And It's Goodnight from Him . . .

by Ronnie Corbett; David Mattingly

  Among the invitations that Ronnie and I didn’t accept was one to be the two Ugly Sisters at the Palladium. Taken in complete isolation that might have been fun, but it went against the principles on which we had been building our careers. The silent films were fine, because they were a natural evolution from the style of the classic serial in The Two Ronnies. To go into pantomime together seemed a step too far, and I don’t think Ron, although he had done pantomime and done it well, was as keen on the genre as I was.

  As in our wider career, so in The Two Ronnies itself. The bits when we were apart in the show were as important as the bits when we were together.

  Before I describe how The Two Ronnies came to an end, I should perhaps say a few words about our two solo spots.

  I’ve already touched on the fact that Ronnie’s and my solo spots on the show were very different, that he played his in character, and I played mine as myself, or as a fictional version of myself. But on reflection they were different in every way.

  Ronnie’s were precise, fast, impersonal. Mine were rambling, slow, personal. Often Ronnie had amusing visual aids, Captions, charts, pictures. All you saw with me was me and a chair. It was a nice chair, a very nice chair, but its visual impact wasn’t great from the start, and was non-existent by the end of the ninety-eight shows.

  Every week I sat in this chair and uttered the magical words of a genius from Slough, Spike Mullins.

  Spike – real name Dennis – had led a hard life. And we thought we’d had it tough. He’d worked as office boy, sweeper-up, messenger, builder’s labourer, farm hand and steel erector. He’d been in the RAF in the war. He’d been a stevedore in the docks and gone totting with a diddicoy. That sounds picturesque, but have you ever gone collecting old scrap and selling it with an itinerant tinker? He’d spent many years as a galley boy on cargo ships and tramp steamers, visiting some of the most unlovely and insect-infested corners of the globe. He’d worked in the kitchens of the Grosvenor Hotel. Well, no, not the Grosvenor Hotel. A Grosvenor Hotel. He’d worked in all-night cafés. He’d even sold stolen ladies’ powder compacts (the powder compacts were stolen, not the ladies. It might have been more fun if it had been the ladies). But he’d always hankered after a really tough life – writing gags for comedians.

  He had a tiny bit of a breakthrough when he began selling gags to the comedian Vic Oliver, who paid him half a guinea (ten shillings and sixpence) per gag, but only if the audience laughed. Spike got a great thrill from hearing his gags getting laughs on the radio, but less of a thrill when he regularly felt that he was being paid for fewer laughs than he deserved. It all fizzled out, and he put his dreams on the back burner.

  Spike was house painting when a chance remark by one of his fellow decorators, a young man with the suitably mournful comic name of Brian Goom, set him on the path that would change his life. It was 1963, and he was forty-seven years of age. Young Mr Goom read in Reveille that Max Bygraves was looking for writers to be trained in writing for television. I don’t know where you are now, Mr Goom, and I don’t know if you’ll ever read this, but, if you do, thank you.

  That night Spike wrote furiously in longhand, and his wife Mary typed the words on their old three-quid typewriter, and the next morning they posted the stuff off, and tried to forget about it.

  Three days later an envelope dropped on to their mat. It contained a cheque and a letter from Max Bygraves.

  ‘Dear Spike Mullins, Many thanks for the script received this morning, and I am elated with the way you wrote this. Of course it is not all usable but I think a good 40 per cent or 50 per cent is, which is wonderful from a seven-page script. So as you will not think you are wasting your time, I enclose a cheque for £25.0.0d on account of the script I will get when I have spoken to you and just given you a few more outlets for the comedy. Many thanks again for your kind interest.’

  Spike had started, and he never looked back. He wrote for Max and for Harry Secombe and others, but life was still a bit of a struggle. His confidence in himself was growing, though, until he was bold enough to send that message that he thought he could improve my waffling!

  He certainly could. It’s a rare occasion when two talents come together and fit perfectly. Ronnie Corbett in the chair was a triumph for Spike and for me, and I must say that part of the pleasure I got from it was the knowledge of how much it meant to him.

  ‘My great-grandfather was killed at Custer’s Last Stand – he didn’t take any part in the fighting, he was camping near by and went over to complain about the noise.’

  ‘My old house was very nice – right next door to David Frost – a lovely neighbour. You could always send one of the children next door to ask, “Can Mummy borrow a cup of money till the morning?”’

  ‘I actually found this joke in an old Reader’s Digest in between an article called “Having Fun with a Hernia” and a story about a woman who brought up a family of four with one hand while waiting for Directory Enquiries to answer.’

  ‘The crowd [at a church fête] at its peak was estimated to be somewhere in the region of sixteen. The beauty queen from the tyre factory – Miss Re-Tread of 1969 – sold kisses at 5p a time, and old Fred at the butcher’s had a quid’s worth and got a bit over-involved. However, disaster was averted thanks to the local fire brigade, four policemen and a chap with a humane killer. Then we had the Unusual Pets Competition, which, owing to lack of support, was won by my wife’s brother with a tin of salmon.’

  ‘My wife joined the East Grinstead Co-operative Vivisection Society – they meet in the Co-op and pull people to pieces.’

  ‘I said to my wife last week – I met her at the chemist’s, she’s always there on Saturday mornings, it’s her hobby, she collects prescription numbers – I said to her, “Our house is getting so dirty you have to wipe your feet to go out into the street.” She said, “That’s the trouble with that street – it marks so easily.”’

  ‘My Uncle Spyro was lost at sea under very unusual circumstances – he went up the mast to look for land and when he came down the ship had gone.’

  ‘For some time now my wife’s had this ridiculous idea that I’m playing too much golf. Actually it came to a head at about eleven thirty last night. She suddenly shouted at me, “Golf, golf, golf, all you ever think about is bloody golf !” And I’ll be honest, it frightened the life out of me. I mean you don’t expect to meet somebody on the fourteenth green at that time of night.’

  When we recorded my spot in the chair, I never went straight into it. I chatted and joked a little bit to get the audience relaxed, and only then began the actual piece that was being recorded. Also, I have to admit that I played a little trick in order to ensure that I got good laughs. I would tell the audience that, if I wanted them to laugh more, I would touch my glasses and just move them slightly. They would be waiting for this, and it never failed when I did it. They loved it, of course. They felt that they were a part of it, that they and I had a little secret together.

  I rarely needed these extra laughs, in actual fact, because Spike’s monologues were so good. They might have seemed to be rather rambling, but in fact they were beautifully crafted. I think he deserves to have a whole one quoted. Pour yourself a drink, dim the lights, sit back in your chair, and watch me in my chair.

  ‘This evening I’d like, if I may, to tell you a story about a chap who was cast ashore on a desert island. By the way, this is not the one about the two Irishmen on a desert island who found a lifeboat and broke it up to make a raft.

  ‘I’m glad it’s not that one because that is a bit ridiculous.

  ‘This is about a chap who was a passenger on a jumbo jet flying to New York, and when they started the film he’d seen it before on the telly, and he was so disgusted he got up and walked out.

  ‘And as soon as he lands in the water he realizes what he’s done and he gets very depressed.

  ‘“Bless my soul,” he says, and “Help!” But they up in the aeroplane can’t hear him because they’re all watch
ing Doris Day, and drinking their duty frees and shouting, “Shut that door!”

  ‘So there he is being tossed about by the waves – that reminds me: a little wave – to my mum and dad.

  ‘Actually my mother still thinks of me as her wee baby, and let’s face it I was a wee baby – I spent the first three weeks of my life on a charm bracelet.

  ‘Not exactly true, but if I told you the truth you’d never believe me.

  ‘She’s very proud of me. Just as I was leaving tonight she looked at me. Her face was radiant and her eyes were shining – I don’t know what she’s taking, but I wish I could get some of it – and she turned to my dad, who was sitting there sewing a button on his hat – he’s had a lot of worry lately – she said, “Ty” – she calls him Ty, short for Titanic, because she thinks he’s a bit of a disaster – she said, “Ty, can this be the same little boy who sang, ‘It’s My Mother’s Birthday Today’ and won the talent contest at the old Holborn Empire, all those years ago?”

  ‘And he said, “No, that was Max Bygraves.”

  ‘Anyway, back to the chap in the water, who is now swimming strongly towards the desert island which was to be his home for the next fifteen years – all alone, nothing but the sea and the sand and the sky – it makes you wonder what he lived on for fifteen years – credit, I suppose, the same as the rest of us.

  ‘So one day he’s sitting there on the beach with nothing but his roughly hewn bucket and spade – and his eight gramophone records – waiting for the tide to come in and fill his little moat.

  ‘Suddenly out of the sea there appeared an apparition. He was very frightened as it flapped its way up the beach towards him.

  ‘“My God,” he says, “it’s Ronnie Corbett’s wife!”

  ‘No, he didn’t, he didn’t say that at all – I just put that in. I must stop saying nasty things about my wife, especially as today is our anniversary: just twelve years ago today when she said, “I do.”

  ‘Which, as I told you before, certainly surprised me, because I didn’t think she did.

  ‘Anyway, when it gets nearer, the apparition turns out to be a beautiful girl wearing a wetsuit, snorkel and flippers, and she removes the snorkel and says, “Hullo, what are you doing here?”

  ‘He says, “Well, actually I’m a castaway on this desert island.”

  ‘She says, “Oh, you poor man, tch, tch, tch, well I never, fancy that, hm, hm, dog my cats, you poor man. How long is it since you had a cigarette?”

  ‘And he says, “Well, actually, it’s about fifteen years, and I’m seriously thinking of giving it up – starting tomorrow.”

  ‘Whereupon she unzips a pocket in the wetsuit – she was a big girl. She produced a packet of cigarettes, and he was overwhelmed.

  ‘“I’m overwhelmed,” he said – there, I told you he was.

  ‘She said, “Buster, you have seen nothing yet. The best is still to come. How long since you had a drinky-winky?”

  ‘She unzipped another pocket and produced a flask of his favourite whisky. A tear sprang to his eye – did I tell you he only had one eye? It doesn’t matter – well, it matters to him, but it doesn’t matter to us.

  ‘“This is marvellous,” he said. “I haven’t had a drink or a cigarette in fifteen years.”

  ‘Then she started slowly to unzip the front of her wetsuit and said, “And how long since you played around?”

  ‘And he said, “Good heavens, don’t tell me you’ve got a set of golf clubs in there.”’

  Spike was a very funny man in real life too. He had white hair and a little white moustache. Well, he probably didn’t always have them, but he did by the time I knew him. Or was it after our first meeting that he went white?

  Spike once built an open vivarium in his garden. You don’t get many of those in Slough. You don’t get many closed vivaria (I assume it’s a Latin word) either. In the unlikely event that you don’t know what a vivarium is, I’d better tell you that it’s a place where live animals are kept in conditions resembling their natural habitat. I know that for a fact – unless the person responsible for words beginning with ‘v’ in the dictionary was sacked and put in a few false definitions out of pique. Spike’s vivarium was for lizards. He fancied having lizards, and bought six from London Zoo. They gave him great pleasure in the two days before they died.

  Spike spoke in a slightly monotonous voice that was almost a whine, but what he came out with were gems.

  On one occasion, one of the BBC governors was touring the building, as they do, and he stopped to speak to Spike.

  ‘How long does it take you to get to work?’ he asked – not very inspiringly, it has to be said.

  ‘Well, I live in Slough,’ began Spike. ‘Well, when I say in Slough, a bit outside. There’s a bus every half hour, ten minutes to the station, but the buses don’t always coincide with the trains. Say a ten-minute wait at the station.’ The poor governor was wishing he’d never asked that dull question, the answer to which was of no possible interest to him. ‘Twenty-five minutes on the train to Paddington,’ continued Spike remorselessly. ‘Then it’s the Circle Line to Notting Hill Gate, change to the Central Line for White City, five minutes’ walk from there. Round about two hours in all, I suppose. Long time without a woman.’

  ‘Yes, yes, jolly good, ha ha,’ spluttered the governor. And he scurried off as fast as his legs would carry him.

  In fact, Spike was making all that up about the journey. Once he began to enjoy this marvellous late flowering of his career, he decided to compensate for the rigours of his early life by being spoilt just a little, and he began to insist that a car was sent for him – wouldn’t go anywhere without it. He even had a car sent to Slough for his script, which, right to the end, was written in longhand and typed by Mary.

  Spike’s was a very individual and often a very dry sense of humour, but it reached out to the twenty million people who watched the show at its height.

  Spike wrote a monologue for me for my very first appearance on the Royal Variety Show. This was in 1969, after I had worked with him on The Corbett Follies, but before his humour had been proven in The Two Ronnies. Unfortunately, his style was not appreciated by the producers of the show. After rehearsals I was summoned to the Royal Box, to be interviewed by Bernard Delfont, the impresario, Dick Hurran, the director of the show, Billy Marsh of the Entertainment Artistes’ Benevolent Fund and Robert Nesbitt, another director. They didn’t understand the jokes. They asked me to explain them. It was impossible. How do you explain a joke? It shrivels and disappears.

  Then Billy Marsh suggested I went on stage at that moment and did, for their benefit, the act that I had done when I’d stood in for Cilla Black at the Coventry Hippodrome. They wanted to select something appropriate from it.

  This was awful, because I just knew that that wouldn’t work. And I managed to stick to my guns, although the encounter didn’t do much for my confidence.

  On the day, I found that I was sharing a dressing room with Buddy Rich, the great American jazz drummer, and he developed severe toothache. A fashionable showbiz dentist was summoned (yes, there are such people) and I discovered that watching someone else’s teeth being drilled is only marginally less disturbing than having your own done.

  I was a nervous wreck by the time I went on stage, but everything seemed to go all right, and the audience had no problem with Spike’s jokes. I never found out whether Her Majesty understood them.

  Spike would always tell me that I needed to be more laid-back in my delivery, that I was rushing it, and he was right. I was almost there, but it’s only in recent years that I’ve felt that I am doing my material as he would have wanted me to.

  I wish he was alive to see it, but he died in 1994. At his funeral at Slough Crematorium, behind the gravel pits, Dick Vosburgh made a very funny speech, for it was also a celebration of Spike’s life and wit. His humour was often quite morose, which caused Dick to dub him the Despond of Slough, but I don’t think he would have wanted to be sent on h
is last journey morosely.

  ‘I’m very pleased to say,’ said Dick, ‘that today they have sent a very special car for Spike. They must have, because otherwise he wouldn’t have gone.’

  During the run, round about 1978, Spike began to feel that he was running out of steam. He’d done almost fifty of my monologues, and he just felt that he wasn’t quite keeping up the standard he’d set himself. This was a very serious moment for me. What would I do if I couldn’t do the chair?

  Help was at hand in the shape of a young writer called David Renwick, whom I mentioned earlier. He had been one of the writers who sent in news items and got a few accepted, but unlike most of the others he used to come to the show on studio days, hang around, drink in the atmosphere, watch the dress rehearsal and the recording. Well, he lived in Luton, so you can understand it. He lived at the time, I believe, with his parents, and even when he moved, he didn’t move very far, so that he could still go back for his Sunday lunch. Somehow, all that was encouraging. He seemed to be the sort of person who might fit into the Spike mould.

  Much later, in a TV show after Ronnie’s retirement, David, who by then had written One Foot in the Grave and Jonathan Creek, said, ‘Spike wrote the first fifty, and I carried on “in his shadow”, I’m tempted to say. I have the most joyous memories of sitting there and watching you in the chair in the dress rehearsal. It just creased me up. I loved Spike’s style. I loved the man. I revered him, and it became a labour of love to try and echo all that. Spike had established the tone, the character. They just oozed class, those monologues.’

  Well, so did David’s. He wrote almost fifty of them too, and the amazing thing is that you can’t see the join. I was blessed, really blessed. It’s extraordinary, really, that for all those fifteen years, I only had two writers for my solo spot.