It’s 10 years today since Ronnie Corbett’s The Blackberry Sketch was released into the world. To mark it, a short thread about how it came to be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= …

We’d written a couple of sketches for That Mitchell & Webb Look. One was The Brain Surgeon Sketch which we co-wrote with @sambaintv and @jessearmstrong1 (they came up with the funny bits, we came up with the words in between).

Many people commented that it had a Two Ronnies feel to it, so when That Mitchell & Webb Look producer @garethmammal began work on The One Ronnie, he asked us to a few pitch sketch ideas.

Not uniquely, The Two Ronnies was something we grew up watching and laughing at with not only with our parents but also our (late) grandparents. Desperate to have a sketch performed by Ronnie C, we set about coming up with loads and loads of ideas.

We were well aware that the Ronnies had covered so much sketch ground already, so we set ourselves the task of coming up with sketches they couldn’t have done in the 80s, trying to imagine what they’d do now.

We picked what we thought were our best ideas and pitched them. One was called “Fruit Technical Support”. It was sort of kickstarted by a tweet @sdawsonbros had done (one 'like' at time of tweeting) which Tim and I thought we could get more gags out of. https://twitter.com/SDawsonBros/status/20130556456?s=20

Fruit Tech Support was one of a few sketches we were asked to write up. Here’s the first draft. As you’ll see, it was way too long and some of the puns were EXTREMELY stretched. (nb. I still love the ‘Megs’ gag) https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/65121050/one-ronnie-fruit-technical-support-v1

We did several rewrites in the next few weeks, but the making of it was some incredibly astute script editing by The One Ronnie’s executive producers @mattlucas @davidwalliams and @garethmammal .

We were thrilled to discover the sketch had made the cut for the show’s recording. We managed to get our parents into the audience for the filming at BBC Television Centre.

On the night, the sketch went down really well. The set and costume design were so well judged - cleverly evoking Four Candles. Harry Enfield’s performance was note perfect, especially his corpsing at Ronnie’s ‘dongle’.

But the biggest joy was that despite a long recording and him being 80, Ronnie sold the hell out of every sketch and was absolutely at the top of his game.

We smuggled our parents into the green room after the show. Tim’s mum and our mum sipped wine in the corner, unsubtly pointing out celebrities to each other. That was the night they forgave us for giving up our sensible jobs.

For what it's worth, despite personal bias, my favourite sketch from The One Ronnie recording was “What?” written by @gralefrit and @JasonHazeley. One of those "I wish we'd come up with that one" sketches. https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1071&v=ielkLRBnZ4k&feature=youtu.be

A couple of weeks later, the Blackberry Sketch was picked as a YouTube teaser to promote the Christmas Day transmission. In its first 24 hours, the sketch did over a million views (which was a lot back in those days).

The show itself was watched by 8 million people. The sketch went on to become the most viewed clip on BBC’s channel for a few years, until it was eventually toppled by Will Smith on Graham Norton (half that clip’s views are from me).

The moment we really got a sense of how much it had snowballed was when the sketch was email forwarded to our parents from friends who were unaware we’d written it. First and last time that’ll happen.

Watching it back now, there really isn't anything I’d change about it. Although I do wish we’d thought of one joke that was posted underneath it by a youtube commenter. “Four Kindles”. (It was right there, how did we miss it?)

We were, and still are, aware of how much luck was involved Ronnie Corbett being in a sketch we wrote, let alone it becoming so big.

Sketch comedy gave us our break in 2001. The Blackberry Sketch moved our career on. It has always been the best way for new writers to get a foothold in comedy and a key stepping stone into narrative. The lack of UK sketch shows has only created more barriers for new talent.

Anyway, a couple of years later, in 2012, we were at a party that Ronnie also attended. He knew we were going to be there and made a point of seeking us out to thank us for making him go viral. (He’s the one at the front)

ADDENDUM: I can't believe I got all those links right in that long thread except for the link to the sketch itself in the VERY FIRST TWEET. The only excuse I can offer is that my Blackberry wasn't working.