father, George, for spending a life working for the Corporation (local council), but equally he felt no urge to follow in his footsteps.
‘Fundamentally he just wanted to make us, his family, laugh and make the viewing public laugh too.’
I think, as we’ll see from the words of his old friends from Lancashire, that Eric was a little unusual as a child: clearly gifted, yet sometimes remote when he chose to be. All these friends seemed to expect him to go on to great things as if it were a given. His sharp wit, inability to deal with responsibilities and major decisions, and a temperament which made it difficult for him to be tolerant of all that everyday life threw his way would all have been a part of him with or without the recognition and success that followed. However, I would say that the nature of his work added to any stress he felt and contributed to his momentary mood swings. But, as I write these words, I know that fundamentally he just wanted to make us, his family, laugh and make the viewing public laugh too. He was somehow beholden to that need to entertain because it had freed him from an ordinary background, yet in the act of embracing it he
became imprisoned by it. That’s really all it came down to. All the other bits were just flighty little moments of everyday life—some days were good and fun and full of hilarity around the house, some days less so. All other expressions, desires and actions were hardly recognizable as anything more than minor character traits: there really wasn’t that much there beyond entertaining—it totally defined him and was virtually all he was seeking from life.
What helped damage his health was the incongruity that being funny was not—and probably isn’t for any comedian—delivered from a relaxed state of mind and body. As my mother once remarked, he could hardly sit down at the dinner table without having to get up and do something halfway through the meal. He was a bundle of nervous energy. This made him slightly contradictory, for while Morecambe and Wise was everything to him, he was also quite happy to point out clouds and make shapes from them, or to sit alone all day long on the river bank, surrendering to the moment and revelling in that childlike clarity of vision that was so much a part of his likeability.
People often approach me and say, ‘You look just like your dad.’ This I find very uplifting and flattering, for my brush-over grey-white hair makes me look much more like Ernie these days. Even friends and family remark about the similarity—to my father, that is, not Ernie. It’s also friends and family who express a quiet concern that I spend too much time working on Morecambe and Wise-related projects and issues, to the detriment of other things, but I’m too old to change. And although I do other projects I never tire of the Morecambe and Wise ones—indeed I would dispense with all the rest in favour of these, because first and foremost I’m as much a fan of Eric and Ernie as I am Eric’s son. I still sit at home and watch the DVDs, and amaze myself that I always laugh and laugh as much as ever. Some humour really is timeless.
It is summer 2008. While the birds twitter and the bees hum, and the man next door tries drowning them out with his lawnmower, I’m sitting at my computer writing the book you are now holding. I feel unbelievably excited. It’s always the same. When it’s to do with Morecambe and Wise I seem to ignite. This ignition is automatic, yet still I can’t resist going through all my favourite
routines of theirs for an excess of inspiration. It’s probably just an excuse to watch all their shows again. With the advent of YouTube I even spend my lunch break watching them getting up to mischief with the likes of John Lennon: I love the way he throws back his head in hysterics when Eric ad-libs. Then there’s André Previn and his wonderful orchestra performing Grieg’s Piano Concerto with Eric as soloist; Eric and Ernie ‘backing’ Tom Jones; Shirley Bassey having her shoe replaced with a workman’s boot; Glenda Jackson in that Cleopatra sketch (‘Sorry I’m late, but I’ve been irrigating the desert…not easy on your own!’); Eric and Ernie making breakfast to The Stripper; or their homage to Gene Kelly with their beautifully shot Singin’ in the Rain. The list is endless.
It’s the going back to the many magical moments of their television career that reminds me—should I need reminding—that they were absolute masters of comedy; and that they are not just for ever but also inimitable. There is something dynamic and glittering about the two of them that prevents their work from tiring—something that goes beyond the fact they were mere comic entertainers providing light relief in an otherwise tragic world. Perhaps it is a combination of their wonderful talent as performers and the lost era from which they emerged. Arguably they are the last great ‘stars’ Britain produced—a legend that goes way beyond today’s vacuous notion of ‘celebrity’.
The novelist L. P. Hartley wrote: ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’ Many are the times that this observation comes to mind, and more often than not it is when I’m thinking about the heyday of Morecambe and Wise, which is basically any year in the seventies. What is it about that decade—that cringe-worthy, decadent, crudely flamboyant, sexist, gaudy, tasteless time—that allowed Morecambe and Wise to reign supreme as the kings of British comedy? This was still the era of the suit-and-tie comedian—‘alternative comedy’ hadn’t even been thought of, let alone given that title, and if a performer had the temerity to appear on TV minus a tie or indeed a jacket, you sensed they wouldn’t be making too many more screen appearances, while simultaneously concluding they must have been dragged out of some working men’s club to ‘have a go’ on the box. Now we can look back from today’s current crop of comedy entertainers and the boot is firmly on the other foot, as we wonder: yes, Eric and Ernie were and for ever will be a remarkable comedy act, but why did they dress like second-hand-car salesmen?
‘Eric is not only England’s most popular comedian, he must be near to being our most popular person.’
Author-playwright-novelist-lawyer the late John Mortimer wrote in 1983: ‘Eric is not only England’s most popular comedian, he must be near to being our most popular person.’
Which neatly sums up why, after fifty-two years on this planet, I still celebrate my father’s life and work in books such as this: frankly, there is a demand for him, and the fact that my father died suddenly mid-flow a quarter of a century ago has not remotely lessened the love for him felt by those who vividly remember the wonderful shows he and Ernie produced, and by others who are discovering them for the first time.
From Morecambe Bay to Broadway
‘My most special memory of Morecambe is the day the whole town came to see me off—and told me never to come back.’
As a kid Eric could only dream of the bright lights of Broadway. That, one day in the distant future, a November night in 2001, there would be a play about his (and his partner’s) life on a West End stage would have been incomprehensible.
The Play What I Wrote, in its initial concept, was an idea of mine, along with writer Martin Sterling and West End producer David Pugh. We wanted to stage a tribute to the legendary double act. It might well have remained just a drawing-board notion had it not been for The Right Size, a comedy team with a great stage track record, coming up with the initiative of writing a play about their own lives in which they happen to become like Eric and Ernie as they go about performing their own tribute to them. And so a potentially good idea turned into a well-executed reality. When actordirector Kenneth Branagh agreed to direct the project, adding West End credibility to the production, the final piece of the jigsaw was in place. And if that wasn’t good enough, the play was destined to transfer to New York after a staggeringly successful run at London’s Wyndham’s Theatre.
Ken
