‘The first part that we had in the can eventually went out as a cinema short as the complete story of The Passionate Pilgrim,’ explains Charles. ‘It was only released in cinemas in the UK and again went out with a James Bond movie, and again it was advertised everywhere on the back of the name Eric Morecambe.’
As I was leaving, Charles was clearly keen to impart to me a few further thoughts about my father. ‘The only real chance of Eric branching out and displaying his full potential would have been if Ernie had gone first. Awful thing to say, but it’s true. I know Eric wouldn’t have done to Ernie what Dud [Dudley Moore] did to Pete [Peter Cook]—though that relationship was obviously more stressed. It didn’t mean Eric was any less keen to branch out. His view of Morecambe and Wise, as he explained it to me, was that he wanted to keep it going as long as possible, particularly because of Ernie. However, he felt they’d done all they could with the series, and it was increasingly becoming a strain to keep the standard up. Again it was this idea he had of “duty to the fans”—that desire to keep the people laughing—that drove him ever onwards.
‘Even when people were with him whom he knew well—indeed me while we were filming—he felt this need to entertain. But he didn’t have to for our benefit, he just felt he should.
‘Mind you, my girlfriend of the time often tells me how once she was driving Eric between locations and couldn’t find her driving glasses. Quick as a flash Eric quipped, “What you need is a prescription windscreen.”’
The last recorded work of Morecambe and Wise was their 1984 film Night Train to Murder.This was supposed to be the film that would not only be their first bigscreen release since 1967 but eclipse that trio of Rank movies made back in the mid-sixties. But it was truly poor, if not awful.
Actress Lysette Anthony was a very young actress back in 1984 when she was hired to play alongside Eric and Ernie as Eric’s niece in this sub-standard Agatha Christie-style murder drama. ‘We laughed and laughed and had such a great time making the film,’ she told me. ‘Even between takes the laughter went on, but nobody pointed out, perhaps because we were all having such a fun time, that the script was very thin and didn’t really work.’
I find Lysette’s observation interesting as it sort of confirms a niggling thought of my own which has been growing over the years: that Thames used its Euston Films arm to lure Eric and Ernie to take The Morecambe and Wise Show to Thames Television, but with no real intent to expend energy and talent on trying to make the film a big success.
What was surprising was that my father was unable to see beyond the merriment and realize he was involved in a duff project. It was only at the screening of the film that the horror of what they had done—for that was his opinion—was fully understood.As a wholly professional performer with fantastic perception and understanding of Morecambe and Wise, he was more gutted by his own failure to pick up on the failings at the time of filming than anything else.
Lysette Anthony did point out to me that everyone at least enjoyed the whole process. ‘Your father was one of the kindest people I’ve ever met, let alone work with. I was going through a really rough time on the domestic front while filming, and your father sensed things weren’t right, though I’d told him nothing. He was terribly protective of me.
‘He was a lovely, decent, very silly, naughty, gorgeous man. I still have a real soft spot for him.’
Lysette was surprised at the difference between Eric and Ernie. ‘With Morecambe and Wise,’ she explained,’when you met Eric it was exactly what you wanted and expected him to be: he was that funny and generous as both comedian and person. Brightening people’s day was very much at the core of his being. And with Ernie it was much less so. And that was a shock. Ernie was quite cold and very much more cautious with people on the set.Together, as a partnership, they were brilliant, of course, and Eric is beyond being an icon and deserves to be so.When I work with other great actors and comedians and let slip I worked on a film with Morecambe and Wise, they are both flummoxed and in awe, such is the reputation of their double act.’
Alongside Lysette Anthony and Eric and Ernie themselves were actors such as Fulton Mackay, best known for his role as the prison warder in Ronnie Barker’s Porridge. But it wasn’t enough to save this project.
After the private screening of the film, and when Eric was able to put a coherent sentence together, the first thing he requested was that the project be shelved. He was told it was impossible to do that.
As it happened, Eric would be dead within a few weeks, and as a mark of respect for his wishes, while not shelving the film altogether, Thames did not give it its theatrical release, finally screening it on TV in a children’s programming slot. How ironic that Morecambe and Wise were seduced to Thames from the BBC by the promise of a ‘big film’. And doubly ironic is the fact that the film has benefited from both video and DVD release, including international sales, proving quite popular in countries where Eric and Ernie were virtually or completely unknown.
Paul Merton told me an interesting story about the move to Thames. ‘I bumped into [the BBC’s] former Head of Light Entertainment, Bill Cotton, at Waterloo Station a while ago.We got to talking about Morecambe and Wise, and he told me that Eric had gone to the bar of the BBC for a drink during the last Christmas he was alive. Bill Cotton had been there too, and in conversation Bill had encouraged him and Ernie to return to the BBC. He did this because he inferred from Eric’s comments that all was not quite as it should have been at Thames; that the move to the different studio was more negative than positive. As it is we’ll never know what might have happened. Eric died the following May. But it’s interesting to imagine their return to the BBC and to see them possibly taking the Morecambe and Wise format even further.’
‘Brightening people’s day was very much at the core of his being.’
Michael Parkinson told me, ‘I don’t think Bill Cotton ever recovered from Morecambe and Wise leaving the BBC. He was devastated. Heartbroken.
‘Eric and Ernie had to make a decision for what they saw as best for them, but Bill took it very personally. I’d go and see Bill around 5pm at the close of play as it were. He was having personal difficulties much of the time back then as well, but he’d always come back to go on about why Eric and Ernie had left. But they never fell out with each other over it. It was more that Bill couldn’t come to terms with it. But he never stopped loving them as people and performers and would have taken them back at the drop of a hat.
‘There was no greater champion for Morecambe and Wise right from the very beginning.’
Curtain Call
‘All comedians are supposed to want to play Hamlet, I know, but that’s not me. I was offered Bottom by the BBC a couple of weeks ago—the part of Bottom, that is—in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But I had to turn it down. I couldn’t learn all those lines, for one thing.’
We all secretly know, but choose to forget, that anything that represents true happiness has to come from within.’ Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it within us or find it not,’ wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson.And I think ‘the beautiful’ can easily be exchanged for ‘happiness’ in that context. Our desire to add externally—materially—to ourselves in an attempt to feel more complete has never worked. So is seeking celebrity status the last desperate attempt to escape reality? If that is the case, then the problem is worse than it appears.All I know for sure is that you only have to look at the famous clientele in the expensive rehab clinics and ask yourself, are they there because they are happy? My father had the fame but could separate himself from the illusion it somehow made him special.
An interview I did with my father in 1982 gives a brief insight into his personality and disciplined manner; how he was the antithesis of the celebrity notion of today.
ME: Is there anyone in particular in the music world that you have not met and would wish to meet?
ERIC: Not individually, no. I have met many of the ones I consider great. André P
revin,Yehudi Menuhin and so on. Perhaps I am accustomed to it, but it is no big thrill in meeting them as, like myself, they are ordinary people. I believe that it is the ones with the lesser talent who try to be something they are not: they go a little round the twist in the end. Anyone who can’t handle it shouldn’t be allowed it; sex included.
Morecambe and Wise were not celebrities per se, so what makes them continue to be so loved today is possibly less to do with imagery and more to do with the content of their work and the nature of their relationship. Morecambe and Wise didn’t tell jokes. Jokes can date performers. Satire, which arguably is the sharpest form of wit, is dated almost the day after it’s been aired, as its content is based on the news and political personalities of the current moment. You have a change of prime minister and/or government, or a new story or scandal hits the headlines, and the material is instantly old and woefully unfunny. Perhaps if left long enough—like the satirical wit of Saki (Hector Munro) from the early part of the twentieth century—it develops a kind of retro edge to it. But relatively contemporary material, like that of Not the Nine O’Clock News—the vehicle which launched Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith, Griff Rhys Jones, and Pamela Stephenson’s careers—is an example of shelf-life comedy. Hugely popular at its zenith in the late seventies and eighties, it is now hardly even mentioned when comedy is discussed. I remember being at Rowan Atkinson’s house in the eighties, shortly after the series had finished, and he could hardly bear to talk about it, let alone watch any of it.
But Morecambe and Wise didn’t do satire—they didn’t even tell jokes.What they did was share with the public their intimacy and the relationship that had been constantly developing from their early variety-hall days—which were beautifully studied in William Cook’s 2007 book Morecambe and Wise Untold—through to their spectacular BBC Christmas shows.The humour was effortlessly grounded in a genuine shared history, as these two giants of comedy had indeed trod the boards together as young lads, travelling to work from Scotland down to the south coast of England and back.
Eric once wrote, ‘Ours is a relationship based on genuine friendship and a mutual admiration. We both think the other is the funniest man breathing!’
Ant and Dec perhaps exist in a time where a decent vehicle for their talents is lacking, and perhaps a closer match to Morecambe and Wise from the current crop would be Mitchell and Webb, who fully began to realize their potential through the series Peep Show.What makes the comparison particularly apt is that Mitchell and Webb have a real outlet for their talent in the format of their shows, rather than messing around with would-be celebrities, real celebrities, or involving the public at large.
I sense that some of the current purveyors of our entertainment recognize they are overly valued: certainly Ricky Gervais, when interviewed on a TV chat show, said he was excessively rewarded for what he did.And Ant and Dec told me that they were flattered by any comparisons to Eric and Ernie, but wouldn’t go near making such an assumption themselves.And being a genuine ‘star’ demands more than being nice, extrovert, and smiley, or my local butcher should get BAFTAs and ridiculously large pay cheques.
Fundamentally there’s a ‘flavour of the month’ feel to entertainers these days that didn’t exist a generation or two ago. Instead of years of hard slog and having to constantly prove your worth, there seems to be an element of ‘These
two are well known and well liked—get ‘em another award and a few more million quid, and in a couple of years we’ll find a replacement for them.’
A journalist writing a profile of my father used the following words to describe him: ‘Eric Morecambe was the rarest of things: a universally popular mainstream comedian who also commands respect from critics and alternative comics (see his virtual clone Vic Reeves).’
That’s probably spot on, though it should be added that the biggest reason Eric is so broadly accepted is because he was a thoroughly decent human being. You can’t fake that. Some have tried, and it’s not my job to name names—there are plenty you can come up with yourselves if you ponder a moment. But with Eric—and Ernie—it was clearly genuine: they wanted to entertain and they were affable with it.
Peter Kay, who arrived as a solo stand-up comedian for the most part and developed into a gifted comic actor, does have that timelessness about him. His comedy is not dissimilar to that of Morecambe and Wise. Peter often reminds me of my father in the way he uses his voice and in his movement. They both hail from Lancashire—well, Kay is from Bolton, which although now part of Greater Manchester is still Lancs in most people’s minds—and he retains the lovable sincerity that Eric possessed—he is an observer of life, not a purveyor of a string of one-liners. Like Eric bickering with Ernie over which of them their school teacher liked best and who had the best pair of shoes when they were kids forty years earlier, Kay will recall bonfire nights in his back garden at home, and which biscuits fall apart quickest when dunked in a mug of tea (or brew, as he calls it).
With Kay I always sense that, like Eric, he would be happy to entertain a crowd in his kitchen at home for nothing, if that is what it took for him to perform. His comedic skills are possibly on a par with those of the late, great Ronnie Barker.
‘The problem I have with today’s comedians,’ says Michael Parkinson, ‘is they’re not funny! Funny is what you get with Eric and Ernie and Tommy Cooper and Les Dawson.With the exception of Peter Kay, who to all intents and purposes is old-school in his style of comedy, you don’t see that now. Possibly Lee Evans has something, too. But Peter has clearly been influenced by Eric and that adds to his likeability: he brings yesteryear to today and it’s wonderful.’
Ricky Gervais has elements in his comic persona of both Eric and Ernie. When in character, like Ernie he can be rather bumptious and forthright and a little full of his own supposed talent and importance—writer Eddie Braben’s device of creating Ernie as the frustrated playwright in The Morecambe and Wise Show being a good illustration of that.At other times Gervais can be like Eric in his mischievousness and gentle naivety. In his series Extras he takes a very popular Morecambe and Wise theme—the appearance and use of a guest star on the show. Ricky uses his guest stars more aggressively—some are lampooned hilariously, while others are made to appear downright evil!—but essentially it is still Morecambe and Wise in its execution.And it is brilliant. When interviewed
on TV, Gervais’s colleague Stephen Merchant described Extras as ‘The classic Morecambe and Wise device’.
During an interview of his own Gervais talked a bit about Eric’s comedy brain. He gave an excellent example of Eric’s irrepressible wit when he mentioned the footage of my father leaving hospital surrounded by the media after his second heart attack.As Eric, led by my mother, attempts to get away from the hospital porch to his car, one reporter asks, ‘Will you take it easy for a bit?’ Eric, without missing a beat, replies, ‘If I can get a bit, I’ll take it easy!’
As Gervais points out, this quick-wittedness follows an extreme life-threatening health scare. For me it illuminates the world my father inhabited: the constant obligation he felt—real or imagined—to look for the amusing. As I’ve said in interviews, he wasn’t someone who woke up in the morning thinking of what he might like for breakfast; he awoke thinking what humour he might find and use in the day ahead.And that was part of his gift for comedy.
Rowan Atkinson is a brilliant comic who has proved time and again over several decades that sheer talent runs from every pore in his body. Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Peter Cook,Tommy Cooper, Charlie Chaplin, Groucho Marx, and many others are genuine comic masters whose work, pain, and talent likewise spans decades. I know comedy is subjective—what one person finds funny another might not—but there is an acceptable criterion when it comes to using the word ‘genius’, and in my view there are very few of those performing comedy out there today who deserve to be described as possessing it: and when the media proclaims they are geniuses, we all should feel vaguely uncomfortable for not questioning it, as the med
ia often has its own agenda.
It’s while in conversation with Michael Parkinson that I realise how much he appreciated Eric’s pure humour—the comedian who always remained a decent and unaffected human being. He said,’Eric and I couldn’t be described as having been close friends or anything like that, but we really enjoyed each other’s company. ‘We’d go out to restaurants and in Eric’s own gentle way he’d cause complete turmoil.The waiter would come up talk to him and Eric would look the wrong side. Hilarious stuff, but what is it with these great comics that they just can’t switch off.’
In conversation with my mother for this book, she told me an interesting thing I’d never before heard.Apparently in the early seventies a Dutch double act approached Eric and Ernie to say that they enjoyed their shows so much they were going to use their material. People weren’t that copyright-conscious back then; certainly not Eric and Ernie, who seemed to find the whole thing vaguely entertaining. ‘I think they arranged to meet up with your dad and Ernie,’ said my mother. ‘Whether that happened or not, I can’t recall, but they received an envelope with a handful of [bank]notes in it—a pittance for the material they were using, of course. But it was very amusing. I think I’ve still got the notes somewhere!’
Since Eric’s death I’ve always kept half an eye on new comedians emerging who clearly have been influenced by Morecambe and Wise.The latest one to grab my attention is the hugely talented Lee Mack, whom I first saw on Jack Dee’s live show broadcast from the Apollo Theatre in London. He’s the first comedian in a long, long time to really press my buttons, and the fact that during his act he effortlessly glides into an Eric impression without ever really saying he’s doing it, no doubt helps.
‘Doing the comedy circuit,’ says Lee, ‘you’re always asked who your favourite comics are, and the two names which always crop up are Eric Morecambe and Stan Laurel.
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