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HIDDEN ARCHIVE: The Twelve Ronnies
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| First published May 2000 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Twelve Ronnies | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Radio comedy should be our saviour. In a comedy world where TV is increasingly letting us down, either through budget constraints, egotistical performers/producers and a general lack of talent from all concerned, and live comedy is being pissed up against a wall by men in leather jackets and those bloody mobile phone headsets which allow the wearer to wank all over us while keeping in touch with head office, the humble wireless should be providing the meat of comedy. Sadly, it would appear that those in charge of preparing radio light entertainment simply want a quiet life and pepper our schedules with easily-digestable tedium these days. This means that neat little curios like The Twelve Ronnies don't get any further than the pilot stage. These days comedy seems to be heading in a rather awkward direction. Too many performers seem embarrassed by the idea of doing stuff under a comedy banner and all too often mold their output to look hazy and meandering, taking a cue from The Day Today's naturalistic approach but forgetting to do so with any kind of verve or enthusiasm, or a good script. You're left with the feeling that they're attempting to paper over the cracks in a weak script by affecting an air of 'I'm being interesting...'. Spirited, enthusiastic delivery is sytematically replaced by joyless, dull 'dark' meandering devoid of soul or indeed comedy. There's very little of the densely-written jovial 'Ta da da da da COMEDY!!!' spirit of the eighties left.
Kevin Eldon sits neatly between the two extremes. He has often proven that he can handle (and make gold of) a bad 'naturalistic' comedy script but luckily isn't afraid to get off the party-line high horse and play screaming babbling madmen if he's in the mood to do so. It's impossible to put into words what Eldon is capable of doing with a comedy line. He claims not to be a collector of comedy shows, idly dismissing the activities of those who do, yet his mind is ticking over with every comedy voice uttered in jest over the past forty years. When he's given free reign to inflict this soupy historical mess of voices on others there's no stopping him. Think of Packing Them In's 'Kevin Boyle', Fist Of Fun's 'Simon Quinlank' (or 'Rod Hull') or The Sunday Show's jaw-dropping astrologer character. Manic Eldon is always best, spitting comedy at the audience with vigour. 
Eldon and Roche are our main hosts, Roche, an ineffectual sub-Henry Normal drip, bullied and brow-beaten by Eldon's persona who takes total dictatorial charge of the situation. Eldon introduces the actors, whom he despises ('the affected imbeciles') and takes perverse delight in making them say nasty things about themselves. This is a genuine personal bugbear of Eldon who, having spent more time than he cares to remember in casting sessions with uppity actors who genuinely believe the world owes them a living, relished the change for revenge. Eldon urges his slower protégé Roche to hurl abuse at the actors too, resulting in a faintly Cook & Moorish double-act situation. Roche's meek character keen to impress his unhinged mentor but only highlighting his meekitude. The pair have an odd conversational chemistry - otherwise banal exchanges are stretched into quick-fire silly-season blethers ('I don't really care, do you?'/'No I don't really care'/'I don't'/'Don''t you?'/'No I don't really care') and this lunacy punctuates the show. Highlighting the worries of writing 'proper punchlines', Eldon informs the audience that when a sketch has run its natural course they will hear a sound effect. This turns out to be a horn followed by the ensemble laughing weakly. Okay, so the mere mention of punchline-avoidance brings out the yawning Python fan in all of us, but when you actually hear the sound effect it ceases to matter as it's hilarious. The actual sketch material is pleasant and dry; highlights being 'The Indignant Minstrel' (who loses it with the object of his humorous ditty: 'You could be the last Panda/Or living in Rwanda...so for god's sake, try and get things into some sort of perspective, will you?') and a great piece about how fantastically sensitive the radio mics are, picking up flies buzzing, death-watch beetles 'tap tappity tapping' and, finally, Prince Phillip farting ('Fantastically sensitive!' / 'Loudmouthed Greek more like' / 'No ha ha ha, I meant the mics...'). Eldon's monologues are hilarious, in particular 'Banato – Island Man' which we'll reproduce here since the BBC didn't want it:
It's not all perfection obviously - a convoluted sketch about a new invention which allows one to imitate the voices of famous singers comes across as just a convenient way of shoehorning in some quick impressions (Bowie doing 'Grand Old Duke Of York' sounds class though), while a fake book discussion show ('Literally Literary') falls down by being an unintentionally rewritten Python sketch. It does however save itself at the end by flying sideways up its own arse at the end, prompting producer Jane Berthoud to make a voice-from-the-box cameo to complain that it doesn't make sense. With Eldon and Roche in the box sorting things out, the actors attempt a mutiny of the show, insisting that they can continue without the writers. Their attempts are monosyllabic and fruitless but the actors assume they've done well, backslapping like fools. A few sketches attempt to turn the whole sketch-writing premise on its head. 'That was great, that last sketch', bleats Eldon with the enthusiasm of a teenager, 'That had everything a radio sketch should have - a door, two slightly posh men and then another door...' The following is probably as post-modern as The Twelve Ronnies gets.
Later in the show they do another sketch in the same vein, this time in the style of Python's 'Cheese Shop'. This borders on cynicism but has some great takes on the holes in the traditional sketch format being parodied ('Odd that your wife vaccuums shelves, but I digress...'). Cashmore's way-over-the-top Cleese is also a nice contrast to Eldon's whimpering Palin. Eldon had nothing to prove with this radio show. He wasn't trying to break into TV or acquire an extra 'thing' on his CV to fool producers with. He just did it for a laugh, and it shows. It's funny. It's well-intentioned and fab. The Twelve Ronnies is enthusiastically written and excellently performed. The BBC obviously disagreed and turned it down - a decision which caused producer Jane Berthoud to fly into an uncontrollable rage at those responsible. (Good for her. Not many producers left who'd care enough to do that. More rage please, everyone...). Radio 4 hasn't produced anything 'new' to match it in the three years since it was recorded. If it had been allowed a full series, the show would have papered effortlessly over its less successful strands and acquired a regular devoted audience (both in the listenership and in the Radio Theatre sessions). Instead, we got a load of shit from Dan & Nick, two dickbrained sub-comedians who pun their way through naff half hours of nothing in search of a TV contract. Thank you, the BBC.
After the show was rejected, Kevin Eldon pondered on rewriting it 'with a bit less blah' and perhaps doing it again through an independent company. Nothing came of this. Talkback apparently offered him the chance to do his own sitcom pilot: ('If I did, I'd accept nothing less than Ted', he announced at the time.) Eldon contributed several sketches to BBC2's Comedy Nation (his segments produced by Jane Berthoud and featuring him and Sally Phillips). He also contributed sketches to Smack The Pony and appeared in his own 15-minute outing for Channel 4 as poet 'Paul Hamilton' (originally part of 'Cluub Z'). He cameoed once again with Lee & Herring in This Morning With Richard Not Judy; in Chris Morris' Radio One show Blue Jam, and the well-intentioned-but-generally-not-very-good-when-it-all-comes-down-to-it Linehan & Matthews vehicle Big Train. There was also the walk-on; walk-off in Hippies, and the only funny line in I'm Alan Partridge ('Bang and Olufson'/'Oh! Ha ha ha ha...') At the time of writing he is as manic as ever in Radio 4's Yes Sir I Can Boogie (Does He Take Sugar with laffs) and somewhat wasted in the disappointing Blue Jam TV transfer Jam which is about as far away from the eyebrow-raising enthusiasm of The Twelve Ronnies as you can get. All very 'dark' but not nearly as scary, sexy or breathtakingly funny as the sight of him dressed in pink, sporting a ridiculous west-country accent and dancing provocatively to 'Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)' on The Sunday Show. Look to the skies, Kev...
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