"Four Candles?" "Fork Handles!"
Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett met for the first time at the Buckstone Club in the Haymarket, London, where Ronnie Corbett was bartending 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 then Head of Light Entertainment for the BBC, and Sir Paul Fox, the Controller of BBC1. 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 became one of the most successful and long running light entertainment shows on British TV, with the enviable prime-time slot of 8 p.m. on a Saturday night, and at its peak was watched by 22 million viewers per show and they aired on from 1971 to 1987.
John and Shane can barely contain their laughter while listening back to their parody of Mastermind, here with Barker as "Magnus Magnusson", Corbett as a contestant named Charlie Smithers, whose specialist subject was "answering the question before last".
