RONNIE Corbett admitted in an interview the other day that he still sheds a tear when he thinks about his old pal Ronnie Barker.

"We never had a cross word," he insisted.

Not bad when you think he was looking back over a working relationship that stretched back through decades.

And what a contrast to the real-life Steptoe and Son - Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H Corbett - whose mutual loathing was reflected in The Curse of Steptoe on BBC4 last night.

Working to the brilliant scripts of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, the pair created a comic chemistry that stands the test of time like vintage wine. And yet they hated being yoked together in this way.

So how can classic comedy spring out of a relationship like that?

Surely it must break all the rules for two people to work together so well and achieve so much without actually liking each other.

But then a partnership - if you'll forgive the pun - can be a funny old thing.

I'm reminded of Gilbert and Sullivan, who between them crafted stylish operettas that pulsed with melody and sparkled with wit.

But again, just like Brambell and Corbett, they disliked each other intensely.

Perhaps the key, then, to a successful partnership isn't compatability - but the fact that each partner complements the other.

Just think of Lennon and McCartney. Arguably, they worked together so well as song-writers because they complemented each other so well - the grit and wry humour of the one meshing in with the sweetness and light of the other.

One of Ken Russell's finest achievements was his TV film A Song of Summer, which dramatised a truly remarkable musical partnership.

This was between Eric Fenby, the young musician who travelled to France to work with the ailing British composer Delius, who was by this time blind and paralysed.

You could hardly imagine a sharper contrast - on the one hand an ageing atheist, domineering, opinionated and unrepentantly disreputable, on the other a shy young Catholic barely capable of saying boo to a goose.

But - as Russell dramatised so memorably - they quite literally made beautiful music together.

Marriages, of course, are partnerships too and here I count my blessings - 25 years of them in September!

If we're lucky enough to make it to 50, we might well be approached by an Echo reporter who wants to know the secret of our happy marriage.

The standard response - as any journalist will tell you - is "give and take".

But a recent BBC comedy special which revisited the sitcom To the Manor Born offered a variation.

When Richard was asked the secret of his long marriage, he put it down to "living parallel lives", explaining: "She does things her way... and I do things her way."