“Are you sure it’s still ticking?” Harvey Korman asks, voice tight with barely suppressed anxiety — and that’s when The Oldest Man (Tim Conway) shuffles into the room, moving with the deliberate slowness of someone who’s forgotten what hurry even means. In Clock Repair, one of The Carol Burnett Show’s most legendary sketches, Conway transforms time itself into a living, breathing joke, while Korman’s desperate attempts to maintain composure become comedy gold.
Every step Conway takes is a masterclass in tension and timing — his creaking knees, wobbly posture, and infinitesimal gestures exaggerate the absurdity of the simplest movements. Gears fall. Tools clatter to the floor. Korman’s face twitches, eyes widening, hands covering half his mouth as he struggles — and ultimately fails — to suppress laughter. Even Carol Burnett doubles over, helpless in the face of Conway’s relentless deadpan genius.
What begins as a straightforward repair job dissolves into utter chaos: clocks wobble precariously, hammers swing too slowly to be safe, and every pause, every drawn-out movement stretches longer than reason allows. The audience roars with every exaggerated tick, and what could have been mundane becomes something almost mythic — a ballet of physical comedy that’s equal parts absurd and sublime.
Conway never breaks character. He limps, coughs, wheezes, and stumbles as if defying the very laws of time, leaving Korman, Burnett, and everyone watching at home in stitches. In this sketch, time doesn’t just fly — it crawls, sputters, and staggers its way into history, immortalized by one of television’s most mischievous, meticulously chaotic minds.
