A Comedy On This Day: Hark At Barker - Rustless On Law (17 July 1970)

 Hark At Barker must be the least documented work that Alan Ayckbourn has ever written. I had a look at half a dozen Ayckbourn books on my shelf after watching this, and it barely gets a mention anywhere.

 One reason for this neglect is the pen name Peter Caulfield. It's understandable to assume that he wrote it under an assumed name because he was embarrassed by it, but the actual reason was because he was under contract for the BBC at the time. Once you know that its by him, you can then detect elements of Ayckbourn in the programme, especially in the way that the routines involve a lot of playing games and enacting out scenarios, but Ronnie Barker's star peronna is so dominant - and the material is so much like a lot of pieces that he went on to do in The Two Ronnies - that you tend not to register the actual writing so much.

 Ayckbourn and Barker went back to 1964, when Barker appeared in Ayckbourn's first West End play (if only for three weeks), Mr Whatnot. Barker played one of his trademark crusty aristocrats, Lord Slingsby-Craddock, and the show was a 'silent' comedy about a mute piano tuner employed by the Slingsby-Craddocks, with no dialogue but with a hugely elaborate sound plot of hundreds of sound cues instead. Barker continued with this type of comedy in Futtocks End, The Picnic and By The Sea, and it’s a slight shame that Ayckbourn and Barker's only TV collaboration wasn't also in this vein.