And It's Goodnight from Him . . .

by Ronnie Corbett; David Mattingly

  For Ronnie and Joy it would be their first visit to Australia, but Anne and I knew it well. I worked out that we have visited Australia no less than seventeen times and that I have played on thirty-seven Australian golf courses. We love it.

  Australia was actually the setting, about three years before our joint visit, for a very unlucky crime, a crime more fitted to Charley Farley and Piggy Malone than to real life. I had done a cabaret at the St George’s League Club in Sydney, went out to supper afterwards and returned to my car to find that it had been broken into and my dinner suit stolen. I think it’s quite funny now. I can just imagine the huge, brutish thief, with his great muscular thighs and arms, staring at his haul – my dinner suit. But it wasn’t funny at the time. I had other engagements, and no suit. How could I get one? Easy. The Sydney Morning Herald showed a photo of me making an appeal for help dressed only in my shirt tails and a bow tie. Help came. British Airways flew my spare suit from London to Sydney in twenty-four hours.

  On another visit, we were able to do two people a very good turn. I was booked to do a week’s cabaret at a casino called Wrest Point, in Tasmania. Anne and I would always arrive a couple of days early for an engagement that required a long-haul flight. It’s not much fun performing with jet lag, and pretty unprofessional. So we had a chance to see the previous week’s show, and we were absolutely stunned by one of the girls in it. She was extremely tall but wore her clothes beautifully and was very talented.

  Not long afterwards, we were in Paris, visiting a night club called Paradis Latin (what an exciting life we led in those far-off days!). We talked to the owner, and he said that he was losing his leading lady shortly. We told him that we knew the very girl for him, that he couldn’t do better if he searched the whole world. That shows how outstanding we thought Lisa Murphy from Tasmania was. We would never normally stick our necks out like that. Well, the owner was so impressed by our enthusiasm that he tried to get in touch with her in Tasmania, but she had already moved on and was appearing in a big, glamorous show in Seoul in South Korea, dancing and singing Seoul music (sorry about that one).

  That was that, we thought, but later, out of the blue, we received a postcard from Paris, which said, ‘How sweet of you to think of me and mention me. Here I am, the leading lady at the Paradis Latin. Love and best wishes, Lisa Murphy.’ I must say it gave us a warm feeling to have achieved this, but I decided to stick to performing rather than becoming an international talent spotter.

  For our year’s stay in Australia, Anne and I decided to take the family by the scenic route, via the Taj Mahal and other Indian restaurants – no, via the real thing, and Malaysia, Phuket, Pattaya and Bangkok. We were accompanied and aided on this odyssey by a splendid girl called Debbie, who had never been abroad before, but stayed the whole year and turned out to be the most brilliant traveller. Whatever we suddenly needed, a piece of elastoplast, some sticky tape, an indigestion pill, a pair of tweezers, Debbie had them. And she only took one suitcase. Amazing.

  Ron and his family went via New York, Los Angeles, Honolulu and Fiji. We went by different routes, but in Sydney we became near neighbours, having both taken apartments in the delightful eastern suburbs that run from Double Bay to Rose Bay.

  The Corbett family’s scenic journey hit the rocks while we were staying in the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok. I felt extremely unwell. The hotel doctor took some tests and discovered that I had hepatitis, which I must have picked up from an injection I had against the disease before I left London. The doctor said that I had to lie down in an air-conditioned room for at least a month, and preferably six weeks. The only good thing about this news was that I was already in an air-conditioned room, and I had a very big and comfortable bed to lie down on, but I was supposed to be going on to Hong Kong and doing a six-week cabaret engagement in the Pink Giraffe Club at the Hong Kong Sheraton. We contacted the general manager of the Southeast Asia Sheratons, and he generously suggested that he would put the whole family up entirely free at the Hong Kong Sheraton if I would agree to do my cabaret stint when I’d recovered.

  So for six weeks I lay in my air-conditioned room, moving just twice a day in order to have the sheets changed (a regular practice in the best Oriental hotels). The rest of the time I spent watching television. I became an expert on Chinese horse racing and could have written a dissertation on Chinese cartoons, had I had the energy.

  But the only real excitement was the window-cleaning. The scaffolding these brave men used to clean the windows of the high-rise hotels was made of lengths of bamboo cane tied together. These huge structures swayed enormously in the wind, and those magnificent men on their window-cleaning machines were wafted to and fro most alarmingly. It was far more thrilling than anything on the television.

  Our jockey friend, Geoff Lewis, was there to ride in several races and was most disappointed that we couldn’t go out together, but to cheer me up he engaged a tailor, Richard Ha, to make a suit for me. It was a bit unnerving to be measured for a suit lying full length in a bed. It felt like being measured for a coffin.

  Anyway, Mr Ha delivered the suit in record time, as they all do, and I wore it for my first night at the Pink Giraffe Club, with Mr Ha in the audience and becoming, I hoped, Mr Ha-Ha. The style of the suit was actually a bit stiff for me, and I never wore it again, but I didn’t want to hurt Mr Ha’s feelings. I was still not at anything like full strength, but nobody has ever called my cabaret ‘action-packed’, and the travelling didn’t get me down – it comprised short walks along two corridors and an eight-storey ride in a lift. And the room would have cheered me up if nothing else had. It’s not often you work in such a beautiful room with all the upholstery made of pink fake giraffe skin. I’m glad it was fake. I like giraffes.

  Well, we reached Sydney in the end and lived in a lovely apartment on Wunulla Road. We had a great view over Sydney Harbour, a roof garden and a private swimming pool.

  The whole area was delightful, with superb restaurants, chic fashion boutiques and well-stocked shops run by people from virtually every European country. The fishmongers were particularly good, but I always paused to have a little look at the patisserie shops… were they up to Dad’s high standards? They most certainly were, and I got a thrill, on his behalf, as it were, when I stood and admired them.

  Ronnie and I were now living close to each other, for the first time in our lives. Ron and Joy were really just up the hill from us, with a wonderful view over the harbour; we took lots of gorgeous photographs of sunsets, even though they were all exactly the same, and now we saw each other all the time.

  Our girls were eleven and twelve, and were utterly happy in a very good girls’ school called Ascham, run by a very modern headmistress named Rowena Danziger. In fact this was just about the only time that Emma was happy at school, and both girls found their schools in Croydon old-fashioned compared to Ascham. Sophie had been to ballet school, while Emma had been at a very traditional, old-fashioned school, run by a headmistress who was a bit of a martinet, and who had a limited vision of what a girl’s education should consist of. Ascham was, admittedly, a privileged and expensive institution, but seemed to us to have none of the divisive class atmosphere that top English schools can have, and to Emma it was a revelation.

  The Barkers’ three were happy too. Larry got a job as a bouncer at the theatre where we were working, and Charlotte went to drama school. Like our two, Adam was happy in his school.

  There were times when Ron and I were working, although we did have more time off than in England, and Joy and Anne were able, for the first time in our relationship, to spend a lot of time together. They went to see shows, and, once a week, went for lunch in some fabulous restaurant.

  A gay half-Maori friend of Anne’s called Alan Brown – he had been in Annie Get Your Gun with her and had kept in touch ever since – used to escort Anne and Joy, along with a gay pianist friend of his, to one of the fabulous restaurants around Sydney every week. He was very camp and an enormous fan of Ethel Me
rman. When she died, he telephoned the Barkers. Charlotte answered the phone, and he said, ‘Tell Mummy to light a candle for Ethel.’ Charlotte didn’t know what he was talking about, and couldn’t hear very clearly, and the message that Joy actually got was: ‘Light a candle for Edward.’

  It was a glorious year. The two lots of children got on well, in fact all the family friendships were cemented. We all agreed that, if we were ever to leave Britain – which wasn’t practical, really, with our careers – Australia, and in particular Sydney, would be the place where we would most like to live. There was all that sunshine, of course, but it was the quality of life that attracted us as well. By day, when we weren’t working, I went golfing while Ron swam a bit, wrote a bit, and visited antique shops a bit, but we saw much more of each other in the evenings than we ever had.

  I think it was while he was in the pool in Australia that Ron had his first little heart flutter, a hint that perhaps all was not quite well in that department.

  The stage show was very closely based on the English version, though with new supporting artistes, apart from Sam Kelly. In fact, it was planned to use the same costumes and sets, and they were halfway across the sea when the Australian union movement said that they wouldn’t have them, so the clothes and sets had to be made in Australia all over again, at tremendous cost. That was Australian trade unionism at that time.

  We made no allowances, in our material, for its being in Australia. We didn’t need to. In those days we were almost bigger in Australia than we were here, certainly as big. There wasn’t a great deal of Australian comedy then, and the audiences were delighted with our routines, because they still had a soul that related to the UK, and they were thrilled to find nice, wordy, finely presented stuff. The show played for four weeks in Sydney and four weeks in Melbourne. Those were the only appearances that Ronnie did during that year, though of course he was able to get on with a lot of writing. I did a variety series while I was out there, but, even so, it was a relatively restful year for us both.

  The family took one short motoring trip from Sydney to Melbourne via the coast. I say ‘short’ because it only lasted about three days. It was actually a long way. Australia is vast. We thought that a nice little family trip round the coast would be really restful, and it was. Nothing much happened at all, except that at a place called Narooma the headmaster gave the school a half holiday, so that he could play a round of golf with me, and all the school came to watch and cheer. Oh, and then there was the cheese. Or rather there wasn’t the cheese. Narooma is known for its cheese, and I was presented with one at a delightful little ceremony. Was the cheese nice? I haven’t the faintest idea. I forgot to take it. I hope it was found before the next occupants moved into the room, and I hope that Narooma didn’t think I’d left it deliberately. But apart from that it was very restful. Oh, except for the gaggle of geese, that is. I went back to our room the wrong way on the next night, and was chased by this gaggle. Don’t laugh, geese can be really picky about making friends. They seemed to have a pecking order, and I was at the top of it – in fact I was worried that they would peck me to death, and was really glad to get back to the room. Still, there was one last day to recover, and that was very restful, apart from locking ourselves out of the car and having to get the manager of the local McDonald’s to pick the lock. An eventful trip, then, but all part of the fun of Oz.

  At the end of that great year, Anne and I gave a rather grand outdoor party at our apartment. We used outside caterers, not a thing we had ever done before, but we didn’t feel we had quite the depth of experience of Southern Hemisphere barbies to do it ourselves. Anyway, I thought it would be much more relaxing for Anne.

  How wrong can you be? When she was organizing everything, she was as cool as a cucumber. Now that she didn’t even have a cool cucumber to slice, she grew nervous, and started sipping champagne before the guests arrived, and by the time the guests did arrive she was so nervous and excited and so carried away that she collapsed into a rose bed, and indeed did have to be carried away, back indoors to lie down. But she soon recovered in time to enjoy the rest of the party, and after its unexpected start it was a huge success, and a great ending to a great year.

  On one of my earlier visits to Australia, I had enjoyed the enormous privilege of being top of the bill in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House. It was an exhilarating experience to play this famous and beautiful building, which is perhaps the greatest symbol of twentieth-century architecture in the world. I could not possibly have dreamt of appearing there when I was serving drinks in the Buckstone Club! Anyway, there I was, and I managed to fill it for three nights running. What I didn’t manage to fill was my dressing room. It was a fabulous suite and looked almost as big as the Concert Hall. It was certainly a lot bigger than some of the clubs I’d played in my early days. I had to set off for the stage five minutes before I was called. There was even a seven-foot Bösendorfer grand piano in my lounge area, just in case I should fancy a quick tinkle on the way.

  David Frost brought a party to one of my shows, and in the party were Kerry Packer and his wife Ros. You tend to meet people like that in David’s parties. David took us all out to supper, and that was how I got to know Kerry Packer.

  Now, towards the end of our year’s trip, I suddenly had a great thought. I rang Ron immediately. Not just to boast that I’d had a good thought – they weren’t that rare – but to tell him what it was. Why not try to do a series of The Two Ronnies for Australian television, on Kerry Packer’s Channel Nine? This time we could do some extra material specially written for the Australian audiences. Ronnie was all for it. He was loving Australia too, and would be very happy to go back.

  There is something very approachable about Australians. Traditional British reserve melts. I rang Kerry Packer that very evening. It was a Sunday. I don’t think I’d do that in England. I’d think, ‘He’s probably watching Midsomer Murders.’ Well, he was at home, and I put the proposition to him, and he said he was very interested, and could I go round and see him the next morning? I don’t think a British media mogul would ever be so open and so immediate. Apart from anything else, they wouldn’t want to give the impression that they didn’t have a full diary for the next morning, and they wouldn’t want to seem too eager, so that later they could drive a hard bargain. Kerry Packer just went straight for it.

  I went to his office and he said, ‘I’ll have as many shows as you’re prepared to do.’ He told me that a man called Lynton Taylor would arrange everything. Our business had been conducted in no time at all, leaving him free to talk about golf. Kerry Packer was a passionate golfer and a great friend of many top golfers, but particularly of Jack Nicklaus. He had recently felt that his golf was in the doldrums and had asked Jack Nicklaus if there was anybody he could recommend to help him. Nicklaus had recommended the American professional Phil Rodgers. He had been flown over and put up in a hotel for a week just to help Kerry Packer with his golf. It must be nice to be so powerful, but at least Kerry Packer was spreading his money around and not hoarding it as a recluse. Anyway, he used his chipping iron and his putter in his large office that morning, demonstrating to me what he had been taught by Phil Rodgers, and then I went to see Lynton Taylor, and in no time at all the financial details for a series of six shows had been agreed, and I left their offices happy about the challenge of the new series and more confident about my golf! There was something very direct and very Australian about the whole process.

  There hadn’t been time to do the TV series during our year’s visit, but soon we found ourselves in Australia again. This time Ron went out on his own first, before his family, so as to sort out arrangements before they joined him. Anne and I were already there, and we sent him a little gift of welcome, a straw hat and a wonderful sumptuous soft beach towel for him to lie on and dry himself off when he’d had a swim, because we knew that he had a lovely pool in his garden.

  And we had the most sweet little poem back, which he’d set, as Ron was wont
to do, in an Edwardian print cut out from an old book he would have had, so that it was framed in a pretty little etched drawing of Edwardian angels, sitting on clouds and playing musical instruments, with the little poem in the middle, which we have now framed and which hangs on our wall at home.

  The whole thing, the poem and the presentation, were so Ron, so very Ron.

  Another thing that happened before Joy arrived was that Ron used the opportunity to make a determined effort to lose weight. It was the right time, and a great opportunity. After all, eating is nothing like so enjoyable when it’s a solitary activity. Well, Harry Secombe was also in Sydney, and he was also on his own, and also using the opportunity to have a serious go at dieting. Anne and I went out to dinner with the two of them, and we discovered the amazing fact that between them Ronnie and Harry had lost me – the equivalent of my weight – between them.

  We did quite a bit of material that we’d already done in England, but which we hadn’t allowed to be sold to Australia, because we knew that we had this commitment, and we wanted it to be fresh to them. We asked the BBC not to sell our shows to Australia for a year, so we were able to do bits and pieces that we’d already done in this country, but we also did bits and pieces with an Australian background, filmed in Australia, and feeling Australian, and we did news items on Australian subjects, so the shows were made on the understanding that they wouldn’t be shown in England.

  For instance, we did a song each week as our Country and Western duo, Jehosaphat and Jones. In England these would have been done live in the studio. In Australia we recorded them in exotic locations found for us by the production team. One of the songs was called ‘Railroad Man’.

  They said, ‘Lay tracks for the railroad,

  ’Cos steam means speed and power.’

  So I’m doing my best and I’m travelling west,

  About fifteen feet an hour, oh Lord,