Rhubarb (1969 film) Rhubarb (1969 film) Rhubarb was a 1969 British short film written and directed by Eric Sykes, starring Sykes and Harry Secombe. The dialogue consisted entirely of repetitions of the word ""rhubarb"", all the characters last names were "Rhubarb", and even the number plates on vehicles were "RHU BAR B". A baby "spoke" by holding a sign with the word ""Rhubarb"" written on it. "Rhubarb" is a radio idiom for unintelligible background speech. Typically extras would mutter the word over and over to provide ambience for a crowd or party scene. In "The Goon Show" the cast was usually only the
Eric Sykes and Ronnie Brody. In 1968, he had a supporting role in an Anglo-American film co-production, the Edward Dmytryk western "Shalako", starring Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot. In 1969, Sykes co-starred with Spike Milligan in the ill-fated television sit-com "Curry and Chips", a satire on racial prejudice created and written by Johnny Speight and made for London Weekend Television. Milligan, who had grown up in British India, played Kevin O'Grady, a half-Pakistani half-Irish man who comes to work in a British factory and ends up boarding with his ineffectual foreman Arthur Blenkinsop (Sykes), who has to regularly defend Kevin against his