Bully's Book Club: And It's Goodnight from Him...: The Autobiography of The Two Ronnies

Ghost-written celebrity biographies! Where would we, and the publishing industry, be without 'em? Nowhere, that's where! They're not...

Whoa, déjà vu, man. Let me start again.

Around the same time PBS stations in the US started running Monty Python's Flying Circus and Doctor Who, another, less high-profile, but equally important British import came to America: The Two Ronnies, the long-running comedy sketch show from ITV. Less surreal and more grounded in the British music-hall tradition than Python, less bawdy (tho' still sometimes suggestive) than The Benny Hill Show, The Two Ronnies nevertheless had an immediate and faithful cult audience here in the US until re-runs stopped around the mid-eighties. Count me among the show's immediate fans: I loved the silly and irreverent humor and the obvious gleeful energy both Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett brought to their clever and tightly-written sketches, films, and monologues. Never seen 'em? Don't remember 'em? Watch and weep with joy, oh edamacated one:



I regularly howled with laughter at sketches like this: since Morecombe and Wise, nobody pulled off face to face comedy better than Ronnie Corbett (the small one in glasses) and Ronnie Barker (the tall one in glasses). They gave inspiration and rise to such later Brit comedy duos as Smith and Jones, Fry and Laurie, and French and Saunders, and were dearly beloved in the world of British comedy. But I have to admit that I kinda forgot about them after the show stopped running in the US. When Ronnie Barker died in 2005 I took note of it and remembered vaguely that I'd laughed at his work, but without the show running regularly in the US (hey, BBC America, get on the ball and put these back on), it was hard to remember exactly what the magic was all about.

Until I switched on the telly to ITV3 in my hotel room during my December holiday in London on Christmas Day, and there was little Ronnie Corbett, a lot older but still as casual and offbeat as ever, relaxing in his familiar armchair and introducing classic episodes of The Two Ronnies for a modern audience. For three days. A three day marathon! US TV and cable networks will occasionally run all-day marathons for a popular or classic series, but to devote an entire holiday long weekend—a period where British TV viewer ship is often at its highest, especially on Christmas Day when nothing is open...well, that's a sure sign of the popularity and respect for this classic series. Even more so because it still stands up. I perched on the hotel bed and watched hour after hour of classic Ronnies shows, some I remembered vaguely but which still delighted, many others I'd never seen. So when I wandered into the post-Christmas half-price sales at Waterstones the next day I didn't blink my little button eyes twice when I spotted Ronnie Corbett's autobiography and memoir of his long friendship and working partnership with Ronnie Barker, titled after their familiar show sign-off: And It's Goodnight from Him...

Like the Billie Piper autobio, Corbett's book has some professional help: it's written "with" David Nobbs, a pretty famous name in the British comedy field himself: he created and wrote The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and authored three very funny novels based on the show (I really must dig those out of my storage boxes and read 'em again!) as well as writing sketches and scripts for not only The Two Ronnies but many big name British comedians. Corbett himself isn't a professional writer (he didn't even write much for the show itself), but he was an excellent humorist, and Nobbs has shaped And It's Goodnight into what sounds uncannily like one of Corbett's traditional show bits where he'd sit in his chair and tell a rambling but rib-tickling monologue. The voice is pitch-perfect, so much that you can imagine Corbett actually just sat down in the pub with Nobbs and told his story. (It sure would like to have picked up the book on CD of this now that I've read it. Maybe next time.)

The book's billed as an autobiography, but "An Autobiography of the Two Ronnies," not of Ronnie Corbett. Corbett's early life gets a brisk chapter and a half and then we're thrust right into the stuff we want to read about: how the two British comedians got together and started their partnership. Like the Spike Milligan book I reviewed on Monday, it's peppered with the big names that made British comedy of the time: David Frost, John Cleese, Dick Emery, Tommy Docherty, Max Wall...but where it excels is in the wonderful recapturing of what made The Two Ronnies work: those amazing sketches. This is a very funny book not only because it reprints dozens of those classic sketches and references dozens more. Visual or TV comedy on the printed page is often tough to pull off, so Corbett was smart in teaming with a proven comedy and book writer to help him translate and put into context this tricky aspect of writing a comedy book. Corbett/Nobbs sidestep the problems easily and gracefully: the sketch transcripts are integrated into discussions of the physical and historical evolution of the show, and even the non-transcripted reminiscences are fully developed so you laugh at the comedy even without reading its actual words. It's a fast read but with a good deal more history and scope than, say, the Billie Piper book, and unlike hers, it has a sad air of being a completed story as it ends with the death of Ronnie B. in 2005. In other words, I bought it for the comedy but I loved it for the friendship: a touching and cheerful story of two entertainment partners who, as far as Ronnie C. tells us and the scuttlebutt in the industry goes, never once had an argument with each other. I know I miss Ronnie B., but the sense of loss and empathy for Ronnie C. at the death of his best friend is amazingly and subtly well-drawn.

Want to buy the book? Well, unlike the previous volumes of Bully's Book Club this week, it's not available on Amazon.com. But you can (all chime in together) order it from overseas from Amazon.co.uk, where it'll set you back about twenty dollars plus five to seven bucks shipping—much less if you can find a used copy from a Marketplace seller who'll ship to America. Seriously, if you started reading this entry and said to yourself, "Self, I sure do remember The Two Ronnies. They were great but I haven't thought about them in years," then pick up this book and reacquaint yourself with the small one with glasses and the big one with glasses.

The best compliment I can give a show business bio is that I come away from this book not only with a great appreciation of The Two Ronnies but a burning desire to see their work again. I was lucky to see many episodes over three days in London, but if you're in the US now, you may not have the same chance. There's not even a current Region 1 DVD release of their work—seriously BBC, get on that right away! Thank the big guy with the glasses in the sky for YouTube however, so sit back and watch Ronnie Corbett impersonate one of the most famous British comic strip characters ever:


Now, anybody remember Dave Allen? What I wouldn't give to see his shows again...