A thoroughly sad day, we will never see his like again. The Guardian website have done a very impressive tribute and have put up some of his classic monologues. They also make mention of The Two Ronnies Christmas Sketchbook. I can't believe he's gone, you know people don't live forever but when you see somebody you've grown up watching, and really like & admire, die it just shocks you to the core.
Very sad news. Ronnie was a comedy genius in the true sense of the word, The Two Ronnies was intellectual comedy and I really enjoyed Sketchbook. But I could see Ronnie looked troubled when presenting the links.
Hopefully the Christmas special will go ahead - it's part of what makes the festive season. RIP Ronnie.
I normally wouldn't join in an obit thread, but this one's different.
Genius is not a word to be used lightly, but never was it more appropriate. I sense that I'm not the only one who felt quite emotional listening to the breaking news this morning.
Today I've heard a few people liken Ronnie Barker to Morcambe and Wise in terms of his comic talent, but that's wrong - he was so much better than that. Not only as a first rate - I think our best - comic actor, but he also proved himself in drama both at the start and end of his career. He was a prolific writer of genuinely funny material, but his delivery and timing were perfect no matter who wrote the script.
Above all else, he was a gentleman and a genuinely nice person. One of my most treasured memories is spending a lunch break sat on a wall at Llangammarch Wells station in his company. It was in the summer of 1984, and we were filming one of the wedding locations for The Magnificent Evans at the village church. He didn't want to eat with the crew, he wanted to come and talk to the supporting artists, of which there were a dozen or so. He sat down with some sandwiches and a cup of tea and chatted with us about the business and answered all our questions about his career. We'd been primed in advance to bring cameras, as he was quite willing to have his photo taken, and it will be to my everlasting regret now that the picture of Ronnie Barker and me sat together on an old stone wall in mid-Wales (if it still exists) is probably somewhere in the home of my ex wife!
He came over as a very modest, almost humble man. There was nothing about him that you couldn't like, and I think future generations will look back on his work as being definitive in the genre.
So now both Spike Milligan AND the gentleman (Gerald Wiley) have gone to join the Phantom Rasberry Blower of Old London Town, and one can only hope that in the fullness of time there's a line on his gravestone which will read, "It's goodnight from him....!"
