David also told one other story about working with Ronnie on Open All Hours. They had both just roared with laughter at some invented piece of comic business, and Ronnie said, ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it? It’s bloody marvellous. Here we are getting paid very well for making each other laugh. Not a bad life, is it?’
Not a bad life. I’ll second that.
The last clip of Ronnie on that night was of a scene between him and David Jason, playing his cameo role as the old man in Porridge. Ronnie is telling him a joke. It’s an old joke, but it becomes fresh again in Ronnie’s superb delivery.
‘This old man went to the doctor, you see. He said to the doctor, “My wife and I aren’t getting any pleasure out of sex any more.” The doctor was a bit taken aback. He said, “How old are you?” He said, “Eighty-one.” He said, “How old’s your wife?” “Seventy-nine.” “Seventy-nine and eighty-one and you’re not getting any pleasure out of sex? When did you first notice that?” “Twice last night and once this morning.”’
At last it was time for Ronnie to come on. He received a prolonged standing ovation. As it went on and on, he stood there, definitely showing his age, somewhat frail if not yet actually ill, and he shook his head from side to side, as if in bemusement, as if he just couldn’t believe that this wonderful moment was real. Surely it must be a dream?
Earlier in the chapter I quoted Ronnie’s speech in 1990 at the first Comedy Awards, where he took refuge behind three characters. It was a good speech, amusing and inventive, and yet… slightly disappointing, because it cheated the audience of the emotion they craved, because the real Ronnie wasn’t there.
I felt that this was different. For the first time there truly was no mask. Ronnie Barker spoke as himself, truthfully, simply and from the heart.
‘My lords, ladies, gentlemen and Jimmy Tarbuck,’ he began, ‘I am naturally overwhelmed by the honour bestowed on me by BAFTA. It’s an extraordinary feeling to be the subject of this evening’s wonderful show and to be the object of so many kind words from so many talented people. I thank you all most sincerely and humbly. To BAFTA and the BBC a most special thank you for organizing the evening and to all of you for coming here tonight. They say that the party afterwards is going to be better than the show, so that’s going to be pretty good.’
Perhaps this is the moment to say that, typically, the hand of Ronnie Barker was even there in the plans for the party. He had been asked what sort of food he wanted and had opted for a hot buffet. As usual with Ron, it was the right decision. The food was excellent, and the party, in the adjoining studio, with black drapes and tiny pinpoints of light so that it looked as if we were eating and drinking under the stars, was worthy of the occasion.
‘It’s curious, though,’ Ronnie continued, ‘that on such an important occasion it’s very difficult to be funny. Funny, that, isn’t it? But I have to tell you that all through my fifty years in the business, two words have always been in my thoughts – these two words are “What luck”. What luck to have met, in the far-off days of weekly rep, a marvellous comedian called Glenn Melvyn, who gave me my first TV job and taught me how to stutter. What luck to have been in Oxford rep when a young Peter Hall arrived as director and brought me to London’s West End. What luck that James Gilbert saw me do a radio show and put me in The Frost Report. What luck that the star of that show, David Frost, put me under contract, that resulted in Porridge and Open All Hours, and who paired me with the wonderful Ronnie Corbett. What luck to have had a wife for forty-five years who, throughout my television career, sat in the audience of every show and laughed louder than anyone else.
‘And finally, standing here before you with this most honoured award bestowed upon me by you, what luck, what wonderful luck, to be flanked on either side by my two best friends, Ronnie Corbett and David Jason.’
Ronnie’s voice was beginning to break. At last we were seeing the real Ronnie B. I’ve watched a recording of the scene, and my face is set in granite, not looking at Ronnie, not daring to, because I still had a small job to do and I couldn’t let the emotion take over. Certainly David’s eyes were wet, and so were the eyes of many in the audience.
‘And I might cry,’ said Ronnie, and hurriedly he wrapped a protective joke round the moment. ‘Gwyneth Paltrow, watch out.’
‘Thank you, Ronnie,’ I said, ‘and thank you, David, and thank all of you for making this evening so special. Shall we say goodnight, Ronnie?’
‘I think we should,’ said my old friend. ‘It’s a very good night from me.’
‘And it’s a very good night from him,’ thundered David and I in unison.
20
At the party after the BAFTA tribute show, Ronnie had a glint in his eye. He had enjoyed a wonderful evening which would have put a glint into anybody’s eye. The adrenalin was back in his veins. He talked wistfully of the possibility of bringing back The Two Ronnies to mainstream television, and somebody overheard him.
Quite soon he had a meeting with Beatrice Ballard, who had been one of the BBC’s executive producers on the BAFTA programme. She had noticed the glint in his eye, and suddenly it seemed that the BAFTA programme had reminded the BBC of what jewels they had in their archives. For many years The Two Ronnies had been shown only on cable and satellite, now suddenly everyone seemed to want to bring us back to BBC1. Suddenly the schedulers realized what appeal a family show of that quality could have.
Of course there was no question of our literally making a new series, we were too old for that, and Ronnie certainly wouldn’t have had the energy. But they wanted something with a bit more impact than just a series of repeats. The solution, proposed by the BBC, was that we should show six programmes, compiled and edited from all our many shows over the years, with us at the news desk linking the programme and reminiscing over the various items. It would be called The Two Ronnies Sketchbook, a title that had been used once before for a book of our sketches compiled by Peter Vincent.
But would Ronnie have the energy even to do this? His health had deteriorated since the award show, and probably the intense adrenalin on that day had made him appear fitter than he was. His heart problems had returned. The main trouble was basically with a valve, which was growing smaller and smaller. The specialist said that it should be replaced, but that he didn’t know if the heart was strong enough.
The glint was still present in Ron’s eye that day, but it wasn’t shining quite so brightly.
He said that he would be prepared to do the shows if – this was how fragile he really was, how tired he was – it could all be put together in one day, so all the linking material would have to be written and agreed well in advance. He would come in at eleven o’clock, and we’d rehearse for an hour and a half, till half past twelve. Then he’d have a light lunch in his dressing room, and a sleep, from half past twelve till half past two or quarter to three. Then we’d come out and do two or three more runs of the material at the desk, and then he would rest from four o’clock until seven, and in that way he would be able to get his energy up for the evening, but it had to be done in one day with that amount of understanding from the production team, and the production team, under the splendid Sam Donnelly, went out of their way to make things easy.
I must make it clear here, since it’s not clear from the name, that Sam is female, our very first and of course therefore our only female producer. We had spent our television careers in a male-dominated world, where, with very few exceptions, women were secretaries, production assistants, and ran the wardrobe and make-up departments. When we returned it was to an industry still dominated by men at the very, very top, but with women well represented at every other level, including being Controllers of channels. This process can only continue. One day a woman will be Director General of the BBC, though maybe not in my lifetime. Will Lord Reith turn in his grave? I don’t know, but I know that I won’t. What would I be doing in Lord Reith’s grave, anyway?
Of course, long before we returned to the studio we had decided which i
tems to show. Only the best. We didn’t hold a few good ones back in case we needed them for a later series, because I think we both knew that Ronnie would not be well enough to do another series.
So, we spent many hours watching old shows and being amazed to find how much we had forgotten. Quite often I had no idea what was coming next. I was relieved to find that Ron had been having the same experience. He would watch himself walking round the sofa and doing a bit of business and realize that he had no recollection of having done it.
I think we both approached the task of selection with foreboding, perhaps even fiveboding in some cases. Would a lot of it seem very lame now? Well, I was mightily relieved. There were very few items of which I was ashamed. But we wanted something better than items of which we weren’t ashamed. We wanted only items of which we were positively proud. And we were most encouraged when an editor, putting tapes together for us to watch, commented, ‘Where is this sort of work now? This standard of words and characters and sets and production costs?’
Ronnie took the lead in this process, marking sketches with two ticks, one tick or a question mark. He was in his element doing that sort of thing. He later admitted that he rejected one or two purely on the grounds that he hadn’t been entirely happy with his performance.
Well, there were a few obvious items, like ‘Four Candles’ and ‘Swedish Made Simple’ and the duck sketch and the rook restaurant and the Mastermind sketch, and the others fell into place fairly easily. We stuck very closely to the original format of the show.
I realize that I haven’t actually mentioned the Mastermind sketch, which was, I think, one of our most brilliant, due entirely to the script. It was written by David Renwick, and he had such doubts about it that he threw it away as nonsense, then decided that it might not be and retrieved it from the waste-paper basket. This illustrates a truth that is one of the factors that makes writing and performing comedy so difficult. The dividing line between silliness and brilliance is wafer-thin. It’s another of those sketches which have an outrageous, contrived premise, but which after that proceed with strict logic. There are a few topical references which may puzzle younger readers, but I think I’d like to give you this one in full. Apart from anything else, it’s one where I had the vast bulk of the laughs, so it’s nice for me to remember it! And, just as I didn’t object to a sketch in which I mainly said ‘Hello’ and ‘What?’, Ronnie B. didn’t mind doing a sketch in which he was virtually a feed. The success of the sketch was all that mattered to us. We were a true team.
Mastermind set.
RC is in the chair.
RB as Magnusson fires the questions.
CAPTION: MASTERMIND
RB: So on to our final contender. Good evening. Your name, please.
RC: Good evening.
RB: Thank you. Now, in the first heat, your chosen subject was answering questions before they were asked. This time, you have chosen to answer the question before last, each time. Is that correct?
RC: Charlie Smithers.
RB: And your time starts now. What is palaeontology?
RC: Yes, absolutely correct.
RB: Correct. What’s the name of the directory that lists members of the peerage?
RC: A study of old fossils.
RB: Correct. Who are Len Murray and Sir Geoffrey Howe?
RC: Burkes.
RB: Correct. What’s the difference between a donkey and an ass?
RC: One’s a trade union leader, the other’s a member of the Cabinet.
RB: Correct. Complete the quotation ‘To be or not to be’.
RC: They’re both the same.
RB: Correct. What is Bernard Manning famous for?
RC: That is the question.
RB: Correct. Who is the present Archbishop of Canterbury?
RC: He’s a fat man who tells blue jokes.
RB: Correct. What do people kneel on, in church?
RC: The Right Reverend Robert Runcie.
RB: Correct. What do tarantulas prey on?
RC: Hassocks.
RB: Correct. What would you use a ripcord to pull open?
RC: Large flies.
RB: Correct. What sort of person lived in Bedlam?
RC: A parachute?
RB: Correct. What is a jockstrap?
RC: A nutcase.
RB: Correct. For what purpose would a decorator use methylene chlorides?
RC: A form of athletic support.
RB: Correct. What did Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec do?
RC: Paint strippers?
RB: Correct. Who is Dean Martin?
RC: Is he a kind of artist?
RB: Yes, what sort of artist?
RC: Er – pass.
RB: Yes, that’s close enough. What make of vehicle is the standard London bus?
RC: A singer.
RB: Correct. In 1892 Brandon Thomas wrote a famous long-running English farce – what was it?
RC: British Leyland.
RB: Correct. Complete the following quotation about Mrs Thatcher. ‘Her heart may be in the right place, but her…’
RC: Charley’s Aunt.
RB: Correct. (Bleeper noise) And you have scored eighteen with no passes.
The only new element in the show was our linking material. It was no longer closely based on news items, and it did involve Ron being more or less himself. He was less uneasy with this now, but still not entirely comfortable. We weren’t aiming at huge laughs, it was quite gentle – the huge laughs were in the old stuff. It wasn’t as rich an experience for the studio audience on the night, that was impossible, but we still took care to make them feel welcome.
Ronnie was a proud man, and he took great pains to conceal the extent of his frailty, but I felt that he needed cosseting, he needed careful handling, because he just hadn’t got the energy he was pretending to have. When the shows went out, people who knew him well could see how frail he was. He’d lost a lot of weight, and his features were sharper, but he put on such a good show that I think very few members of the viewing public realized how ill he was.
I was sad to see him like that, of course, but I was quite pleased that he was up for it, because I was certain that it would work, and it would be a kind of a little bit of another refreshing burst in our lives and careers, which of course it was, almost more than the originals, because people realized in the vacuum that had gone before how good the stuff had been when it had been shown originally.
This may seem odd, after all the viewing figures the original shows had got, and after the OBEs and the Royal Command Performances and all the various award ceremonies, but I really do believe that it was only when we came to do this compilation that the two of us fully realized the magnitude of our success.
It had been eighteen years since our last series. A man once went up to Barry Cryer in Regent Street and said, ‘Didn’t you used to be Barry Cryer?’, and Ron did toy with the idea of starting the series with, ‘Good evening, we used to be the Two Ronnies,’ but he abandoned the thought in the end.
We were delighted to be back in primetime viewing on a Saturday night, but even more delighted by the public response and by the reaction of new viewers who had been too young to see us before. It really did mean a lot to us. I couldn’t help wondering, though, whether families sat and watched us together as much as they did in the old days. Confucius Corbett, sociologist, he wonder whether in fact families did as much together in the modern era of computer games, the Internet and binge drinking at the weekends.
After The Two Ronnies Sketchbook, Ron went back into hospital, for a check-up. It was just before Christmas, and the specialist said that if he didn’t have the valve operation, he might not have much more than six months to live. Ron said that he would see how he felt, if there was the right moment, when he felt strong enough, he might have the operation, but then, whenever he did feel strong enough, he persuaded himself that maybe he didn’t need the operation. He was frightened of having a stroke, and he didn’t want Joy to have to deal with a
helpless invalid. He was more frightened of that than of dying. Anyway, he never did have the operation.
Our final show together was a Christmas special compilation. This was recorded in July 2005, with the same format as the Sketchbook series, new linking material at the desk and selected items from our Christmas specials. Since this was Ron’s very last show, and I’ve just quoted a sketch in which I had most of the laughs, I would like to remember it by giving you just one extract from it, his monologue entitled ‘The Milkman’s Christmas Speech to the Nation’.
He was dressed as a milkman, but seated like the Queen at an ornate desk in Buckingham Palace (not really in Buckingham Palace, though that would have been a thought).
‘A very merry Christmas to you all,’ he began, speaking in a stately way, but also in a milkmanlike way. I’m sure there isn’t such a word, but there should be. This was the cleverness of Ron the actor, to be able to seem like a statesman and a milkman at the same time. ‘As I think of you,’ he continued. (Well, of course he continued. It would have been the shortest monologue in history if he hadn’t. Sorry. I’m being facetious to hide the fact that writing this bit is making me emotional.) ‘As I think of you, my loyal customers, sitting at home round your firesides this Christmas, it brings home to me very strongly the enormous responsibility I have as your milkman.’
A Caption appeared on the screen, giving his name, which was H. M. Quinn.
‘And I know that you will appreciate how important it is to me to know that I have your support, and shall continue to have your support, throughout the coming year. The task of supplying milk to a great nation such as ours is, I am sure you realize, not an easy one. Either here at home, or in the colonies – spread as they are, like butter, over the entire globe – whether home or colonial, it is our express wish that it must be co-operative, uniting dairies across the world. The milk of human kindness must not be watered down. It must flow, not only through the cream of society, but also on to the most humble doorstep in the land, be it black, or white, or gold-top. Let our lives be ordered, and ordered as soon as possible, so as to avoid disappointment, in the years to come. I extend my warmest and most heartfelt bottle to you all.’
And It's Goodnight from Him . . . Page 24
