The Two Ronnies: In A Packed Programme Tonight

More outrageous and hilarious news items from the double-act unrivalled on our TV screens. Here are Irish jokes and other non-PC howlers, and 70s jokes about Dennis Healey’s eyebrows and Esther Rantzen's toothbrush and what happened to Telly Savalas at a Hollywood Bowling Alley when he bent down to do up a shoelace, and crossings of course and wedding jokes, like the one about the symphony written entirely by two newly-weds which starts with a roll on the drums, continues with a squeeze on the harmonium, and builds to a big finish on the linoleum. All good clean fun for young and old, delivered dead-pan with a twinkle in the eye by the inimitable Two Ronnies, as they were in those innocent days of yore.


RONNIE BARKER: 'These “news items”, the pick of all those Ronnie Corbett and I have delivered from behind that double desk, have become such a trademark of the show that I cannot imagine starting and finishing in any other way. What a treat, then, to sample them once again in this splendid and rib-tickling selection.’ 


ABOUT THE EDITOR

Ian Davidson is a British scriptwriter who has also acted, directed and produced in television and the theatre from the 1960s. After performing and writing with Michael Palin and Terry Jones at Oxford University – his first BBC writing credit was for That Was the Week That Was in 1963 – he became an actor at The Second City improvisational theatre in Chicago. Returning to the UK, he worked for Ned Sherrin (as a film director) and David Frost, and then began a lifelong association with Barry Humphries as a writer and director. He was Script Editor of The Two Ronnies from 1978–83 and with Peter Vincent wrote seven series of the Ronnie Corbett sitcom Sorry! With Vincent he also wrote for Dave Allen, The Brittas Empire and Comrade Dad. With John Chapman, he wrote French Fields for Thames Television. In 2013, Vincent and Davidson wrote When the Dog Dies for BBC Radio Four, still transmitting.