The Two Ronnies
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40 free The Two Ronnies trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
For sixteen years Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett made The Two Ronnies one of the most watched comedy shows on British television. Its sketches turned on wordplay, misunderstandings and perfectly timed pauses, and the best of them are still quoted decades later. This quiz covers the sketches people remember, led by Four Candles and its muddled shopping list, along with the serials, among them The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town. There are also questions on how the two men met, who wrote for them, the guests who dropped in and what each star did away from the show. It suits anyone who grew up with the show, fans of classic British comedy and quiz setters after a round with reliable answers. Every question comes with a short explanation, so you will pick up a story or two even when you miss.
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Q 01In The Two Ronnies sketch Four Candles, what does the hardware shop customer really want first?
Fork handles
Fork handles, meaning handles for garden forks, is what he wants, but his dropped aitches make the order sound like a request for candles. The shopkeeper duly puts four of them on the counter.
Q 02Barker and Corbett opened and closed every edition of The Two Ronnies sitting at a desk as what?
Newsreaders
Newsreaders gave the shy Barker a mask to hide behind: he found it almost impossible to talk to an audience as himself, so the spoof bulletins kept both men in character.
Q 03Which Goon Show star wrote The Two Ronnies serial The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town?
Spike Milligan
Spike Milligan first planned the story as a TV special for the Goons, but Peter Sellers's Hollywood commitments sank it. The serial's credits named him and 'a Gentleman', who was Ronnie Barker.
Q 04The Two Ronnies' Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town spoofed the hunt for which killer?
Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper is the model for the Phantom, a madman who stalks the streets and stuns or kills members of the upper classes simply by blowing a raspberry at them.
Q 05In which sitcom did Ronnie Barker of The Two Ronnies play jailbird Norman Stanley Fletcher?
Porridge
Porridge takes its title from old slang for a prison sentence, after the breakfast once served in British jails. Barker privately regarded it as the finest work of his career.
Q 06In which sitcom did The Two Ronnies' Ronnie Barker play Arkwright, a stammering, miserly shopkeeper?
Open All Hours
Open All Hours flopped at first: its 1976 run on BBC2 drew low ratings and was not renewed. Repeats on BBC1 then did so well that the BBC ordered a new series in 1980.
Q 07In The Two Ronnies serial The Worm That Turned, who has seized control of a future England?
Women
Women run the England of 2012 in the 1980 spoof, where men keep house in frocks, the Union Jack has become the Union Jill and Big Ben is known as Big Brenda.
Q 08In The Two Ronnies spoof of the quiz Mastermind, what is odd about every reply?
It fits the previous question
It fits the previous question, because Charlie Smithers has chosen answering the question before last as his specialist subject. Each mistimed reply lands as an absurd answer to the next one.
Q 09Whose 1978 exit from the BBC left The Two Ronnies as its flagship light-entertainment show?
Morecambe and Wise
Morecambe and Wise left the top spot to Barker and Corbett, whose show went on to win the fiercely fought Christmas Day ratings battle year after year.
Q 10Which tiny but domineering monarch did Ronnie Corbett play in The Two Ronnies' Phantom Raspberry Blower?
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria bullies her browbeaten son, the Prince of Wales, played by Ronnie Barker. The pairing sent up Edward the Seventh, a recent TV drama starring Timothy West.
Q 11Which towering comedian played the upper-class man beside Barker and Corbett in the 1966 Class sketch?
John Cleese
John Cleese wore a bowler hat beside Barker in a homburg and Corbett in a flat cap, each man looking down on the next. Marty Feldman was one of the two writers behind the sketch.
Q 12Members of which troupe, including Michael Palin and Terry Jones, wrote early Two Ronnies sketches?
Monty Python
Monty Python members gave the early shows a surreal streak, writing sketches in which eccentric people turn comically violent. Four of the six Pythons contributed.
Q 13What did Ronnie Corbett sit in to deliver his rambling solo monologue on The Two Ronnies?
A big easy chair
Q 21Which sitcom co-star of Ronnie Barker blew the raspberries for The Two Ronnies' Phantom Raspberry Blower?
David Jason
David Jason settled an old argument in his 2013 autobiography by confirming that he made the noise. Many accounts had wrongly credited the serial's famous co-writer.
Q 22The Two Ronnies billed its Phantom Raspberry Blower as a Chopper Films production, mocking which horror studio?
Hammer
Hammer was famous for Gothic horrors starring Dracula and Frankenstein, the style that the serial's stalking madman sent up.
Q 23Which name in The Two Ronnies' writing credits was really Ronnie Barker, the author of Four Candles?
Gerald Wiley
A big easy chair made the 5 ft 1 in Corbett look smaller still as he spun one simple joke out over several minutes, wandering off on tangents before a deliberately corny punchline.
Q 14What do Piggy Malone and Charley Farley, heroes of several Two Ronnies serials, do for a living?
Private detectives
Private detectives Piggy (Barker) and Charley (Corbett) first appeared in the 1972 whodunnit Done to Death and came back for three more serials, the last filmed aboard a cruise liner.
Q 15In The Two Ronnies' Four Candles, what does the customer want when the shopkeeper fetches gate letter Ps?
Tins of peas
Tins of peas is all he is after, but he only says so once the weary shopkeeper has climbed a ladder to fetch down the awkward box of gate letters for a second time.
Q 16In which country did Barker and Corbett spend 1979, later making a Two Ronnies series for the Nine Network?
Australia
Australia was a tax move: on a tip from two sitcom writers, both men took their families to Sydney for the year to avoid paying that year's income tax.
Q 17In which Scottish city was Ronnie Corbett of The Two Ronnies born, the son of a master baker?
Edinburgh
Edinburgh was home until national service in the RAF, where Corbett was the shortest commissioned officer in the British forces. He then moved to London to become an actor.
Q 18On which night of the week did The Two Ronnies hold its prime-time 8pm slot on BBC1?
Saturday
Saturday at 8pm made the show a weekly family fixture for sixteen years, from its first edition in April 1971 to a final Christmas special in 1987.
Q 19What business did Ronnie Barker open in Chipping Norton after retiring from The Two Ronnies?
An antiques shop
An antiques shop called The Emporium kept him busy for ten years, though he joked that it lost money every week and was still cheaper than skiing.
Q 20On which 1960s BBC satire show did Barker and Corbett first perform together, before The Two Ronnies?
The Frost Report
The Frost Report drew the two together as grammar school boys who had never been to university, in a cast and writing team made up mostly of Oxbridge graduates.
Gerald Wiley was invented so that Barker's scripts would be judged on merit, not on his fame. He kept up the act by criticising his own sketches, and guesses at the real author included Tom Stoppard.
Q 24In the sitcom Sorry!, The Two Ronnies' Ronnie Corbett played a 41-year-old librarian still ruled by whom?
His mother
His mother, Phyllis, smothers Timothy Lumsden and talks him out of every attempt to leave home. The sitcom ran from 1981 to 1988, alongside the later Two Ronnies series.
Q 25Where did four candles escort the cross at the 2006 memorial service for Ronnie Barker of The Two Ronnies?
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey had honoured only two comedy figures this way before, Joyce Grenfell and Les Dawson. Some 2,000 people came, and the extra candles saluted his best-loved sketch.
Q 26Which English city, where Ronnie Barker of The Two Ronnies grew up, has a pub named The Four Candles?
Oxford
Oxford gave Barker his schooling, his first job as a bank clerk and his start in amateur dramatics. The Wetherspoon pub named after the sketch stands on George Street.
Q 27Which tools does the assistant offer in the last gag of The Two Ronnies' Four Candles, later rewritten?
Billhooks
Billhooks sound close to the rude word the shopkeeper has just misread on the shopping list. Barker thought the gag too obscure and too coarse, and wrote a new ending for the stage show.
Q 28In The Two Ronnies' Four Candles, what does the shopkeeper fetch for a customer wanting a 13-amp fitting?
Bath plugs
Bath plugs come out by the boxful after the customer asks for a rubber one for the bathroom. Only when he is asked what size does he reveal that he wants the electrical kind.
Q 29Which comedian joined Ronnie Corbett in My Blackberry Is Not Working, a 2010 homage to Four Candles?
Harry Enfield
Harry Enfield shared the sketch in The One Ronnie, a BBC One special for Corbett's 80th birthday shown on Christmas Day.
Q 30Which blonde bombshell of British cinema led the state police in The Two Ronnies serial The Worm That Turned?
Diana Dors
Diana Dors, who found fame as a star in the Marilyn Monroe mould, played the Commander, whose guards patrol in boots and hot pants. The serial aired in 1980.