The Two Ronnies: Series One

Saturday April 10th, 1971 was a fairly ordinary day.  T-Rex's first number one,'Hot Love', was 'Top of the Pops' for the fourth week running,  Charles Manson was most likely fretting a little about being sentenced to death the day before, and the US ping-pong team had just arrived in China for a 'friendly' diplomatic tournament. It was also the day my mum decided that something else probably wasn't suitable for an aspiring 7 year old.

"About time I saw it all again then!", is a thought I had when the BBC decided in their wisdom to release the complete series' of the Two Ronnies rather than the welcome, but bitty 'best ofs' which came out on two random discs years ago.

There are those of a certain age, and I'm sure of a certain comedic disposition who, when the opening theme music of this show is played, are sent into the throes of nostalgia, yet as the saying goes, nostalgia isn't what it used to be. However, with a writing team consisting of many of the Pythons, Barry Cryer, David Nobbs and Ronnie Barker himself (as 'Gerald Wiley') things were boding well for the series, even if the two stars hadn't actually worked together as a comedy duo before.

The familiar format of the shows is already established in the first programme, with the introductory jokes and puns being followed by a sketch or two; musical items by singers in the news at the time; a filmed story split up over the series' length; more sketches dotted about the show involving doctors/interviews/vicars etc; Ronnie Corbett's meandering shaggy dog joke; a larger musical number often featuring a multitude of dancers and then the final jokes and puns follwed by the obligatory "And so it's goodnight from me…" etc etc.



Something which I didn't remember, or perhaps deliberately wiped from my memory, were the appearances by various international variety acts, who put on a short example of their skills, and were, in places, jaw-droppingly awful.

As an example, a chap named 'Chaz Chase' (see below), who was almost 70 when this was recorded, did nothing but eat peculiar items, mostly involving lit cigars, cigarettes, matches and various bits of cardboard. A quick Google will show that this is an act he 'perfected' some 50 years earlier, and so there was no reason why he shouldn't do the same thing on this programme. The reaction from the audience however was a little reserved for both him and 'Alfredo', who was able to take a minute doing a bad impression of Sammy Davis Jr., pulling a few more faces while playing a drum kit and catching ping pong balls in his mouth. They say that variety is dead, but it should have been put out of its misery a long time before if this was all the Beeb could muster for a new show.



The 'serious' musical numbers for this series were performed by a couple of acts.

A 16 year old Tina Charles (later to become a bit of a disco queen, and was one of the backing vocalists in Steve Harley's 'Make me smile'), who, quite frankly, murders a few of the chart topping numbers of the time, but does a good post-60s dance movement - just the one though…in all the songs…whatever the style or tempo.

 

We also have the Australian trio (although two were born in Britain) 'New World' who perform some inoffensive songs including  the fairly big hits, Tom-Tom Turnaround, and  Rose Garden. The great shame about this group was that others had bigger hits with cover versions of their songs, although I'm sure the royalties helped…especially with the Old Bailey trial in which they were involved about vote rigging for Opportunity Knocks.



And then there are the Ronnies themselves.

We have seen 'bleeding chunks' from the series many times over the years as various anniversaries come about (expect some more for the 40th next year), but what isn't obvious from the excerpts is the rather slapdash and almost, dare I say it, amateurish and under-rehearsed nature of the shows. Actually, much of the humour comes from the improvisation around obvious slip-ups (one being quite literal), which shows that however many scriptwriters you have, with Barker and Corbett involved there's always going to be a hilarious comeback, even if it's a simple raised eyebrow.



Generally, when there's a woman involved, the humour is appallingly sexist, but then that's how it was at the time of course, and it's very easy to be judgmental a few 'enlightened' decades later. Raquel Welch gets a couple of  mentions (Fnaaar!), and Madeline Smith (who is famous for appearing in not much for some Hammer films) is excellent, and remarkably tolerant, as the heroine in the 'Hampton Wick' episodes.

One or two sketches made me laugh out loud, including the hayfevery vicar and  the TV cooking item, which, to be perfectly honest, shows that these sort of programmes haven't changed at all for 40 years, but there are a few which make you wince, most especially the Black and White Minstrel musical item and mentions of Chinese and black babies. These style of jokes are, as I said, 'of their day', but you can't help think thoughts such as "Oh dear..was this really funny?"

Fortunately, there are also very intelligent items, most notably the continuation of the famous 'Class' sketch made famous in The Frost Report and the beginnings of the genius that were Ronnie Barker's best word-play sketches.



Having said this of course, the 'double entendre' (a phrase which means nothing to the French coincidentally) is always going to be hilarious when delivered in the right situation, and there are many to be savoured here, together with the origins of Ronnie Barker's best word-play sketches and some terrible puns which seem to have been stolen by more recent comedians who probably hope no one has seen these DVDs.

Jokes which will never be stolen are the once topical jests towards Harold Wilson, Edward Heath and even Monsieur Pompidou, who apparently had had some bad news, as Mrs. Pompidon't.....yes,well this was actually one of the funnier ones.

I'm left wondering whether there was some sort of censorship with the reissues of the show, as one of the credit sequences mentioned the appearance of an act called 'Trio Biarge', a  group who never actually appeared in the DVD. It may have been a copyright issues of course, but considering the fuss that was made over a Star Trek sketch in a later series, we may just be allowed to see what is acceptable in our own times, and so perhaps 'The Two Ronnies: Series One (Edited for 21st century sensibilities) would have been a more apposite title.



By the end of the series, I had turned 7, Dawn's 'Knock Three Times'  was Number One, and nothing particularly remarkable happened in the world.