How Ronnie Corbett Became A Comedy Giant
Ronnie Corbett's on-screen chemistry with Ronnie Barker in The Two Ronnies made them household names - but their big TV break came about thanks to an accident.
The award-winning show saw the Scottish-born entertainer perform sketches and musical numbers with Barker for 16 years.
"We had a certain kind of material that was not dangerously esoteric. It's difficult to be clean and clever at the same time, but a lot of our stuff was," Corbett once said.
Episodes of the show, which ran from 1971 to 1987, ended with the pair saying: "It's goodnight from me ... and it's goodnight from him."
The series included the Four Candles sketch which was once voted the funniest comedy moment of the 1970s.
Their place in comedy history was sealed by the way they handled a technical fault at the BAFTA awards.
As hosts of the ceremony they were forced to fill in unscripted for some minutes and high-ranking BBC executives immediately signed them up.
Ronald Balfour Corbett was born in Edinburgh on 4 December, 1930, and took to the stage from an early age, featuring in a church panto at 15.
After a move to London doing intimate revues and running the bar at a club, he was spotted by David Frost who invited him to join Barker and John Cleese in The Frost Report, one of the most influential TV shows of the 1960s.
"David turned my life around," Corbett said later.
When on his own, Corbett specialised in delivering long jokes from a huge armchair with his legs dangling in the air.
His illustrious career also included stints in the theatre and a starring role in TV sitcom Sorry!. He also recorded An Audience With... for ITV.
The veteran comic also featured in Cleese's follow-up to A Fish Called Wanda, Fierce Creatures, as well as the 1967 spoof version of Casino Royale.
In 2012 he received a CBE from the Queen at Buckingham Palace for his services to charity - including the RNLI and the Variety Club - and the entertainment industry.
