Ronnie Barker

Book review: All I Ever Wrote, Ronnie Barker

Timeless comedy sketches from a dazzling wordsmith.

Ronnie Barker's paedophile son earns huge royalties

Pervert Adam Barker is equal shareholder in Handles For Forks which distributes his late dad's work.

Ronnie Barker - in profile

This weekend we're looking at the work of one of Britain's greatest comedy greats.

Radio Times review

Writer Roy Clarke's revisiting of the beloved Ronnie Barker vehicle is completely timeless, which is doubtless part of its appeal. There are no crude 21st-century technological innovations in that little corner shop in Yorkshire, it could be set in any year from the 1930s.

There's also a pervading feeling of a cosy community of the type that probably either doesn't exist or never did exist, as a series of oddballs passes through the doors of Arkwright's stores. Mrs Dawlish (Vicki Pepperdine) is the comedy nuisance here, a snobby local who's taken aback that such an old-fashioned corner shop is still flourishing.

But there are signs that Granville (David Jason) is modernising - he wants to open a coffee shop!

First class! The Two Ronnies get their own stamps

Comedians Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett among those honoured in the latest series of stamps from the Royal Mail.

Radio Times review

A wildly successful pilot last Christmas has inevitably resulted in a series of the refreshed, fuzzily nostalgic version of Ronnie Barker's beloved sitcom. Not that much has changed in that Yorkshire corner shop since 1976.

Yes, hapless nephew Granville (David Jason) is now in charge, but the jokes are still pretty much the same as they ever were, with gags about women's boobs ("How well you are... both looking"), which everyone finds inherently hilarious, pratfalls, men being caught in their underpants and nudge-nudge lines such as "I think I may have dislocated my valuables." Which is doubtless why audiences love it.

In the opening episode it's Valentine's Day and Granville has problems with a new money belt.

Ronnie Corbett says he still misses Ronnie Barker

Ronnie Corbett has admitted he still misses Ronnie Barker almost a decade after his death.

The first of three programmes looking at the enduring affection for Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais's classic prison sitcom Porridge. Eric Idle, Keith Allen, David Walliams, Ronnie Corbett and Ian McShane join together in celebration of Ronnie Barker's iconic lag Norman Stanley Fletcher beneath a voiceover from former co-star David Jason. La Frenais and Clement dissect their own rather sterling work while original locations are visited, as is the little-known story of how the show very nearly never reached the screen.

Porridge: the greatest ever British sitcom?

In the comedy's 40th year, Gabriel Tate argues that putting Ronnie Barker in a prison cell was a stroke of genius.