Home Advent Calendar 2017 Day 1: The Two Ronnies Old Fashioned Christmas Mystery

Barker and Corbett only ever made four standalone (as in not part of a regular series) Christmas shows, and the second was in 1982. This from 1973 is as high concept as the show ever really got, a self-contained story taking place at the country residence of Sir Giles and Lady Hampton on Christmas Eve 1872, in which the turkey is stolen and they have to call in Piggy Malone and Charley Farley, who were supposed going by their own regular sketches to be contemporary-set characters but let that pass. That sets up a classic farce much as you'd expect from the pen of Gerald Wiley, and while much is recognisable - a Barker monologue (watch the actors behind vainly attempt to keep a straight face), Corbett stealing away to sit in a big chair and confide in us, a big musical finish with apologies to Gilbert & Sullivan - there's also dancers, a balancing act, a B-plot featuring Gabrielle Drake, and a strange interlude where stage actress Cheryl Kennedy, who had been the resident musical turn on that year's first series of That's Life!, delivers a monologue that doesn't fit with the rest of the set-up. According to the credits Sally James, a Ronnies sidewoman in several sketches around that time (indeed we'll see her as a straightwoman elsewhere this time tomorrow), and Barry 'I'm Barry Gosney' Gosney are in there somewhere.