Old Spoofs of TV Series - why was the name often changed?

That would still work today!

The Two Ronnies parody of TOTP was called Plop of the Flops.

"Big Momma":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi8PU9lgz5E


"Status Who":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq2OHOyJHnY&feature=related

I always liked the idea of 'Grinding Nemo', as mentioned in Frasier.

That Two Ronnies' 'answering the question before last' sketch is one of my favourite bits of comedy of all time. They don't make 'em like they used to.

IIRC the writer of that sketch was David Renwick, who later wrote One Foot in The Grave

David Renwick wrote quite a few Two Ronnies sketches as well as this one.

The Two Ronnies was written by many writers, it had quite an open house policy (although Ronnie B wrote quite a bit under the name Gerald Whiley). The same with Not The Nine o Clock News and Weekending. All of which produced many writers who went on to bigger and better things.

David Renwick did indeed write the 'answering the question before last' sketch., as well as half of Ronnie Corbett's monologues (the rest of the monologues being written by Spike Mullins).

The idea for the Two Ronnies skit came after David had watched an edition of Mastermind where Magnus Magnusson had almost given way the answer whilst asking a contestant a question. He wrote it but wasn't happy with it at first and so binned it, then had second thoughts and retrieved it from the bin - just as well or we would all have been deprived of that comic masterpiece. Magnus himself in his book on Mastermind described the Two Ronnies sketch as being 'in a class by itself".

The reason for Ronnie Barker using the Gerald Wiley pseudonym was so that the sketches he submitted could be considered on merit and not because he was one of the stars of the show. To keep the pretence going, he even used a different typewriter when writing the GW scripts.

A little snippet which you may or may not know: the musical numbers in the Two Ronnies were all recorded prior to the studio recording, then played back to the audience when the episodes were being recorded. A similar technique was also used for the first Kenny Everett BBC series and his 1981 Christmas special.

It is interesting to hear about the way The Two Ronnies musical sketches were played back to the audience later. I wonder if all the regular Two Ronnies sketches had canned laughter or a real audience. I would be really interested in finding out which comedy series had real audiences.

The BBC have never used "canned" laughter. They may play scenes to an audience and even enhance a reaction they expected to be greater; but "canned" laughter is just an audio track of an audience that isn't reacting to the actual show - like you'd hear in a cartoon like the Flintstones or Top Cat.

Then Life of Riley fooled me in that regard.

David

What about "last of the summer wine"?

Partly or fully assembled recordings of the show are played back before an audience.

I'm pretty sure I just said that a few minutes ago.

There is and has been no canned laughter on the BBC.