Nothing's Too Much Trouble

Nothing's Too Much Trouble is a sketch featuring The Two Ronnies, i.e. Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett. Like many of their sketches - though not all - it was written by Ronnie Barker himself.

The scene is an old-fashioned sweet shop. Barker, as shopkeeper, is serving an old lady, pointing out that, as a sign on the wall says, "Nothing is too much trouble" in his shop. Presently Corbett enters. It turns out that he is obviously trying to test Barker's slogan by unnerving him in a number of highly exaggerated ways. Among other things he wants him to sort out liquorice allsorts because he only likes the pink ones, he actually insists on finding out whether certain chocolates "melt in your mouth but not in your hand", and he asks him to unroll liquorice rolls because he wants to know how long they are. Barker shows some signs of starting to break in the middle of the sketch, when he claims that "nothing is too much trouble, sir, not even you." Eventually, Barker goes completely berserk when asked to count out an exact figure of hundreds and thousands and pours two whole jars of hundreds and thousands on Corbett's head, before smashing up his shelf with a hammer when asked by another customer to break some toffee into small bits.

Trivia

• When Corbett says, "I want some gobstoppers.", the following line, which did not appear in the original text, is added in the sketch itself: (Barker:) "Big gob or little gob?"
• Note the expression on Ronnie Corbett's face at the very end of the sketch; also the way the hundreds and thousands are falling off the brim of his hat when he slightly moves his head several times

Bibliography

• Ronnie Barker, All I Ever Wrote: The Complete Works (1999)
• And It's Goodnight from Him...: The Autobiography of the "Two Ronnies" (Hardcover) by Ronnie Corbett (soon to be published)

External links

• The Two Ronnies at TV Heaven
• The Two Ronnies at the Internet Movie Database