Is 'The Two Ninnies' the funniest deconstruction of a comedy show ever?

[Sydward Lartle]

The Two Ninnies - Not the Nine O'Clock News (1982)

I actually really like the Two Ronnies, and I think it's scandalous how their extensive body of work for the BBC is so often reduced to just obvious choices like 'Four Candles' or 'Nuts M'Lord' when there were so many absolutely first-class solid gold sketches in their programmes that get ignored.

However... this parody made me fall off the settee laughing first time I saw it as part of the BBC2 Not the Nine O'Clock News compilations back in 1995, and even just thinking about it as I go about my daily business is guaranteed to have me giggling like an idiot. For me, this was the moment - never mind their one-sketch contribution to the Funny Side of Christmas the same year - that demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that Smith and Jones would be able to carry a credible career in television comedy as a double act after NTNOCN finished.

It's just bloody flawless, all the way through. It absolutely nails the Two Ronnies' mannerisms, their performing style, the kind of music they used, the jolliness of their musical numbers, the lyrical conceits, the wordplay and even (much as I hate to say this) the occasional self-righteousness of Ronnie Barker. Ben Elton said in an essentially affectionate and warm-hearted interview that there was a touch of the Captain Mainwarings about Ronnie Barker, and that side of him seems to have come to a head with Barker's incandescent response to this sketch - right down to the letter he sent to series producer John Lloyd describing it as 'excrement'.

If memory serves, 1982 was a bit of a precarious time for the Two Ronnies, because the BBC weren't happy about the Barker-penned silent comedy they'd made that year, By the Sea. If memory serves, it was very much a pet project for Barker, his attempt at capturing the world of saucy seaside postcards (of which he was a collector, of course) on film, but he was over-indulged by the BBC and the first edit of the film was almost feature length and deemed unsuitable for broadcast. It was cut down to 55m, and this is the version that was broadcast, but according to Bob McCabe's book on Barker, some BBC gonk wanted to trim it down to 25m but Barker threatened to leave the corporation if that happened. So maybe it wasn't the best of circumstances for a group of young upstarts to take a sketch that was written by a disgruntled former Two Ronnies scribe and give Barker and Corbett an affectionate roasting. Plus, I think Barker had made some less-than-complimentary remarks about the new breed of comedy writers and performers, which was all grist to the mill.

Joke upon joke, of course, Peter Brewis ended up working for the Two Ronnies!

[non capisco]

"I spend all day just crawling through the grass/Thistles in me hair and bracken up me anus" gets me every time.

There is a brutal attention to detail that makes The Two Ninnies a gift that keeps giving, for sure. I've watched it a thousand times and I've only just spotted the disparity in size between the two sets of bi-naci-nocul-arse.

I think the thrill of it remains that it's not at all affectionate. The trombone even sounds witheringly sarcastic. I have a huge amount of affection for the Ronnies as well but I was blown away when I first saw this. Its sheer ill will towards another BBC show is still kind of breathtaking. It helps that I always disliked the musical numbers on The Two Ronnies. They were indeed always marching up and down upon the spot spot spot.

[non capisco]

And for all its caustic taking aim they actually bothered to write a cohesive comedy song full of wordplay on a birdwatching theme. "I'm a raven maniac/Got half a dozen chicks in me bivouac". And the coup de grace is that they're incongruously dressed as Beefeaters. It really is perfect.

[the science eel]

Couldn't they afford to dress up some of the crew as beefeaters too and have 'em prancing around behind them? It just looks cheap.

[Absorb the anus burn]

End Of Part One did it better than anybody else.......(The best TV parody show ever....?)

[Brundle-Fly]

Couldn't they afford to dress up some of the crew as beefeaters too and have 'em prancing around behind them? It just looks cheap.

That's hardly the point.  The Two Ronnies finales used to cost a mint by BBC production values. They were clearly sending this up too because they were probably peeved that one Ronnie B saucy musical homage would pay for two episodes of NTNON

[non capisco]

I love the deliberately shit attempt to make Griff as Corbett look shorter by having him stand slightly further back.

[the science eel]

That's hardly the point.  The Two Ronnies finales used to cost a mint by BBC production values. They were clearly sending this up too because they were probably peeved that one Ronnie B saucy musical homage would pay for two episodes of NTNON

Clearly.

[Sydward Lartle]

End Of Part One did it better than anybody else.......(The best TV parody show ever....?)

I wish you hadn't mentioned that. A few years ago now, I watched both series of End of Part One in their entirety, and whilst there were a few bright moments scattered throughout (most of which weren't even the television parodies, which tended to be of the "aren't we clever to have spotted this cliché" variety), I found most of it absolutely interminable. Marshall and Renwick were undeniably talented writers, but for me, they really only found their mojo with Whoops Apocalypse a couple of years later, and the Steam Video Company, by rights, should have ran for at least three series.

[Brundle-Fly]

Clearly.

Yes. Make a note of that.

[Sydward Lartle]

Couldn't they afford to dress up some of the crew as beefeaters too and have 'em prancing around behind them? It just looks cheap.

I'd rather have seen several Pamela Stephensons doing high kicks and wiggling her arse, to be honest.

By the way, here's why Mel and Griff were dressed as beefeaters. There was a reason to it, it wasn't LOLRANDOM.

[non capisco]

I wasn't saying it's LOLRANDOM but it is incongruous to the song they're singing. It's yet another layer of disdain. It really is a vicious sketch and that's why we're talking about it all these years later.

[Sydward Lartle]

Another sketch from that series that still has the power to reduce me to hysterics is Rowan Atkinson as the French weirdo who calls St Paul's Cathedral 'St Paul's titty', the Post Office tower 'the Post Office prick' and Nelson's Column 'Nelson's willy'. It's just childhood vulgarity, admittedly, but the joy is in the delivery. You could say the same thing about lots of Derek and Clive.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Ben Elton said in an essentially affectionate and warm-hearted interview that there was a touch of the Captain Mainwarings about Ronnie Barker, and that side of him seems to have come to a head with Barker's incandescent response to this sketch - right down to the letter he sent to series producer John Lloyd describing it as 'excrement'.

I find it incongruous that Ronnie Barker would even have been watching Not The Nine O'Clock News.  He seemed a grandfatherly sort of figure that you'd expect to stick to stuff like Terry & June and Last of the Summer Wine.

[Glebe]

Nothing to add, except that it's one of the great take-offs. I love Mel doing that little 'look over to the writer/producer' thing that Ronnie B used to do after a desk gag went down well.

[Norton Canes]

'By The Sea' is brilliant, I could easily watch a feature-length version.

[shiftwork2]

Ronnie Barker was a very vocal critic of alternative comedy around this time.  'It's an alternative to comedy' or some such.  Maybe those comments were provoked by this sketch, or perhaps his views invited the Two Ninnies.

[Cuellar]

It's one of those things that I remember as having caused me to weep with laughter (funnily enough another of these moments was a Ronnie Barker sketch). The 'through the grass/up my anus' misdirect especially. And how it just descends from innuendo to outright rudeness; 'titting up and down on the willy bum bum', 'with a bum, tit, how's your father, WOOPS tickle a dildo'.

[Ignatius_S]

Ronnie Barker was a very vocal critic of alternative comedy around this time.  'It's an alternative to comedy' or some such.  Maybe those comments were provoked by this sketch, or perhaps his views invited the Two Ninnies.

I quite like it but don't think it's brilliant and found the law of diminishing returns sets it after repeat viewings – and answer to the question is no.

Ronnie Barker was a very vocal critic of alternative comedy around this time.  'It's an alternative to comedy' or some such.  Maybe those comments were provoked by this sketch, or perhaps his views invited the Two Ninnies.

Although it's been said of Barker, I don't think there's been a huge amount of evidence to indicate it. When I think about it, Barker wasn't one to cultivate the press and on television interviews, always looked uncomfortable and him being a very vocal anything I don't feel runs true.

It's been suggested that Barker's comments led to the sketch, but think that's bunk. IIRC, NTNON had parodied The Two Ronnies before, but the driving force of The Two Ninnies was one of its writers. As mentioned above, Brewis wrote the song, but the material that preceded it was penned by someone who wrote for The Two Ronnies and the usual explanation is that he was extracting some revenge.

According to John Lloyd, he wasn't very keen on The Two Ninnies sketch and expressed a 'are you really sure that you want to perform this? You might regret it later' feeling. I can't recall which interview it was, but seem to remember Griff Rhys Jones agreeing with the latter (IIRC) and that they thought they were being rather daring, but much later on felt it a little unfair.

Jones in this interview talked about the sketch and what was the result when he met Barker:

I only met Ronnie Barker once, 25 years ago, when he was already the king of television comedy. It was at a "light entertainment party". (A misnomer of an event.) I had recently been in a sketch called "The Two Ninnies" on Not the Nine O'Clock News. This rather crude lampoon had gratuitously, unfairly and quite amusingly savaged the bespectacled duo (they had become the sacred cows of the BBC comedy department, so I suppose our excuse was that we resented it). John Lloyd, the producer, claimed that it was really a "hommage" last week. Well if it was "un hommage" it was one that annoyed Mr Barker.

I was just trying to leave the party under a table of halved scotch eggs when he spotted me and, in a curious embrace, half hug, half throttle, presented me to a group of men in pale grey shoes and wide lapels. "Here he is!" he said grimly, but stopped there. He was too generous or too professional to do much more than tweak me. I was about to play Fancourt Babberley in Charley's Aunt. So he wished me luck. He had once played the part of the butler in the same play in rep at the Oxford Playhouse. "There is a laugh on every entrance and there are 78 entrances," he said. He got them all, I'm sure.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3620242/Its-like-being-in-a-marriage-except-that-you-always-end-up-in-bed-together.html

[Autopsy Turvey]

Love the song of course, and the repetition of 'breasts' and/or 'testicles', but the line "I shan't be getting any laughs because he writes most of the scripts and makes sure I get all the crappy bits" was demonstrable hooey, mean-spirited flimflam and erroneous humbug.

[Ignatius_S]

Love the song of course, and the repetition of 'breasts' and/or 'testicles', but the line "I shan't be getting any laughs because he writes most of the scripts and makes sure I get all the crappy bits" was demonstrable hooey, mean-spirited flimflam and erroneous humbug.

I love that phrasing - and humbug really should be used more.

[Brundle-Fly]

When the first series of Alas Smith & Jones came out I vaguely remember some blurb saying "they were the new Two Ronnies".  Barker commented in the press that 'The Two Ronnies are very much still here and performing new material, so "the new Two Ronnies" are actually The Two Ronnies!'

[Bingo Fury]

I was always on the side of the NTNOCN team on this one, as I felt they were justified in calling out the family-friendly, smut-free Ronnies on their long history of double-entendres while the new "alternative" comedians were getting pilloried for allegedly peddling filth.

Love the song of course, and the repetition of 'breasts' and/or 'testicles', but the line "I shan't be getting any laughs because he writes most of the scripts and makes sure I get all the crappy bits" was demonstrable hooey, mean-spirited flimflam and erroneous humbug.

That, however, was uncalled-for.

[Sydward Lartle]

demonstrable hooey, mean-spirited flimflam

I wondered what Baby Herman had been doing in the dead years following his triumph in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

[the science eel]

Anyway - to answer your question, this is funnier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2z-AdzgKjY

[Jumble Cashback]

Since nobody's mentioned it so far:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rvvsIO568x8

[trabuch]

Anyway - to answer your question, this is funnier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2z-AdzgKjY

Yes it is - and even more so.

[3D]

I'd rather have seen several Pamela Stephensons doing high kicks and wiggling her arse, to be honest.

Or advertising Canon cameras in hot pants.

[kngen]

And for all its caustic taking aim they actually bothered to write a cohesive comedy song full of wordplay on a birdwatching theme. "I'm a raven maniac/Got half a dozen chicks in me bivouac".

Yeah, that joke and the 'muffled titter' didn't register with me until years later. Fantastic writing.

I think I said this in my very first post to CaB many, many years ago, but I watched this at the time with my parents, and my father said that it was clearly a shot back at Ronnie Barker, because he'd referred to NTNOCN as 'smut' in one of his broadsides at modern comedy at the time. I've yet to find any evidence of that though, and it was dismissed by several Cabbers when I posted it. so who the fuck knows?

I seem to remember the audience being a lot more reactive to it, maybe not on the original broadcast but in the audio version for The Memory Kinda Lingers - I remember particularly enjoying a great whoop from the studio audience when it goes into the double and triple time bits at the end. Could be a different audio mix, or just my memory playing tricks.

[HappyTree]

Paul Whitehouse as Sarah Millican doing the stop starting thing from Jim Moir as Vic Reeves as Davey Stott. Brilliant.

Two Ninnies, rubbish. It's well done, observed and performed. But I hate the original musical numbers so much that this parody is only more of the same to me. I never liked Smith & Jones's own musical numbers. Or any musical guests on comedy shows*. One thing that's best left in the past.


*With the sole exception of Motorhead on The Young Ones which was totally in keeping.