You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone (10 page)

Eric always admired the past masters of comedy, accepted his peers of comedy, and distrusted the youth of comedy that was breaking through in the early Eighties.‘Contemporary comics concern me slightly,’ he said.‘I worry because I feel there is very little talent coming up, but maybe I’m saying that because I
am an old pro now. I don’t know. Perhaps I envy the fact that the newcomers are young and they have it all to go…’

That’s very telling, because I know my father so enjoyed his life and, perhaps as a direct consequence, always seemed to see himself and Ernie as the new kids on the block, despite the passing years.The fact that it had taken some twenty years to make a decent career and reach many millions of people was perhaps the root cause of their appearing forever new, fresh, vibrant, and of the moment. And I find the strangest thing of all, which sort of confirms this theory, is that when I watch new DVDs compilations or repeats of their shows I discover there
is
a timeless immediacy about them. It is almost as though they have stepped out in front of the camera that week; not the forty-odd years ago that it really is. Much of that is due to their immense talent as performers—the voices of ageless comedy delivered through two middle-aged men bickering over mostly surreal issues. As comedian and writer Ben Elton once observed, they were ‘the greatest alternative comedians of all time’. Much of it is in the writing of Eddie Braben—the affectedness of Ernie and the puncturing wit (Groucho and Phil Silvers-style) of Eric towards both Ernie and the numerous guest stars. It’s the product of complete teamwork.

Sir Michael Parkinson—universally known as ‘Parky’—told me,‘What made it interesting for me with Eric, was the fact that yes, we came roughly from the same part of the world—the north of England—but that Eric came from a long line of great names of northern comedy who were my heroes.

‘I was very aware of the variety hall tradition: Sandy Powell, Norman Collier, Jewell and Warris, Jimmy Tarbuck, Les Dawson. I admired these comedians enormously as they and their predecessors were not so much part of my childhood as my birthright.When eventually I came to do the Parkinson shows, I wanted to meet as many of these heroes as I possibly could.

‘I managed to interview Sandy Powell, for God’s sake! I managed to persuade the producer to allow him to do his famous vent act—filmed for posterity. Without doing that type of thing it would have been lost for ever.

‘And then at the height of their fame I interviewed Eric and Ernie for the first time,’ he says with a wistful smile. ‘You don’t get stars like Morecambe and Wise now. It’s hard for people today to understand just how truly big they were. I mean they were superstars.They were colossal.And television’s changed, so we won’t see the like of them again.’

I remember their first appearance in 1972 very clearly. It was the show when my father famously retold the story of the night of his heart attack in November 1968 when he and Ernie had been working near Leeds. It was also the show in which the previous guest before them was Raquel Welch.

‘One of the smartest moves Raquel Welch ever made in her career was saying to me, “No, I’m not going to go on with them!”

‘I’d been talking to Raquel in the interview about her equipment arriving, and as soon as Eric and Ernie came on after her piece, Eric said, “My equipment
never
arrived!”

‘It was interesting to see how Eric and Ernie could do a spot like they did on my show, and manage to give each other individual space,’ says ‘Parky’.‘It would have been very easy for Eric to overwhelm Ernie, but Eric knew when to involve his partner, and Ernie knew when to sit back and let Eric go.That takes a very deep understanding, which presumably comes from years of treading the boards together.’

‘I first met up with Ernie Wise when we were thirteen-year-olds doing turns on
Youth Takes a Bow
. I remember what I thought of him then. The only word for it was “strange”. But now I know him so much better I’ve changed that. He’s “very strange”.’

T
he beginning of the ‘golden era’ for Morecambe and Wise was heralded by the words ‘Thursday 25th December 1969 BBC1, 8.15pm-9.15pm, Guests: Susan Hampshire, Frankie Vaughan, Nina,Ann Hamilton and Janet Webb’.Those were the details in
Radio Times
of their first-ever Christmas special, a seminal event which would change everything.

With the nation’s unified love and expectation of the wonderful
Morecambe and Wise Christmas Shows
came a fame they had dreamed about as kids but never fully believed would be theirs; and with it a wealth that likewise went way beyond the modest expectations of their youth.And that was all fine and dandy. So what were the drawbacks?

I think that from my father’s point of view the stress of not only having spent years attaining what they set out in search of, but of now having endlessly to work to consolidate it, did some harm to his physical health. From having been hopefuls without much pressure beyond the basic desire to survive in the business—and they’d always managed that OK—they were catapulted into being the top act on the comedy heap.As frightening and heady as it was remarkable, this new situation placed great pressure on them. Many times before I’ve said that my father was never fully able to deal with responsibility and stress, and this he himself readily confirmed over the years.

My mother deliberately geared our home life to making everything easy for her husband, and we all understood, and for the most part did our best to meet, the need to make allowances for genius. But in the working environment, following Morecambe and Wise’s sudden elevation from what Eric jokingly described as ‘a cheap music-hall act’, they were now in all seriousness dubbed ‘the nation’s favourites’.

From Ernie Wise’s standpoint the downside of this success was that his role as straight man—one which even today has a vaguely derogatory connotation—was being given far closer critical scrutiny.This was right and understandable in so much as Eric was receiving the same examination for his comedic talents. But the fact remains that the lot of the straight man, which is a topic that surfaces repeatedly in this book, was and is a particularly tough one; and while Eric was arguably over-glorified for his unquestionable comic gifts, Ernie was ludicrously devalued for his own gifts.And gifts they clearly were, for what is a double act without two performers? As comedy double act Mitchell and Webb point out, Eric and Ernie are inseparable because what makes the comedy work is the combination of the two personalities.

Negativity has hovered over Ernie’s career ever since those original media examinations and mud eventually sticks. So perhaps it is hardly surprising, if not very pleasant, that over the decades several people have said to me,‘We love your dad but hate Ernie.’ I’ve always found this reaction slightly shocking.‘Love’ and ‘hate’ are such strong, emotive words to use in this context.We’re talking

about a wonderful comedy duo, not two dictators. It basically shows a lack of appreciation of the straight men of the comedy world. It says that we love funny men but don’t understand why they need a partner. Comedian Paul Merton said,‘I believe the people who don’t understand how these things work denigrated Ernie Wise down the years. It is the two of them together that is superb: there has never been a better double act.And Ernie is more than a straight man, but, if we have to use that term, there was never a better straight man.’

Dominic Cavendish picked up on this in a piece in the
Daily Telegraph
in 2007. Writing about Ernie’s development under the influence of their BBC scriptwriter Eddie Braben, he said:‘Wise had always been short, dapper, reassuringly ordinary. Now, as brought home by the daft playlets that ended each episode, he had aspirations to be a playwright, giving Morecambe even more opportunities to bring him down to earth.‘And he went on to quote an observation

my father made about his partner’s transformation.‘What Eddie Braben did for Ernie,’ Eric said,‘was to make him into a person. Before, anybody could have played his part. Not now. Ernie is his own man.’

The late, truly great Tony Hancock, referring to Clapham and Dwyer, a touring variety double act of the first half of the twentieth century, said of Billy Dwyer:‘He bore out what I have always felt about these comedy partnerships; that the straight man is invariably much funnier than he is credited with being.’

It’s a commonplace to say that you can’t have one without the other, but what some people fail to notice about double acts is the emotional support that the two partners give each other, and particularly in the early years, when the failures are far more frequent than the successes. Ernie kept Eric grounded and was responsible for making him great. Certainly Eric was a very funny man since the day he entered showbiz—according to some of the interviewees in this book,

funny from the moment he was born—but without the stabilizing presence and unique abilities of Ernie at his side, he might have been a lost talent, a comic run adrift without the support he needed to be the comedian we came to love and even idolize. Ernie knew just when to pull Eric back and just when to let him go: Eric was the loose cannon, Ernie the grounded, calming influence.

‘Ernie gave Eric something to bounce off,’ commented Paul Merton. ‘If Ernie slipped up, Eric would be in like a shot: and if all else failed, he could slap him around the face and say, “You can’t see the join.” Brilliant stuff!’

But the greatest reality check of all is to understand that Eric himself said he could never have done any of it without Ernie. Notice, he didn’t say he could never have done it without a partner. For Eric it
had
to be Ernie.And in an interview nearly thirty years ago he said,‘There is no one better…he is the greatest

straight man in the country.’ Ernie was there to complement Eric.And he never sought to get one over him by trying to win the laughs himself or by complaining—publicly, at least, and that is where it mattered—that Eric was getting most of the plaudits.That must have taken a good deal of courage and common sense, because Ernie could be very, very funny when he was allowed to be, which by design was mostly when away from the cameras.And when you’re in a double act it is imperative that you find your partner funny.As author John Fisher says,‘The real key to [Morecambe and Wise’s] popularity is in the loyalty and camaraderie that binds the two, each obviously regarding the other as a genuinely funny man, a camaraderie never impaired in the audience’s view by Ernie’s show of pomposity or Eric’s barbed defiance.The point is that for all Eric’s protestations to the contrary—Morecambe and Wise—well, you really can’t see the join.’

‘Eric and Ernie had done it the hard way,’ points out Michael Parkinson, alluding to the oneness of their relationship.‘They came through the halls and basically served an apprenticeship which doesn’t exist now. I’m sure being stars on television was never easy, but it must have been better than stepping out to unforgiving audiences at the Glasgow Empire to the sound of your own footfalls! You have to be a very special type of person to survive and become stars like Morecambe and Wise did.

‘But think of it; twenty-five years after your Dad died and ten years after Ernie died, and we can sit here together and still laugh just by reminiscing.’

I was watching the latest Morecambe and Wise DVD put together by the BBC. It’s arguably the best of the lot in that it covers what is left of their first series in 1968, when Eric and Ernie were still in formulaic straight-man-funny-man mode and the scripts were, as ever, supplied by Sid Green and Dick Hills. In other words, it is the Morecambe and Wise of the ATV Lew Grade years but in their earliest BBC incarnation.While it’s of historic interest to see the little that still remains from this first series, what makes the DVD somewhat remarkable, and this is an accidental by-product of the compilation, is the contrast between the two definitive eras of the first series in 1968 and the second series in 1969. And it would be the second series which would

define how their double act would become loved and remembered, it seems, for ever.

The one reason for this is that by the time this second series had been screened, Eric had nearly died at the age of forty-two from his first heart attack. Hills and Green—perhaps in fear of his failing to recover from it—had abandoned ship for other projects, and now Eddie Braben was not only at the helm in terms of writing much of their material, but had redefined Eric and Ernie’s working relationship to make it more akin to Laurel and Hardy in content and style, as discussed earlier. Essentially, Eddie had developed in script form the Eric and Ernie he discovered when meeting them—warm, gentle, caring, and closer than brothers. And this he had to do because, he was the first to admit, he didn’t believe in the double act in its original format.‘No one can be that stupid!’ he said, going on to add,‘What we never saw [in the ATV series] was the genuine warmth that existed between them. I always felt that Ernie was too hard; too abrasive. He had this charming innocence, but you never saw that in the act. He was the typical feed.’

A day or two after watching the DVD I came across a
Daily Telegraph
article about this very product which correctly noted that this second series was ‘when “Bring Me Sunshine” becomes their signature tune’. But what I liked most
about the piece was its summing-up:‘Watching this DVD is a reminder that, although they sometimes had duff lines, they never gave a duff performance. Though the age they embodied grew stale to the palate, they were fresh like no other double-act—before or since.‘That nails it for me. It is what I have always said and always believed: Eric and Ernie transcended the fashions, attitudes, politics, and so on of any period in which they worked. It is as though they were grabbed from a timeless place and put in front of a camera and allowed to chat and occasionally run riot. Each show almost resembles an exceptionally well-made home movie:‘This is Eric and Ernie in a studio garden having fun’ sort of thing.‘Here we see them dancing down the street like Gene Kelly.’

What each show
doesn’t
do is deliberately and frequently reflect upon life as it was lived at that time.This is of paramount importance to their continued success for, like Laurel and Hardy, while they clearly come from a specific timeframe, what they are seen doing within that timeframe is timeless. Their material contains so few pointers to the nature of the era that they cannot become victims of changing outlooks and tastes.

Under Braben’s influence both Eric and Ernie became distinct characters. Ernie more so, perhaps, through his on-screen pretensions to be a playwright, but Eric too was sharper than in previous decades. Eddie had seen to that, washing away the gormless funny man of yesteryear as if he had never existed.

Dominic Cavendish, again in the
Telegraph
, describes Eric as ‘that maniclimbed, maverick-minded man-child, [who] could turn, say, some throwaway chatter about his hand (“My hand, if you realise, my hand has been everywhere with me”) into a pitch-perfect comic soliloquy, punctuated as ever by nudges of those black-rimmed specs.’

Eric’s Groucho-cum-Phil Silvers repartee with their guest stars is another key to their great success. Of their guest stars, Ernie once said, ‘No one has ever been difficult to work with during rehearsal, or objected to the sketches

we’ve asked them to play in.‘And Eric added, ‘We’re always amazed at how professional all our guests are. None of them is ever late for rehearsals.Well, all except one—Glenda Jackson. She went to our old rehearsal place…No one had told her we’d moved!’

Eric recalled
Dad’s Army
star Arthur Lowe appearing on one of their shows (along with most of the
Dad’s Army
cast, if I recall correctly):‘Arthur Lowe is another whose professionalism impressed us.You could give him fifteen pages of script and the next morning he would turn up word-perfect.’

Arguably their most famous guest star in their most famous show (which included Shirley Bassey and the ‘boot’ incident) was André Previn conducting Grieg’s Piano Concerto with Eric as pianist. Eric said,‘André arrived on Monday morning for rehearsals and said he was sorry but would have to miss rehearsals the following day because he wanted to visit his sick mother.We nearly collapsed when he said she lived in Los Angeles…When we started rehearsals he was word-perfect.We thought he’d been learning his lines on the long flights. But he hadn’t. He learned the script by torchlight in the back of a taxi coming from the airport!’

Michael Parkinson told me,‘The Morecambe and Wise Andre Previn sketch
will last as long as human beings have a sense of humour. It’s a genuinely classic piece of comedy.’

But, amid all the spectacle of guest stars and lavish sets, Morecambe and Wise worked so well on TV because of the relationship between two middleaged men—a surreal relationship of remembered schooldays sleights, crushes on the opposite sex, and contretemps with teachers.

Eric and Ernie’s careers progressed steadily along their chosen path but there were two notable diversions. One was their journey into film-making, the other a few appearances on
The Ed Sullivan Show
in New York. Both occurred during the sixties, which in itself is illuminating as they pre-date two other colossal events in their lives—Eric’s first and near-fatal heart attack and their move from ATV to the BBC, where their star rose meteorically.The heart attack meant a temporary (though it was to prove permanent, at least as a double act) break from making big-screen films, and their arrival at the BBC to make
The Morecambe and Wise Show
brought about the new comedy team of Morecambe and Wise…and Braben.And, with the great John Ammonds in charge of production, the team was complete.