Singular appeal

CELEBRITY pals love Ronnie Corbett, but the pint sized comic is still at a loss to explain his appeal after all these years. “People laugh when I arrive, without my even having to say a joke,” he says.

“There is, I suppose, something comic in the way I speak and move.”

He celebrated his 80th birthday this month, and the BBC hasn’t let the landmark event go unnoticed.

The documentary Being Ronnie Corbett charts the comedian’s long career and features the man himself, as well as many fellow comics who admire him.

Ronald Balfour Corbett was born on December 4, 1930, in Edinburgh. The baker’s son caught the showbiz bug after appearing in a pantomime at 16, but first served in the Royal Air Force as a commissioned officer during his National Service.

He later worked as a storeman and a bar manager to make ends meet, before moving to London in 1951 to further his showbiz career.

Corbett became Danny La Rue’s straight man and later landed a regular stint on BBC TV’s popular children’s show Crackerjack.

In 1966, David Frost asked him to join The Frost Report, where he met Ronnie Barker. Their on-screen chemistry proved so successful that their subsequent series, The Two Ronnies, ran from 1971 to 1987.

After Barker’s retirement, Corbett appeared in cabaret, in the Ray Cooney farce Out of Order and Fierce Creatures with old colleague, John Cleese.

He also had his own sitcom, Sorry!, which ran for seven years, and featured in a variety of TV programmes, including The Ronnie Corbett Show and The Ben Elton Show.

Corbett, a quintessentially British comedian, failed to crack the US like Eddie Izzard or Ricky Gervais, but his skills did not go unnoticed by one major US talent.

Director John Landis was such as fan of The Two Ronnies he wanted Barker to play a butler in Trading Places.

While that part eventually went to Denholm Elliott, Landis finally got to work with Corbett on this year’s black comedy, Burke and Hare.

Co-star Simon Pegg was full of praise for Corbett. “Ronnie’s a really good actor,” he explained recently. “He’s never been given a serious role, which I think he could do eminently.”

Those popping up in the Corbett tribute include Miranda Hart, Rob Brydon, Stephen Merchant, Bill Bailey, Matt Lucas, David Walliams, Catherine Tate, Reece Shearsmith, Bruce Forsyth, Michael Palin, Ben Miller, Jessica Hynes, Jon Culshaw, Kevin Bishop, Tamsin Greig and Stephen K Amos.

STREET Market Chefs arrive in York with a slight change to the programme’s format. This one sees RAF aircraftmen James Wilmot and Ian Mark taking on the challenge.

Both men are used to serving up food for more than 1,200 people each week at RAF Linton-on-Ouse, just outside the city.

Judging their dishes will be Yorkshire Life magazine’s food consultant Annie Stirk, local TV presenter Pam Royle, and Andrew Pern, the Michelin-starred chef at the Star Inn, at Harome, in North Yorkshire.

Ian and James have a set amount of time each to rustle up such mouth-watering delights as fillet of pork with langoustine tails, roast pork fillet stuffed with apples and cranberries, rhubarb and vanilla souffle and chocolate mint parfait.

DEMOLITION: The Unsinkable Ship is a documentary about the complex decommissioning and sinking of the USNS General Hoyt S Vandenberg, a 40-year-old US naval ship that was designed to be unsinkable.

The ship had an illustrious military history, having entered service during the Second World War when it was used for a number of operations, including taking Holocaust survivors to the US. It’s since helped track Nasa space missions and spied on Russian missile launches during the Cold War. But for the past 20 years it’s been rusting in a Virginian river.

Now, CDI (Controlled Demolition Incorporated) are aiming to make the Vandenberg part of the world’s second largest artificial reef – but it seems the vessel won’t go down without a fight.