The Two Ronnies was a BBC television comedy sketch show created by Bill Cotton for the BBC, which aired on BBC1 from 1971 to 1987. It featured the double act of Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett, the "Two Ronnies" of the title. The show was based on the complementary personalities of Barker and Corbett, who never became an exclusive pairing, but continued to work independently in television outside of the editions of the Two Ronnies. The show was produced annually between 1971 and 1987. It had many notable writers including Ray Alan, John Cleese, Barry Cryer, Spike Milligan, David Nobbs, David Renwick, Eric Idle, John Sullivan, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Laurie Rowley. In addition, Barker used the pseudonym Gerald Wiley when writing sketches.
The show featured comic sketches in which Barker and Corbett appeared both together and separately, with various additions giving the programme the feeling of a variety show. The sketches often involved complex word-play, much of it written by Barker, who also liked to parody officialdom and establishment figures, as well as eccentrics. In addition to their regular TV series, the Ronnies also made a number of Christmas specials and telemovies, the best known of which being Futtock's End, The Picnic and By The Sea.
In common with similar British productions of the time, The Ronnie's humour included healthy doses of innuendo and the occasional baring of a starlet's knickers, particularly during the "serial" segments such Death Can Be Fatal. Full-figure lingerie scenes were much rarer than in The Benny Hill Show, but young female extras appeared in their underwear on occasion throughout the Seventies and early Eighties.
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