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 of "Eric Sykes Presents Peter Sellers", and the second, in 1958, was called "The Peter Sellers Show". In 1959, Sykes wrote and directed the one-off BBC special "Gala Opening", with a cast that included 'Professor' Stanley Unwin and Hattie Jacques, and played a small supporting role in the Tommy Steele film "Tommy the Toreador". At the turn of the decade Eric Sykes and his old friend and colleague Hattie Jacques co-starred in a new 30-minute BBC TV sitcom, "Sykes and a...", which Sykes created in collaboration with writer Johnny Speight, who had worked with him earlier in the 1950s on