Sir David Frost: One of the best comedy scouts in TV history

Many people are claimed to have changed the face of British comedy. Forty years ago, aged only 27, David Frost actually did.

Sir David Frost has interviewed seven British Prime Ministers and the same number of American Presidents. His interviews with disgraced American President Richard Nixon are the stuff of journalistic legend. Frost/Nixon became a multi-award winning play on both sides of the Atlantic and is being made into a Hollywood blockbuster directed by Ron Howard, with Michael Sheen playing Frost.

Yet it is his role as The Godfather of British Comedy that David Frost may be most proud of. Tonight on BBC 4 The Frost Report Is Back! reminds us just how crucial The Frost Report was in shaping the careers of artists as diverse as The Two Ronnies and Monty Python.

According to Sir Antony Jay, one of the original writing team on The Frost Report, whose credits include Margaret Thatcher's favourite comedies Yes Minster and Yes, Prime Minister, says, "the shrapnel enriched British comedy for years to come." The creator of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, David Nobbs, was another of The Frost Report's writers. "I felt we were creating the world at that time," he says.

Yet it started so unpromisingly. Frost – already famous for the groundbreaking satirical show That Was The Week That Was – teamed up with producer Jimmy Gilbert, intent on creating a new type of social comedy. They wanted spark and originality and set off on a gruelling Europe-wide search of festivals, clubs and revue bars looking for talent. They didn't find any.

Back in England, Gilbert recommended Ronnie Barker, a seasoned radio and stage performer, who had appeared on screen with Benny Hill and Jimmy Edwards. Ronnie Corbett was appearing in late-night cabaret with Danny La Rue. Gilbert wasn't keen on the diminutive funnyman but Frost saw potential and persuaded Corbett to join up over afternoon tea at The Ritz.

By the second show Frost and Gilbert recognised the tremendous chemistry between the two Ronnies and started to write for them as a duo.

The famous Frost charm was called into action again pretty quickly when he remembered a gifted young writer he had known at Cambridge. The man in question had given up comedy to be a serious journalist for Newsweek in New York. Frost flew to the States and persuaded John Cleese back to the UK and back into comedy.

Artists such as Julie Felix, Tom Lehrer, Sheila Steafel and Nicky Henson completed the original cast. Now Frost and Gilbert turned their attention to picking a writing team. Most British television comedy then – as now – was written by one or two writers. Frost and Gilbert decided to go for a system which is now standard in US comedy. They built a team of writers, but their masterstroke was to mix seasoned professionals and utter novices. The result was explosive, exciting and entirely new.

Antony Jay had been a BBC news and current-affairs editor: he was bored and left to go freelance. Frost asked him if he would have a crack at comedy and pretty soon Jay was writing 2000-word briefs for The Frost Report's theme of the week, which became the templates for the scriptwriting team.

And what a team it was! Bill Oddie and Tim Brooke-Taylor – who became two thirds of The Goodies – Graham Chapman, Marty Feldman, Barry Cryer, Keith Waterhouse, Willis Hall, Peter Tinniswood, Frank Muir, Nobbs and, claiming to speak "on behalf of the end-of-the-pier comic writers", Denis Norden. The late Dick Vosburgh wrote for the show travelling round and round on the London Underground Circle Line. He said it was the only place he could get peace and quiet.

But Frost and Gilbert had not finished yet. They continued to tour clubs and theatres looking for new talent. They went to see a revue at the Rehearsal Club above the Royal Court Theatre in London. It was a pretty unsuccessful revue: Frost and Gilbert brought the audience numbers up to eight for the entire week. But again they saw potential and hired the writing team a duo by the names of Michael Palin and Terry Jones.

Palin and Jones were so terrified that at first that they hardly wrote anything at all – which was a problem for them as the team was paid by results – so to augment their income Gilbert cast them as extras in the sketches. Gradually they became inspired to write more – particularly by Cleese and Chapman. Then Brooke-Taylor asked his friend Eric Idle to join the writing team. So then Cleese, Chapman, Palin, Jones and Idle – all the British members of Monty Python's Flying Circus – were now on the same bill.

The Frost Report only ran for two seasons in 1966 and 1967 and a special one-off edition, Frost Over England, won the Golden Rose of Montreux in 1967. Its sketches, like Cleese, Barker and Corbett's classic "I look up to him" satire on the British class system, written by Marty Feldman and John Law, still make people laugh today.

Frost went onto become one of the most famous and insightful journalists in the world. However, he says of The Frost Report: "I look back at those shining stars and see how far they have soared. It was such a colossal circus of talent and for a short while, I had the very great privilege of being called its ringmaster."

Barry Cryer typically puts it a little more pithily, calling Frost "a practising catalyst".

The Frost Report team of then largely unknown performers and writers created some of the best British comedy of the last 40 years. In addition to The Two Ronnies and Monty Python's Flying Circus, a very short list of its performers' and writers' credits includes Porridge, At Last The 1948 Show, Do Not Adjust Your Set, Sorry, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, A Bit of A Do and Fawlty Towers. And, as you will see tonight, The Frost Report itself is still bloody funny.

Andrew Fettis produced 'The Frost Report is Back!', a two-hour special bringing together members of the original team and featuring classic sketches from the series. It is on BBC 4 tonight at 9pm