Ronnie Corbett’s account of buying his house in Addington, near Croydon, Surrey, sounds like one of his rambling monologues from the Two Ronnies — the television comedy series that made him and partner Ronnie Barker household names in the 1970s and 1980s.
“It must have been 1967 because I was doing panto at The Palladium — Cinderella with Clodagh Rogers and Terry Scott — marvellous cast. Not many of them with us now, of course. Jimmy Tarbuck was working somewhere else in London that night, and he called round to our house in Norwood for a drink after the show.
“The Norwood house was nice enough but nothing grand. Not like this. And, anyway, Jimmy was sitting there and he suddenly said, ‘When are you going to move, Ron, because you can’t live here for ever, you know’. I’d never really thought about moving, but I did a bit of a double take at my surroundings and d’you know, Jimmy was right. So I started to look for somewhere suitable and I heard about this house in Addington.
“Now, Addington rang a little bell with me because Val Parnell had first told me about the Addington golf club when I left the RAF in 1951. Marvellous club, he’d said — he’d played here with Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Jack Benny — all the big American names. And funnily enough there’s a picture of the group of them in the clubhouse bar and, d’you know, some people don’t recognise them. Isn’t that a shame? And . . . where was I? Yes, the two things came together, as it were, and I found this house for sale. And I loved it, mainly because it backs onto the course, and we have been happy here ever since.” The house was built in 1927 and looks rather forbidding from the outside — Arts and Crafts-style features mix uncomfortably with stunted mock Gothic towers. “A friend once described the look as sub-Scottish baronial, which is about right,” says Corbett. “But we liked the interior so much we took the advice of Jim Slater, a famous financial adviser of the time, whose catchphrase was, ‘Always buy a home you can’t quite afford’. He was right. And no, I won’t tell you what I paid for it. Ha, ha.”
The inside of the house contrasts sharply with its gun-metal grey exterior. Despite being extremely spacious, with seven bedrooms and its main reception rooms linked by archways, the house still has the feel of a comfortable family home. It’s here that Corbett, 72, has lived with his wife Anne, a former singer and dancer he met when they were both on the bill at Danny La Rue’s London nightclub. It is also where they brought up their two daughters, Emma, 36, and Sophie, 35.
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The kitchen is closest to Corbett’s heart. “Ronnie’s a marvellous cook,” says Anne, “pasta dishes and starters are his speciality, but he’s good at anything. His father was a baker, you know.
“He’s also got very strong opinions about things such as design and decor — not like me. Anyway, we went to visit the home of the kitchen designer Carol King, and her kitchen was wonderful. Ron wanted the same things, so he asked her to do ours.”
Refitted four years ago, the kitchen has an American feel, with oak cabinets, a tall refrigerator, a huge six-burner hob with a double oven below and full height, stainless-steel larder units that slide out of the wall. There is underfloor heating and air conditioning and the room opens out onto the front garden steps.
The sitting room has an impressive carved marble fireplace and Corbett, with his “marvellous eye”, according to Anne, has furnished it in light shades of yellow and green. In the corner sits the armchair in which Corbett ran through every one of his famous Two Ronnies monologues, which were written by Spike Mullins. “They were masterpieces in the art of digression. I didn’t memorise them word for word, I’d have them on the autocue. But I’d sit here reading and re-reading them and getting a feel for their rhythm.” There is also a dining room, with a table that seats eight, and next to that the only really “showbizzy” room in the house — the drawing room, with its oak-panelled walls, high ceiling, minstrels’ gallery and grand piano. “We’ve had some marvellous Christmas parties here,” says Corbett, “with a roaring fire in the grate and people like Marianne Montgomery, Bruce Forsyth and Laurie Holloway taking turns on the piano.”
But it’s outside the house — beyond the swimming pool and the cherry tree given by David Frost and at the end of the acre and a half of lawned garden, that you find the real reason Corbett bought this house 35 years ago — it is the gate leading to the Addington golf course. “I can’t resist it. The gate leads to the sixth tee, and I must have played five times a week since we have lived here. But now the children have gone we are downsizing to a bungalow nearby. I’ll still back onto the course — it’s only a matter of moving from the sixth to the second tee so it won’t be a great wrench.”
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Corbett rarely appears on television now, restricting himself to charity work and the odd after-dinner speaking engagement. Is “downsizing to a bungalow” a euphemism for retirement? “Don’t you believe it. I still have a hankering to take a show to the Edinburgh Festival. As Anne says, ‘There’s lots more things in my little beaded bag that nobody’s even seen yet’. . . ”
Ronnie Corbett’s home is on sale for £1.35m with Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward, 020 8777 2381, www.kfh.co.uk; and Hamptons, 01883 345 255, www.hamptons.co.uk