Comedy Sketch Escalation Pattern

‘The Two Ronnies’ was a comedy sketch show on BBC One during the 70s and 80s which featured the double act of Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett.

In this sketch the ‘sweet shop’ the shop keeper gets himself into trouble by priding himself that “nothing is too much trouble” and that customers can be as picky as they like.

The sketch starts out with an reasonable scenario of a women wanting a specific weight of sweets to buy. The sketch really gets going when another customer comes in and starts pushing the boundaries of what is too much to ask of the shopkeeper.

The customer first requests that he would like a quarter of a pound of liquorice all sorts, which he then later adds he only likes the orange ones, leading to the shopkeeper having to separate the orange from the other coloured sweets.

This scenario grows and grows to be more ridiculous as the customer demands a gob stopper that finishes in the colour pink, a mint with a specific hole size, chocolates that melt in your mouth but not your hand, only soft centred milk chocolates, the length of a liquorice roll and to count out exactly 1100 of Hundreds and Thousands.

This all leads up to the breaking point for the shopkeeper who then pours the tub of Hundreds and Thousands onto the customer’s head. He becomes so wound up, when the next customer comes in with a reasonable request like at the start of the sketch the shopkeeper overacts. In this case instead of cutting up toffee into small pieces he smashes it all with a hammer.

This build up of a mundane scenario growing out of control is a common feature I have noticed in sketches, for example the same system can be seen in The Monty Python’s dead parrot sketch where at first the customer simply complains that the parrot he just bought is dead to then smashing the parrot on the table and screaming in its ear to prove it.

This is something I would like to incorporate in my own sketch however, only having one minute to show the journey from the mundane to the ridiculous will be a challenge without making the sketch seem rushed.

HOPKINS, K. (2011) The Two Ronnies – Sweet Shop Sketch. YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbGMS5jQFcs&t=1s [Accessed10th November 2017.]

MONTY PYTHON. (2008) The Parrot Sketch – Monty Python’s The Flying Circus. YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npjOSLCR2hE&t=23s [Accessed 10th November 2017.]