Chesney and Wolfe, were a British television comedy screenwriting duo consisting of Ronald Chesney (born René Lucien Cadier; 4 May 1920 – 12 April 2018) and Ronald Wolfe (born Harvey Ronald Wolfe-Luberoff; 8 August 1922 – 18 December 2011). They were best known for their sitcoms The Rag Trade (1961–1963, 1977–1978), Meet the Wife (1963–1966), On the Buses (1969–1973) and Romany Jones (1972–1975). When their partnership began in the mid-1950s, Chesney was already known to the public as a harmonica player.

Chesney, was born in London of French descent, the son of Marius, a silk trader, and Jeanne (née Basset). He left the French Lycée school in London at the age of 16, and began using his English name.

Chesney initially learned piano, but decided instead a career as a chromatic harmonica player, performing professionally from the age of 17. Touring the ABC Cinema chain, he played on BBC Radio broadcasts from 1937, the first being Palace of Varieties. Declared unfit to serve in the Second World War because of the removal of a tuberculosis-infected kidney, he taught the harmonica to troops in a BBC radio series, which ran for 42 weeks, beginning in 1940. After the war, he began to diversify into the classical repertoire.

Chesney became a well-known performer, entertaining troops, performing at the London Palladium and Royal Albert Hall, and working with Duke Ellington and Gracie Fields. He was President of the National Hohner Song Band League (later the National Harmonica League) from 1951.

Wolfe was born in London, a cousin of actor Warren Mitchell, and the grandson of Russian Jewish immigrants. His parents ran a kosher restaurant in Whitechapel, which served performers from the variety theatre across the road. He was educated at the Central Foundation Boys' Grammar School in Islington. For a while he was a stand-up comedian. "I came from vaudeville and music halls", he once said. During the Second World War, he was an army radio operator, and after being demobbed he worked as a radio engineer for Marconi.

In the early 1950s, he began to write for the Jewish comedian Max Bacon; after Bacon introduced him to the BBC, Wolfe contributed material for radio shows. Starlight Hour (1951), broadcast on the BBC Light Programme, was a series which featured Beryl Reid. Wolfe became Reid's regular writer, providing material for her characters, Brummie Marlene and the naughty schoolgirl, Monica. After Reid joined the cast of the radio comedy series Educating Archie, Wolfe joined the writing team for the series which Eric Sykes had created. The series featured ventriloquist Peter Brough and his dummy Archie Andrews.

Chesney's harmonica playing was featured as a musical interlude on Educating Archie; this led to his first meeting with Wolfe in 1955. They wrote the show's last four seasons, initially with another of the show's writers, Marty Feldman. A one-off special for BBC Television in 1956, entitled Here's Archie, was written by Wolfe, but still featured Chesney with his harmonica act. It also starred Irene Handl.

The first regular television work for Chesney and Wolfe, writing in partnership with Feldman, was in 1958 when ITV franchise holder Associated-Rediffusion made a television version of Educating Archie. Persuaded by Wolfe, Chesney soon gave up performing professionally, so that they could form a writing partnership. He did, however, tutor Sylvia Syms for her harmonica-playing role in the film No Trees in the Street (1959). By this time, they had also written material for Tommy Steele and Ken Dodd, including pantomimes for both. The sitcom It's A Deal (1961) turned out to be their last work for radio. It starred Sid James as a dishonest property developer, with Dennis Price as his partner, but lasted for only a single series of 13 episodes.