Two Ronnies

[Baron Kurtz]

What's your favourite Two Ronnies sketch? I know most people like Fork Handles, and The Worm That Turned was a good long running sketch, along with The Phantom Raspberry Blower. My favourite is below, from the Christmas Special of 1984. Featuring a pair of chracters, Charles and Aubrey, who appeared quite frequently.

I give you: Bathroom Tiles.

[video=youtube;BrOEq765yMQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrOEq765yMQ[/video]

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Identical Twins is fun, too.

[video=youtube;fpJvW1kO4yw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpJvW1kO4yw&feature=related[/video]

 

[Warden]

On a related note, just seen this on the BBC news website

Michael Hurll, who produced The Two Ronnies and established the British Comedy Awards, has died aged 75.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19662332

 

[Wally_Hood]

Unless I am mistaken, didn't they do a skit about going to the tax official and trying to explain the deductions?

 

[davidraphael]

It's not a sketch (there are too many for me to choose from!) but here's the great theme tune, which was one of the greatest of the 1970s by legend Ronnie Hazelhurst.

[video=youtube;EwuB00OHQMY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwuB00OHQMY[/video]

 

[herringbonekid]

...along with The Phantom Raspberry Blower.

that one used to really scare me as a child.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

yeah, me too. When I saw it on repeats.

I really liked the silliness of their songs, too, with cymbal smashes every time a dirty word was to be sung. The comedy of the era was very much cocking a snook at the laughable "morality" police of the Whitehouse ilk. It's weird that everybody had a good giggle, but would have been outraged if the words had actually been spoken.

 

[herringbonekid]

[video=youtube;y0C59pI_ypQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0C59pI_ypQ[/video]

 

[Two Types]

I saw a repeat recently and found them much funnier than I ever did when the shows were originally broadcast.

 

[AntonAAK]

I recently watched a documentary on double acts in British light entertainment and was reminded of this spoof in Not The Nine O'Clock News. Apparently Barker was incensed by it and it was quite damaging to The Two Ronnies' popularity.

[video=youtube;6oVG4_k7Hbc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oVG4_k7Hbc[/video]

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Yes, I fear Barker might have taken it a bit too seriously.

I think the recent shows (Corbett's 80th birthday celebrations??) have revealed just how much the 80s generation of comedians respected the Ronnies. For though it's a fact that they did the same stuff, essentially, for 30 years, the could still make it funny …

 

[Edward]

Maybe less this individual sketch getting to him and more it being a focal point for everything he might have objected to in the 80s "alternative comedy" scene (cue stock footage of Jimmy Tarbuck or Bernard Manning saying "what, an alternative to comedy? It didn't make me laugh" etc). There was a time I remember in the Eighties when it was fashionable to quite viciously mock anything that had gone before in comedy and that had been somewhat successful, but that seems to have turned around again. Cyclical, I suppose, but when you look at the sitcoms and comedy that have been popular of late, they're a return to a more traditional format again.