Origins
Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett met for the first time at the Buckstone Club in the Haymarket, London, where Ronnie Corbett was serving drinks between acting jobs. They were invited by David Frost to appear in his new show, The Frost Report, with John Cleese, but the pair's big break came when they filled-in for a few minutes during a technical hitch at an awards ceremony in 1970. In the audience was Bill Cotton, the Head of Light Entertainment for the BBC, and Sir Paul Fox, the Controller of BBC One. Cotton was so impressed by the duo that he turned to Fox and asked "How would you like those two on your network?". As a result, Barker and Corbett were given their own show by the BBC. The programme quickly became one of the most successful and long running light entertainment shows on British television, broadcast at the prime-time slot of 8.00 pm on a Saturday night, and 20 million viewers a show at its peak.
Read more about this topic: The Two Ronnies
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)