Picture the scene: it's 3am. There is a rat-a-tat-tat on the door of a corner shop and Ronnie Barker's bespectacled eyes appear at the window.

In a deadpan voice he says to the shopkeeper: "Sorry to trouble you old chap - just wondered if by any chance you had a foot pump for a lilo?"

It could so easily have been one of the comedy sketches with which The Two Ronnies entertained millions.

But this scene was played out miles away from the television studios in a quiet side street in Littlehampton.

Ronnie and his family owned a holiday home in South Terrace, a perfect bolthole from the bright lights of his working life.

Ronnie was about to catch a plane with his family and was missing a vital bit of kit. So he trotted round to Cooper's corner shop in Norfolk Road which, as everyone knew, sold everything and was open all hours. There he made his unusual request to shopkeeper Basil Cooper.

Cooper's is widely credited with being the inspiration for the series Open All Hours, which starred Ronnie Barker as the tight-fisted shopkeeper Arkwright, David Jason as his dreamy nephew Granville and Lynda Baron as the object of Arkwright's desire, buxom nurse Gladys Emmanuel.

There is no proof that Cooper's sparked the series but the clues are there.

Cooper's, like Arkwright's, sold everything. It crammed in so much into its confined space that its wares overflowed onto the pavement.

The shop, which had been in the Cooper family since 1925, was run by Basil's mother. She wasn't a nurse but she was called Gladys. According to locals who remember the original shop, she was fond of holding court in the shop and giving orders to her son, the shop boy.

Although he was called Basil, it is thought Ronnie Barker borrowed another name from just around the corner - Granville Road. Basil, who sold the shop in 1972, spotted the similarities as soon as the series began on BBC1 in the mid-Seventies. Although on television it was written by Roy Clarke and set in Doncaster, Ronnie undoubtedly had some input.

Basil said: "Ours was an old-fashioned grocery store with things piled up outside. We wore those brown overalls, used an old cash register and we did have a delivery bike until we progressed to a van.

"Some of the names were the same and we were open all hours, from 7am to midnight. In the summer months we would be up well into the night stock-taking, doing orders and filling shelves and it was during one of these nights that Ronnie came looking for the pump for his lilo."

Cooper's sold most things but not lilo pumps. However, enterprising Basil dug out a foot pump he kept in the back of the shop and sold that to a satisfied Ronnie instead.

Basil, of St Flora's Road, Littlehampton, said that away from the TV lights, Ronnie was a quiet and private man.

He said: "He only came into the shop occasionally. Mostly we saw his wife Joy and the children. I think Littlehampton was his retreat from the bright lights. When he wasn't working he just liked a quiet life."

But even when he was off duty, Ronnie's mind was absorbing the detail around him for future use.

Basil said: "We lived in the back of the shop so when we were shut it wasn't unusual for people to come and knock on the back door and ask if they could have something."

Basil's wife Maureen believes the television producers may also have borrowed traits from Gladys Cooper.

She said: "Gladys was a kind of square lady and had the same stance as Arkwright. The way she walked and stood at the counter and some of her mannerisms were similar too."

Basil insists he cannot see any similarities between him and Arkwright. Certainly they didn't borrow Basil's hearty laugh and there is no trace of Arkwright's famous stutter.

Although there is still a shop on the Cooper's site, it is now a Londis store run by Bharti Shah. The name Cooper's is still used in the licensing notice above the door.

Sue Warley, who owns Mortimer's restaurant across the road, remembers Cooper's in its heyday.

She said: "It was a real old-fashioned shop with things hanging from the ceiling they used to take down with a long stick. Women used to go in with their shopping baskets and Cooper's would fill them for them.

"They were a tradition in the area but as soon as they sold the business it was upgraded and eventually became an ordinary supermarket. But you can see where they got the germ of an idea from."