And It's Goodnight from Him . . .

by Ronnie Corbett; David Mattingly

  19

  They would cross particularly at award ceremonies, the first of which was given to Ronnie, fittingly, at the very first Comedy Awards, in 1990. The awards were the brainchild of Michael Hurll, who had succeeded Terry Hughes as producer of The Two Ronnies. I should also give credit to our other three producers after Michael, who were Marcus Plantin, Paul Jackson and Marcus Mortimer. We were very lucky in them all.

  Michael Hurll now had his own television company, and they organized the awards, which were produced by his company for ITV. They were not broadcast live, which was lucky for one of our great theatrical knights, as we will see.

  These first awards were held at the London Palladium, and were introduced by Michael Parkinson. The final award in a glittering evening was a Lifetime Achievement Award for television comedy. The award was voted for by the people who write, produce and direct British television, and almost inevitably it was given to Ronnie. Ronnie was introduced by Sir Alec Guinness, who was a great admirer. Ronnie had been astounded to read, in Sir Alec’s autobiography, ‘I’ll tell you who my favourite performer is. Ronnie Barker. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. He’s really great.’

  So this presentation was much more than just another award. It was a rare moment of total sincerity. It was also a meeting between two men who in some ways had very similar natures – they were both known above all for their versatility as actors, and they were both uncomfortable appearing in front of the public as themselves, so there was something really rather appropriate about it.

  Sir Alec was clearly ill at ease. ‘We’ve had years of delight,’ he said, ‘week by week from Clarence, the short-sighted removals man, from Norman Stanley Fletcher, from Ron Glum…’ (Ronnie played Ron Glum to June Whitfield’s Eth in Six Faces of Jim, the Glums having come from the classic radio series Take It from Here, written by Frank Muir and Denis Norden) ‘… and a host of others all of whom lived happily inside Ronnie Barker, who was a writer, a supreme comic and, for my money, a great actor.’

  Sir Alec in fact tried to do a Ronnie Barker joke, which was a shame, as he was a fish out of water. The joke that he tried to do was a news-desk classic – ‘There was a collision today outside Newport Pagnell between a van carrying prisoners and a lorry laden with cement. The police are hunting for six hardened criminals.’ Unfortunately Sir Alec’s mind went blank as he approached the end of the joke. It was extremely embarrassing. As he reached the punchline he said, to stunned silence from a packed Palladium, ‘The police are hunting for… six concrete men.’ Luckily, since the show was recorded, the joke could be edited out, but I don’t think Sir Alec would mind my telling it now, after all these years, since he was very game about it at the time, and said he hoped he could come back one day and give another award to Ron and do it properly.

  Ronnie’s acceptance speech was absolutely typical.

  ‘Sir Alec, ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, ‘all through my professional life I’ve been lost without a character to hide behind. “Oh, just go on and be yourselves,” they’d say, but to me that was impossible, and tonight is no exception, so my thanks to you all for this prestigious award must also be in character.’ (‘Yourselves’ was an interesting slip of the tongue, and it was interesting that his tongue could slip as himself. It never did in character.)

  At this point he adopted the persona of Norman Stanley Fletcher.

  ‘My thanks especially to the governor of this prison for letting me out for the evening to pick up this award. I mean, normally they don’t take too kindly to you picking up sharp metal objects, know what I mean, but in this case he said, “OK,” on condition that I let him stand it on the mantelpiece in his office next to his autographed photograph of Lester Piggott, and my special thanks must go to the jury, and I never thought I’d ever hear myself say that.’

  Next he became Arkwright.

  ‘Secondly, I would like to say, c-c-categ-ca-, I would like to say ca-ca-c, I’d like to say c-c-categ-ca-, but I can’t. So thanks to all the customers who over the years have supported us through thick and thin, and in Granville’s case, mostly thick, though I must say since my retirement he’s been doing quite well, has Granville.’ (Here the camera went on to Granville, alias David Jason, who had picked up at least three awards during the evening for Only Fools and Horses and A Bit of a Do.) ‘This award might go far in healing the rift in my social arrangements with Nurse Gladys Emmanuel. I shall give it to her as a b-big peace offering, and, believe me, she’s a b-big piece to offer anything to.’

  Then it was back to his crisp spokesperson and an old friend of a monologue.

  ‘Finally, as President of the Loyal Sobriety for the sufferers from Pispronunciation, I would like to say how clappy I am to deceive this award. When you have trouble in saying your worms correctly, it is dicky felt to suppress yourself properly when speaking to the general pubic. This can be the case even in such experienced screechers as our late Prim Minister, Mrs Scratcher, and the bleeder of the opposition, Mr Pillock. So I will merely spray, thank you very much, and a crappy istmas to you all. So it’s goodnight from him. Goodnight.’

  In 1996 Ronnie received another Lifetime Achievement Award. Not bad, is it, to have one lifetime and receive two awards for it? This was at the BBC Centenary Programme, and again it was being presented by the supreme presenter, the daddy of them all, Michael Parkinson. ‘There’s one more award to come,’ he said. ‘This is an actor who retired eight years ago.’ Ronnie thought, ‘Who else retired eight years ago?’ I was sitting next to him, and I said, ‘It must be you.’

  Everyone stood up, and Ronnie, thinking very quickly, sometimes greased lightning didn’t stand a chance compared to his mind, said, ‘Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, please sit down,’ because he wasn’t sure if the cameras were showing that everyone was standing up, and he wanted the audience at home to know that they had been!

  Not long after that, I did a programme called An Audience with Ronnie Corbett. An Audience with… was a series in which the studio audience was packed with friends and colleagues of the celebrity who was the subject of the programme. They were primed to ask questions that would lead the star of the show into anecdotes and keep the show buzzing along. Unfortunately, some of the people I really wanted to be there, such as Danny La Rue, David Frost and John Cleese, couldn’t make it, they all lead such busy lives. So it was important for me to have Ron there and I just had to ask him to come up from Oxfordshire, even though I knew it would be a lumber. He came, bless him, and of course he didn’t want to ask a sensible question, that would have been too much like being himself, so he asked a silly one. ‘Who did you most enjoy working with?’ ‘What’ll I say to that?’ I said. ‘Say Basil Brush,’ he said. Well, I’m an obliging, obedient sort of person, so I said, ‘Basil Brush.’ The little routine went quite well, but it looked strange to everybody to see one Ron on the stage and another in the audience, and somehow everybody began talking about the possibility that Ronnie might retire from retirement, as it were. But no, that wasn’t going to happen.

  These thoughts were fuelled even more when we actually did appear together in 1997. This wasn’t strictly an award ceremony or a tribute programme, but you have to bend the rules in comedy, so I’m including it. It was actually the Royal Command Performance, and they wanted Ronnie to come out of retirement to participate. I’d done a few Royal Command Performances, and I was quite comfortable with them, but they weren’t Ron’s cup of tea. But then he had an idea, an idea that meant that he could appear on the show in character. It was an idea that we would certainly have been using if we had still been making our shows.

  The idea was for a take-off of The Two Fat Ladies. These were two lady chefs, Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Patterson, who did a very popular cookery programme in which they charged round the country on a motorcycle and sidecar combo, cooking high-class meals in high-class accents. They were in the great tradition of English upper-class eccentrics.

  All we were to do in the show
was introduce the next act, and Ron thought it would be great if we came on to the stage dressed as the two weighty ladies, in a motorcycle and sidecar combo, parked the bike, got off, walked down, took off our helmets, introduced the next act and got off. What could be simpler? Almost anything.

  The snag, you see, was that I was going to have to drive the thing, and it involved a gear change, and the stage of the Victoria Palace, where we were to appear, is not large, and beyond the stage is the orchestra pit, and musicians are touchy people: they hate having motorcycles landing on their heads.

  I arranged to have the motorcycle and sidecar delivered to the car park at Selhurst Park, Crystal Palace’s football ground, and I had to practise three days a week with this damned machine.

  I had to drive on to the stage, change gear, put the brakes on, and stop in the middle of the stage. It didn’t work too badly, but there was a moment when Ron thought that I was going to take him over the edge into the pit. I mean, I’ve heard of going over the top, but this was ridiculous.

  Never mind. We did it. It was all pretty sensational. The sight of the two fat ladies surging on to the stage on their motorbike was pretty amazing, but when we took our helmets off and everyone saw who we were, the place erupted. After all, it was the first time we’d been together for ten years.

  We were deeply touched by the warmth of our reception, although I have to say that I always felt that I had too much lipstick on, particularly without the helmet.

  Afterwards, in the traditional post-show line-up, Prince Philip said to Ronnie, ‘Ah! They’ve exhumed you, have they?’

  But they hadn’t. Not yet.

  In 2000, Ronnie was the subject of an episode of Channel 4’s Heroes of Comedy, and in 2004 the BBC showed an hour-long BAFTA tribute to him. Many of the people who paid tribute to him were the same on both programmes, so I will concentrate on the BAFTA one for three reasons – it was the final tribute to him during his lifetime; a BAFTA tribute is a very rare event, given only for the greatest; and I had the inestimable privilege of hosting it.

  BAFTA (the British Academy of Film and Television Arts) had their plans, in accordance with their normal way of doing things. But Ronnie, being Ronnie, had other ideas. They wanted him to sit in the audience and watch the show. That was the very thing he didn’t want. He felt that if the camera cut to him every two or three minutes, the audience at home would be sick of him before he came on. Also, his self-consciousness about being seen as himself would be tested to the limits. How many modest looks and thrilled expressions could even as fine an actor as Ronnie produce, as person after person sang his praises? No, it was far better that he remain hidden out of the way and come on at the end. This would have a far greater impact, he felt, and, as usual, he was right.

  There was an electric atmosphere that night. The audience was packed with stars, real stars, not the so-called celebrities of our times. There was a sense of joy in celebrating a living legend and in celebrating the great gift of comedy.

  ‘Good evening, and welcome to a special BAFTA tribute,’ I began, ‘a tribute to a remarkable man, an extraordinary actor and a brilliant comedian – and that’s not three people, just the one.’

  We then saw clips from all sorts of celebrities. ‘I think the word that comes to mind in connection with Ronnie is “jolly”,’ said John Cleese. ‘He was capable of total brilliance,’ said Michael Palin. ‘When I’m with him,’ said Richard Briers, ‘I feel happier.’

  I thought that last quote was about as good as it gets. Wouldn’t you just love one of your best friends to say that about you?

  ‘Uncle Ronnie Barker has always had the gift,’ I continued, ‘of being a star and the man next door at the same time. I often noticed when we were doing the news bulletins, if I came out with a good one, Ronnie would turn to me and just laugh, and that was the only time really in The Two Ronnies that you could see Ronnie Barker just as himself, just for the moment. Now later tonight you will be seeing the real Ronnie Barker. He is here tonight, but of course he’s shy and retiring – well, he’s retiring more than most.’

  Peter Kay was the first to come on and sing Ron’s praises live to this audience. ‘I think he’s a fantastic actor, and everything he does, you believe that he really is that person… If I make half as many people laugh as he has or mean a quarter as much to as many people as he has, I’ll die a confused but happy man.’

  Johnny Vegas, recorded on film, said, ‘I’m the only bloke, I think, who reads him in the bath… I read him with reverence, and I have a special bubble bath I use when I’m reading him.’ The picture of Johnny Vegas in a bubble bath was just one of the unforgettable images conjured up during that great evening of laughter and emotion.

  One of the most striking tributes was from Gene Wilder, also on film. It was fascinating to hear the take on Ronnie’s talent from this most American of comic actors. ‘I lived in London for a year doing my first film as a director, and what I looked forward to at the end of each week was going home on a Saturday and ordering in some Indian food and then sitting and watching The Two Ronnies, and on one of the shows Ronnie Barker said that he was writing a letter to the Queen, but his typewriter kept jamming on him and every time he hit an “e” it gave him an “o”, so it began: “To hor Majosty tho quoon”.’ It’s a lovely thought, that great American actor watching us and laughing at us over his chicken tikka marsala. ‘I feel that, no matter how farcical he was, like Chaplin there was always an element of reality to what he did, and when I saw his work I saw the embodiment of what I was striving for in my career.’ Phew!

  Next Josephine Tewson, the female element in so many of our sketches and of his sitcoms, took the stage and described Ronnie rather memorably. ‘He is the most untheatrical of actors. It’s rather like meeting a very, very witty bank manager.’

  One of the most extraordinary contributions came from Ben Elton, who recalled, ‘I first met Ronnie Barker at a BBC Light Entertainment Christmas party in the early eighties. Stephen Fry and I had been hovering about, hoping that Jim Moir, the boss of Entertainment, might introduce us to the great man. When Jim finally did introduce us, Ronnie nodded at Stephen and said, “I quite like you,” before glancing at me and saying, “Don’t like you much, I’m afraid.” It tells you something of the aura in which I held and still hold this giant of the comic arts that I was just pleased he’d spoken to me at all. If he’d impaled me with his cocktail sausage, I’d have considered it a privilege.’

  It’s a rare person who never says anything that they regret, and I’m certain Ron must have regretted this uncharacteristic remark, born I’m sure out of the unease he often felt at parties, but the fact that he and Ben became good friends, and that Ben was a regular visitor at his great summer parties in Oxfordshire – Ron and Joy knew how to throw a party – is a lovely ending to a story that began so badly, and a tribute to them both, but particularly, I have to say, to Ben, who took Ronnie’s comment so extraordinarily well.

  The next man to come on to the set and speak to that audience of the famous was Rob Brydon. ‘Growing up as a teenager in South Wales, it was a wonderful experience to know that, come what may, on a Saturday night I would be guaranteed entertainment, and I remember thinking that it would last for ever, and then one day she moved away.’ Lovely, but then he added, ‘and so it was that I turned to The Two Ronnies and if anything had even more fun.’

  As I’ve been writing this book, I’ve been struck by the number of people who at various times mentioned the pleasure of those Saturday nights, and I’ve realized how fortunate we were to perform in an era when a television programme could become a national institution. Those days are past. In the era of a myriad channels, and also of the Internet, television programmes will no longer be events, to be discussed in pubs and offices the next day.

  Sir Peter Hall appeared on tape and said, ‘You taught me a great deal. You taught me that comedy has to be very serious and has to be very truthful and that it all depends on timing. From the beginning
I thought you were a bit of a genius… You should have played Falstaff. You are a great actor.’

  We did in fact see a short extract from Ronnie’s performance in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and even in the tiny extract we could see that it was stunning, but if this BAFTA evening proved anything, it was that Ronnie turned his back on the great roles of serious acting not for something lesser, but for something as good, as important, as moving – comedy.

  Each speaker was raising the emotional temperature a notch, and the last speaker, Sir David Jason, was no exception.

  ‘To me there has never been anyone with such an ability to make the entire nation laugh so long and so loud as Ronnie B.,’ said Sir David.

  He spoke of Ronnie’s generosity. ‘One of the many times I witnessed this generosity as an actor was not long after I first met and worked with “the guv’nor” in the series His Lordship Entertains. At the start of my career I was a lowly actor. Mind you, considering my height, I suppose I’ve always been a bit of a lowly actor.’

  He told how he was offered a part in a very funny script, The Odd Job, by Bernard McKenna, but thought that he had been offered the wrong part. He phoned the director, Sidney Lotterby, and said, ‘Of course I would love to do it, but you’ve obviously asked me to play the wrong part. Clive is Ronnie’s part. Surely you want me to play the husband?’

  ‘No,’ said Sid. ‘Ronnie wants you to play Clive.’

  David told the audience, ‘I replied, “But that’s the funnier character.” “Ronnie knows that,” said Sid, “but he thinks you’ll do it better.” To an up-and-coming young actor, surely that is generosity of the highest order?’

  During the evening we did in fact see a clip from The Odd Job. Ronnie hires David Jason to kill him. David is astounded and shaken, but agrees. ‘When will you do it?’ asks Ronnie. ‘Leave it to me,’ says David, ‘and then, when you least expect it…’ at which point he leaps straight in and tries to throttle Ronnie quite violently. His doing this so immediately, after his initial astonishment and reluctance, is very funny, but what makes it far funnier still is that Ronnie, who wanted to be killed, defends himself equally violently when the moment comes. It’s a delicious scene, a very funny and unusual idea played out by two supremely funny men.