate Rumanian Alsatians and Dalmatians but Rumanian Alsatians don’t hate Tasmanian Dalmatians or Alsatians.’
It was clearly impossible for me to repeat all this. I was caught.
‘Sometimes I only repeat things twice,’ I said, after a pause.
That pause had to be of exactly the right length. Nobody can tell you how long it should be, it’s all down to instinct, and truth. Even in a sketch as bizarre as that, one needs to play the characters utterly truthfully.
I needed to call on all my experience in a very funny sketch written by John ‘Only Fools and Horses’ Sullivan. I told Ronnie B. that I had bought a racing pigeon that was going to earn me a fortune in bets. I showed it to him, plonking its cage on the table. In the cage was a beautiful male mallard. He was also a perfectly trained mallard. He understood that it was important, for the comedy, that he remain deadpan. It would also be much funnier if he didn’t move at all, since I was intending to race him. He needed to be a lazy, inert duck. He did it brilliantly. This was no ordinary duck. This was the Buster Keaton of the duck world.
We were into a routine then, with Ronnie insisting it was a duck and me maintaining, increasingly desperately, that it was a pigeon.
Eventually, Ronnie asked me if it had a name.
‘Yes,’ I admitted cautiously.
‘What is his name?’
I paused. I didn’t want to admit this. My little world was collapsing around me.
‘Donald.’
I think it’s one of the funniest lines ever written. But again, the pause had to be just right, and truthful.
I would like to quote one of our sketches in full, so that you will get the full picture of their character. It was a sketch called ‘Hello’, and it was written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones.
Party music.
Ronnie Barker standing with a drink. Ronnie Corbett comes up to him.
RC: Hello.
RB: I’m sorry?
RC: I just said, ‘hello’.
RB: Sorry? Sorry? I didn’t catch it again.
RC: Hello.
RB: What?
RC: Hello!
RB: And?
RC: And what?
RB: And what else did you say besides ‘hello’?
RC: I didn’t say anything else. I just said ‘hello’.
RB: Not ‘Hello, you boring old git, who the hell invited you?’
RC: No, I didn’t say that.
RB: Oh! I don’t mean those exact words… I was only using them as an example… It might have been more on the lines of ‘Hello, you fat, ugly, mealy-mouthed sadist, I wish you were dead.’
RC: No, I didn’t say anything apart from ‘hello’.
RB: Huh! I’ve only got your word for it.
CR: Look… I was over the other side of the room, I saw nobody was talking to you, and I thought I’d just come over and say ‘hello’.
RB: I never did!
RC: What?
RB: You implied that Dorothy and I were having a relationship.
RC: When?
RB: Just then! All that stuff about my car not being in the garage.
RC: I didn’t say anything about your car.
RB: Oh no…but you implied it.
RC: All I said was ‘hello’.
RB: Oh yes, but look at the way you said it!
RC: What?
RB: You said it in that ‘Hello! His-car-wasn’t-in-the-garage-at-11.30-and-he-left-the-light-on-in-the-study-to-make-the wife-think-he-was-working-late’ kind of way.
RC: It wasn’t meant to sound like that. It was just a ‘Hello, how are you?’
RB: Oh, I see! ‘Hello-how-are-you… going-to-explain-the-hotpants-in-the-glove-compartment-when-the-wife-gives-the-vicar-a-lift-on-Sunday?’
RC: It was only ‘hello’.
RB: Listen, sonny, if you go around talking to everybody the way you’ve been talking to me, I’m not surprised you haven’t any friends.
RC: I’ve got lots of friends.
RB: Oh yes… but they all ran out on you, and you had to come over and pick on me to heap abuse on!
RC: I only said ‘hello’.
RB: I mean, how was I to know it was loaded?
RC: What?
RB: The gun! The gun you said.
RC: I said ‘hello’.
RB: Anyway, I was going to throw it away and never use it… it was Dorothy who wanted to have a look down the barrel and see how fast the bullets came out.
RC: I just said ‘hello’.
RB: I tried to stop her… But before I could, she’d pulled the trigger, jumped out of the car and buried herself under a bush on a lonely stretch of the A47 outside Stafford.
RC: I was only using the word ‘hello’ to start a little conv…
RB: And now I come to think of it, I was in Glasgow at the time in any case – no, Frankfurt!… No! Even further away… er… Istanbul: I was in a cellar – chained – all by myself… (Pause) except for the witnesses… lots of witnesses… Turks… but they write in English… They’d testify… you could write to them… unless they’re dead… oh, come to think of it, I think they are dead! Yes, I think I read about them being dead… pity… You’ve got to believe me! You’ve got to!
RC: (Embarrassed) I only came up to him and said ‘hello’.
RB: In any case I didn’t mean to… but she kept on about the money and the divorce and the gambling and the bad breath… I just had to. (His voice rising to a crescendo) All right, I’ve been a fool! A bloody fool! I admit it!
RC: A perfectly ordinary ‘hello’.
RB: (A manic glint in his eye) But you’ll never take me alive!
He whips out a phial, tears off the top with his teeth and slips it in his martini and swigs it down, dying with many contortions and assorted terrible death convulsions. At last he lies dead at RC’s feet. RC looks over him anxiously.
RC: Hello? (Cautiously) Hello? Hellooo? (No reaction… RC stands up) Tut tut!… Can’t have a decent conversation with anyone nowadays…
Pull out fast to reveal RC standing alone amidst a room full of dead guests. All have glasses, some are draped over tables, most are on the floor. RC starts to pick his way through them, picking up the odd head with his foot, saying ‘hello’ hopefully and letting it drop again. Fade.
That sketch shows how we could begin from a very mundane premise, a man saying ‘hello’ at a party, and end up with the most fantastic conclusion. It also shows the strength of our working relationship. I didn’t say, ‘Hang on a minute. Ron has all the funny lines. All I seem to say is “Hello!” and “What?”’
Later I’ll quote a sketch, one of our best-remembered, in which I have all the funny lines. And I’ll also come to the most famous sketch we ever did, but it’s time to get back to the subject of rehearsals. I mentioned that in Twang I was directed by the legendary Joan Littlewood. Well, in Irma La Douce, Ronnie was directed by the even more legendary Peter Brook. Neither experience proved happy.
Twang proved unhappy because it was such a failure, and the fact that the failure proved lucky for me did little to diminish the pain of being part of it. Irma La Douce proved unhappy for Ron because it was such a success. He had to stay in it for two years – people were forced to stay in long-running shows in those days – and it drove him up the wall. But they both proved unhappy because we neither of us really got on with the two legends. I suspect that a lot of it was due to this business of rehearsal. Both Littlewood and Brook believed that rehearsal was a period of discovery. I have to say that they both seemed to think that, the more
painful the discovery, the more rewarding it was.
Ronnie and I weren’t right for this at all. We understood what our part entailed very quickly, we learnt it very quickly, we found we could do it without searching into the depths of our past and our motivation. I think Joan and Peter thought all this was very shallow, but I do believe, on the whole, that we were just as good as the people who were more at ease looking into the murky depths.
The rehearsals are finished. We are as ready as we will ever be. It’s time to move into the studio for the actual recording.
11
The shows were recorded in front of a studio audience on Sunday evenings at the BBC Television Centre in Wood Lane, London. The main part of the building is entirely round, with a continuous round corridor on every floor, and until you get fully used to it, you tend to find that you are making the wrong decision as to which way to turn. You find yourself doing 83 per cent of the circle, when you only needed to do 17 per cent. There is a rather dispiriting air in these endless corridors, but that is gone the moment you step into the studios. They are huge, and hanging from the high ceilings are vast amounts of technical equipment.
On the Saturday evening, we would record the musical finale of that week’s show, without an audience. This was because it was often a very elaborate set-up with a large chorus, but mainly because there just wouldn’t have been any room for the set in the studio. These items took up a great deal of space.
And It's Goodnight from Him . . . Page 10
