TV SERIES · 1971– · UK
The Two Ronnies
21 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (21)
- #001
Sir David Jason provided the voice of the Phantom Raspberry Blower in the Old London Town sketches.
- #002
In 1979 Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett took their families to Australia for a year. This allowed them to explore other work opportunities and to avoid the 83% top rate of income tax introduced by the British Labour government in 1974.
- #003
In the early 1980s Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones performed a famous parody of the series in a sketch on another BBC show, 'Not the Nine O'Clock News'. This greatly upset Ronnie Barker, who felt it was disrespectful and rude, and shortly afterwards he expressed his feelings plainly to Smith at a BBC party, leaving Smith distraught that he had hurt one of his comedy heroes. Years later, after Barker died in 2005, Ronnie Corbett spoke to Smith and said that although Barker had been extremely angry about it, Corbett himself (who had begun his television career in satire) had not taken great offence, because he understood the parody completely and thought it was well done, funny and not unfair. He said he had wanted to say something years earlier but had stayed silent out of loyalty to Barker. The producer of NTNN, John Lloyd, later said that he had lunch with Barker at the BBC, that Barker never mentioned the parody sketch, and that he was warm and friendly towards Lloyd even though he knew who he was.
- #004
The series was commissioned by the BBC's head of light entertainment, Sir Bill Cotton, and BBC One controller Sir Paul Fox, who were impressed by seeing Barker and Corbett perform an improvised routine together at the 1970 BAFTA awards while it was delayed by technical problems.
- #005
Patrick Troughton, the former star of Doctor Who (1963) as the Second Doctor, played the Judge in the Courtroom Examination sketch of the 1984 Christmas Special. Doctor Who regular Nicholas Courtney (the Brigadier) also appeared in a 1973 episode. Ronnie Corbett would later appear alongside Elisabeth Sladen in the Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007).
- #006
Several members of Monty Python (Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, John Cleese and Graham Chapman) are frequently credited as writers on the first few series. However, none of them wrote directly for the show; instead, sketches from Monty Python's Flying Circus that the team had rejected were routinely offered to The Two Ronnies, and those that were used ended up with on-screen credits for the relevant Python members.
- #007
Ronnie Barker could move in and out of each character effortlessly.
- #008
It is one of the most successful comedy shows in British television.
- #009
Spike Milligan wrote the Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town, and Sir David Jason provided the raspberry blowing (which he claims to be a master of); years earlier Milligan had given the then-unknown Jason a very valuable autograph.
- #010
In the "Star Trek" parody sketch, the script had Captain Kirk (Corbett) shrunk by an alien power because of Ronnie Corbett's height, while the alien power caused Spock (Barker) to grow and become fat. However, a special camera effect was set up to make Corbett appear taller.
- #011
During sketches featuring only one of the Ronnies, the Ronnie who is not performing can sometimes be heard laughing during the other's performance.
- #012
Madeline Smith said in 2017 that appearing on the series damaged her hopes of being seen as a serious actress. At the time she was a young actress known for her work in Hammer horror films, in which she was the willing victim of Ingrid Pitt and Peter Cushing, so she hoped that an appearance on the hugely popular The Two Ronnies would help her move away from the horror genre. But things did not work out that way. She recalled: "I was asked to do the show and I was very excited because I'm a comedy person. I like making people laugh. Unfortunately I got in the way. Afterwards I found myself typecast: I was like a pair of breasts with a face and a squeaky voice on top. Everyone thought I was brainless and I was stuck with that image for the rest of my career."
- #013
Throughout the series' 16-year run, Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker worked on other TV shows and film productions between seasons.
- #014
Matt Lucas and David Walliams named The Two Ronnies as one of the inspirations behind "Little Britain".
- #015
For example, UK Gold's permanent repeats always exclude the musical guests in order to maximise the length and frequency of advertising breaks and to avoid royalty fees.
- #016
The "Space War" musical sketch in Season 8 is a parody of George Lucas's "Star Wars", with Ronnie Barker as C-3PO and Ronnie Corbett as R2D2.
- #017
The Worm That Turned episodes are a parody of George Orwell's novel "1984".
- #018
Sketches written by Ronnie Barker were usually submitted "anonymously" to the pool of sketch writers under the name Gerald Wiley. After learning who the writer Gerald Wiley really was, it is quite surprising to see how much material he (Ronnie Barker) wrote under the pseudonym Gerald Wiley. Probably not a coincidence, if the credits were alphabetical by surname, he was always the last name among the main writers.
- #019
The Phantom Raspberry Blower sketches are impersonations of Jack the Ripper.
- #020
In the musical number sketch, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett would take a well-known song and change its lyrics. One such song was the children's nursery rhyme "This Old Man (Knick-Knack Paddy-Whack)".
- #021
Among all the characters Ronnie Barker played, the one closest to himself was in The Two Ronnies.
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