Book Review: Remembering Ronnie Barker
Published: Monday 15th August 2011
A review of 'Remembering Ronnie Barker', a book by Richard Webber.
Hugely talented and widely adored he may have been, but it's hard not to feel the life of Ronnie Barker offers little meat for a biographer. Whereas most post-war comics seem to have been a simmering mass of neuroses and vices, the most acclaimed of The Two Ronnies seems to have been resolutely professional and - Godammit! - actually very nice throughout his forty year career. He was even sensible enough to retire before he was sixty.
In truth, even had Barker been a younger healthier man in the late 1980s, it was undoubtedly a good time to bow out anyway. It's difficult to imagine The Two Ronnies' variety performances or mini movies such as the arguably sexist The Worm That Turned lasting into the 90s. His two greatest sitcom triumphs Open All Hours and Porridge had already ended before he retired and it's hard to imagine he would have found any good vehicles of the calibre to replace them: even in the 80s, his later sitcom efforts The Magnificent Evans and Clarence flopped.
However, this is a fitting tribute to a genuine comedy legend. Webber is particularly strong on Barker's earlier career, meticulously covering every early rep performance, every appearance on The Rag Trade or The Navy Lark and every cameo in The Avengers, in full.
Oddly, he does rather neglect Barker's later, more successful and best remembered career segments. In an eighteen chapter book, Porridge and Open All Hours are covered in one chapter (perhaps because Webber has already written a book about Porridge) while the twelve series of The Two Ronnies are covered in just two.
Still, it's not all hero worship: some of the script frustrations during The Two Ronnies are explored, as is Barker's unease at appearing as himself on screen. Whereas Ronnie Corbett was happy to deliver rambling monologues as himself, Ronnie B always had to be in character. The closest we ever got to seeing the real Barker was as an absurdly cheery version during the opening and closing "news" segments on The Two Ronnies.
But this is a fair, if unbalanced in scope, tribute to a hardworking and decent post-war comedy legend.
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