Very sad to read this. Having worked so long with the genius that was Ronnie Barker he was often overshadowed by his partner, but was a truly funny man in his own right. RIP and condolences to family and friends . Now it really is "Goodnight from him"
The passing of Ronnie Corbett on Thursday was unsurprisingly the headline story on the BBC lunchtime news. They chose to start the story with a clip of one of Ronnie’s trademark monologues from the oversized chair, where he was reading from something that was addressed to “Ronnie Goliath Corbett”. Surely never was so much talent packed into 5 ft 1, a diminutive stature that was regularly the feature of his jokes. When there were only three TV channels, “The Two Ronnies” attracted twenty million viewers every weekend as their comedy routines and sketches appealed to the whole family. Their double act was less than the sum of their parts, as solo Barker is also remembered for Porridge and Open All Hours amongst other projects and solo Corbett portrayed a put-upon bachelor son in Sorry! The pair first worked together in 1960 after David Frost spotted Ronnie Corbett working in Soho as part of a Danny La Rue review and invited him to appear on The Frost Report. Who can forget the famous class sketch with John Cleese? After Barker retired from “The Two Ronnies”, Corbett’s other vehicle Sorry! was cancelled by the BBC but his career continued as he regularly appeared on our screens with modern day comedians whom he had influenced in almost twenty years of the legendary double act. The editor of The Daily Star was seen being pelted with rotten tomatoes in Fleet Street on Friday morning after his newspaper was the only one that did not feature a large front page picture of the comedy colossus Ronnie Corbett with the headline “... and goodnight from him”. On ‘dress down Friday’ in our office, somebody showed up wearing a t-shirt that had on it four candles:
