Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker in 2005
Credit: BBC
Ronnie Corbett said “there was never a cross word” with Ronnie Barker, during four decades of what he called a close and “very British friendship”. Barker described their partnership as “even more amicable than a marriage – wedlock without the bad patches”. During the heyday of The Two Ronnies, which was first transmitted on April 10 1971, more than 20 million viewers regularly tuned in every Saturday night; it was more national institution than television show.
The two men, both christened Ronald, met in London in 1963, when Corbett was a part-time barman at the Buckstone Club in Suffolk Street, near the Haymarket Theatre, a basement drinking hole where stars such as Sean Connery and John Gielgud would hang out. Corbett, who had previously worked with Barker’s stage manager wife Joy Tubb, was in the process of seeking new acting roles at the time he served Barker, then playing a roly-poly French gangster in the musical Irma La Douce, a lunchtime drink.