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Lancaster Road Junior School, Morecambe. Eric is second from the left on the front row.
In many ways, Eric’s was a typical working class childhood. His parents were far from affluent (when they went shopping in Lancaster, several miles away, they used to walk home to save the bus fare) but Eric never went hungry. And though money was often pretty tight, he never ran short of fun things to do. On Sundays George would take him fishing, and on Saturdays they’d go to a football match – usually Morecambe, sometimes Blackpool, occasionally mighty Preston North End. Yet there was one aspect of his upbringing that was highly unusual, at least for those days. He was an only child. This oddity was to prove crucial for his future prospects. Had he been one of six children, like his mother, or one of eleven, like his father, it’s highly unlikely he would have been able to pursue the same show business career.
However despite a happy and comparatively comfortable home life, Eric did surprisingly badly at school. ‘I wasn’t just hopeless in class,’ he recalled. ‘I was terrible.’1 His school reports bear him out. Out of a class of 49, he was ranked 45 – and the other four, according to Eric, never even went to school. Eric’s poor academic performance remains a mystery, especially since Sadie was not only intelligent, but diligent too. ‘I am disgusted with this report,’ she wrote to his headmaster, ‘and would be obliged if you would make him do more homework.’ Her efforts were in vain. When Sadie told the head she wanted Eric to go to grammar school, he told her it would be a waste of time. When she said she’d pay for private education, he said it would be money down the drain. For the time being, at least, Eric was his father’s son. ‘I had no bright ambitions,’ he recollected. ‘To me, my future was clear. At fifteen I would get myself a paper round. At seventeen I would learn to read it. And at eighteen I would get a job on the Corporation, like my dad.’2
If there was one thing Eric was good at, it was performing. Ever since he was a toddler, he’d entertained his parents by dancing to the gramophone. Once, he sneaked out of the house and onto a nearby building site, where Sadie found him treating local workmen to a song and dance routine. ‘That little lad’s a wonderful entertainer,’3 said one of them. ‘I’ll entertain him when I get home,’4 said Sadie, yet she did all she could to nurture her son’s nascent talent. Egged on by his mum, Eric studied half a dozen musical instruments, including the piano and the accordion, and although he never mastered any of them, it didn’t do his sense of rhythm any harm. He cultivated his showbiz education at the local cinema, although his interest in the movies came second to his interest in making mischief. On at least one occasion, he was thrown out for firing his pea shooter at the heads of bald men in the stalls.
Sadie also sent Eric to dancing classes, and when the teacher recommended individual lessons, at a cost of two and six a time, she toiled as a charlady to pay for them, on top of her day job as an usherette on Morecambe Central Pier. To make a few extra bob, she’d gather up the discarded programmes, bring them home, iron them until they looked brand new, and resell them at the theatre the next day. Despite her sacrifices, Eric was far from keen. ‘I never liked the lessons,’ he recalled. ‘I’d have much preferred to have spent my time kicking a ball around with my mates.’5 Yet Sadie’s investment soon paid off. Before long, he was playing local working men’s clubs, often for as much as fifteen shillings a time – half his father’s weekly wage.
The Bash Street Kids. Eric is in the middle of the front row. ‘I was just a shy, bashful sort of boy. Why, even when I was six I used to blush every time I hit a policeman.’
Unwillingly to school. A reluctant Eric sets off for Lancaster Road Junior School, where he reached the dizzy heights of 45th out of a class of 49.
As a budding entertainer, Eric was lucky to be the only child of such a shrewd and dedicated mother, but he was also lucky to born in the right place at the right time. Today Morecambe is a quiet resort on the edge of the Lake District, frequented mainly by flocks of wading birds and the birdwatchers that come to watch them, but in the 1930s, when Eric was a lad, it was a thriving holiday town. Smarter than nearby Blackpool, but with much of the same seaside bustle, it was a lively place of entertainment, whose shows spilled out of the dancehalls and onto the promenade. Eric’s mum and dad met at the Winter Gardens, a splendid ballroom where Eric would later perform with Ernie. Full of precocious self confidence, he entered talent contests on the prom, winning so often that locals were eventually barred from competing, since his success was discouraging genuine holidaymakers from joining in.
Eric’s dad Georgs (far right) with his workmates from Morecambe Corporation. A world away from the Morecambe & Wise Show.
Fortunately, such competitions weren’t confined to Morecambe promenade, and Sadie soon found a bigger stage for her prodigious child. After several decent write ups in the local press, he finally got his big break in 1939 when he won a juvenile talent show in Hoylake, a seaside town on the Wirral. For Eric, it felt like travelling to Australia, but this odyssey was well worthwhile. ‘Eric Bartholomew put over a brilliant comedy act which caused the audience to roar with laughter,’ reported the Melody Maker, the show’s sponsor, and their interview with Eric revealed another side to the lad who’d been content to drift through school. ‘My ambition is to be a comedian,’ Eric told the paper. ‘My hero is George Formby.’ In later life, Eric confessed that he actually found Formby ‘about as funny as a cry for help,’6 but it was telling that his role model was one of the best known (and best paid) comics in the country. His dad’s laid back approach, which informed Eric’s lackadaisical school career, had been eclipsed by his mum’s determination and drive.
Eric’s mum and dad, George and Sadie (right), all set to emigrate to America, with George’s brother, Jack, and Jack’s wife, Alice, They’d even bought their tickets, but then Jack fell ill, and they all got cold feet. Just think: if Jack hadn’t been poorly, Eric would have grown up in America. Would he have become the next Bob Hope? Or merely the next John Bartholomew?
Eric with his mum and dad, George and Sadie, in their Sunday best.
Eric’s prize was yet another audition, but this try out was a cut above the usual talent show. This time, he’d won an audience with Jack Hylton, one of the top impresarios in the land. The audition was held in Manchester, another epic journey for Eric. Sadie couldn’t stand those showbiz mums who sought glory through the (real or imagined) talents of their children. Nevertheless, she was determined to get Eric’s head out of the clouds and – if at all possible – improve his prospects. Hence, she left him in no doubt about the significance of this trip. ‘She drummed into me all the way from Morecambe that this just might be the most important day of my life,’ recalled Eric. ‘And she was right.’7 For sitting in the stalls, in pride of place alongside Hylton, was an accomplished young entertainer called Ernie Wise.
