‘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 Previn,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 media 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.
‘I used to think it was so important in my life to make a decision as to which of them I thought was funniest. I’d spend hours on long journeys contemplating this.’
I pointed out to Lee that it’s funny the way kids can think like that. A twinkle appeared in his eye as he said, ‘Kid? This was two years ago on my way to gigs!’
He settled on Eric as his all-time comic hero because of his longevity. ‘Longevity in this business is so special, remarkable and, once acquired, permanent by its nature. But if you said back in the mid-1980s that your favourite comedians were Morecambe and Wise, you’d have got strange looks. It was the era of the alternatives, and the immediate past comedians suffered more than the black and white ones of the 1920s who were revered as high art. Frankie Howerd,Tommy Cooper, Cannon and Ball, Benny Hill, Les Dawson and Morecambe and Wise were out of favour.Yet look at Morecambe and Wise now all these years on.’
In my father’s last days, as they turned out to be, he made an interesting observation which initially shocked me but on reflection sort of demonstrates what forty-three years of any partnership can create. ‘If Ern and I stay together and carry on making shows for the foreseeable future,’ he told me, ‘then I’m going to end up hating him, and he’s going to end up hating me. It has to be that way:
it’s too long to be doing the same thing. All the little faults and irritations will become massive and destroy us. I wouldn’t want that.’
As someone who has doggedly analysed his father for twenty-five years, I constantly racked my brains while writing this book to make sure that he made no other observation or suggestion immediately before or after this comment, and that my declining memory is recalling things with 100 per cent accuracy. The reason for my thoroughness is that although it would have been natural for him to have added ‘therefore we must stop doing Morecambe and Wise shows’, he genuinely didn’t. I’ve imagined that he went on to say that, but I know that he just smiled and walked out the living room, bringing to a close one of the occasional yet enlightening conversations we were prone to, especially in the last months of his life for some reason. None of it was to matter, of course, because
within a fortnight he was dead. Death overcame all considerations, including what might have been.
My father died suddenly on 28 May 1984 in the wings of a theatre in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. He had being doing a solo show—a Q&A for his old friend and former variety-hall stalwart Stan Stennett—during which he covered the many aspects and times of his remarkable life. Strange really that he should have gone over his whole life story and then died at the completion of its telling.
I think he recognized very profoundly that everything about this physical existence was transient, and possibly not as important as we like to think—or that we’re not as important as we like to think we are within it.We certainly can’t take anything with us when we leave, which makes a mockery of the idea of ownership. My father’s entire fame—the attention, the money, the plaudits, and even the illnesses—were rendered meaningless, and he knew that was how it would be. He also knew that it was OK: so long as we, in some familial gesture, continued to watch the shows, then all else was fine.
During our many walks across the fields at the back of his house we would talk about the books we both wanted to one day write.Although the fact that both he and I were keen to write could be a thorny issue between us at times, it was a subject never avoided. Actually my father never avoided anything if it was there to be discussed.Without any direct connection to the books we were talking about, he said, quite suddenly and almost dismissively, ‘You can write what you like about me when I’m dead and gone.’ What struck me—and at this particularly juncture I had no plans to write anything at all about him—was that he really meant it. It was said in that ‘It’s not going to be my problem’ kind of way.That conversation made me start to evaluate many things in my own existence. If this man with all the trappings of success following a huge and at times very hard career could evaluate it with a half-smile and a dismissive shrug, then what was there really to worry about? None of it, of course, is that important beyond the importance we allow ourselves to imagine.
Paradoxically, I sensed that my father hid behind the trappings of fame, and behind the material rewards and comforts it had brought him. I’m sure this reaction was fear-based, and it was certainly contradictory to those moments I’ve just described.While accepting that his mortal life was a blink of the eye in the history of humankind on our planet, he still was comforted by having things he couldn’t have had as a kid, and equally fearful they might be taken away. In several conversations with my mother when they were discussing the purchase of something one would hear him say, ‘Can we afford it?’
I’m so thankful he never took himself or his image too seriously (unlike many from his own era and the current era that I’ve stumbled across).And when you consider how fêted, how loved and adored by a vast public he was and remarkably still is, it is truly admirable that he resisted believing the myth of his worth.
Ernie Wise died of heart failure on 21 March 1999 after several years of illhealth. A couple of minor strokes and two heart attacks had left his memory impaired. Personally I found this very tragic, considering his enthusiasm and effervescence of just a few years earlier, during which I’d had the opportunity to meet up with him on several occasions, mostly to discuss work on what would one day become The Play What I Wrote.
Ernie’s passing was the final chapter in a long and entertaining story: two boys who had dreamed of one day becoming big stars, but who never really believed it was likely to happen: that was how Ernie once described it.
The polished, clog-dancing discovery Ernie Wise that fate had brought together with the singing, all-round entertainer Eric Bartholomew had gone to join his partner—at least that’s how the media depicted it in both words and cartoon. Having to accept that the story really was now over was one of the hardest things to take on board. While Ernie had been alive the double act sort of still existed as a living entity.
The years have ticked by.As well as this being Eric’s twenty-fifth anniversary, it is also Ernie’s tenth, and I’m sure this book will be only one of many celebrations to mark the passing of both of these giants.
Reminiscing with my mother not long ago about Eric, I told her how sad and frustrating I felt it was that my father, while reaching the top of his profession, had been allowed so little time to enjoy it; that mostly he had been on the journey getting there. But my mother saw it differently. ‘Since his first heart attack,’ she told me, ‘your dad understood that every breath he took could have been his last. Nearly dying at forty-two gave him a sharper sense of the moment, and the recognition that it must be enjoyed.’ And she added, ‘As well as living more in the moment, he would also tell me with genuine delight what a wonderful life he had lived; that there should be no regrets if anything happened to him.’
As for Morecambe and Wise the industry, this still appears to tick on. At the time of writing this book, as well as the documentaries and various TV film projects under discussion concerning both of them, I am also in discussion with the local MP in Lancaster about setting up an Eric Morecambe museum in Morecambe.This excites me greatly, as there is no better place for all the various bits of memorabilia to be displayed for the benefit of the visiting tourists and local people.
As with Laurel and Hardy before them, as the years pass by there will be ever fewer who can recall them as a living act. Slowly, therefore, Eric and Ernie will be become a part of our psyche—two familiar names and faces that instantaneously conjure up an image of brilliance combined with daftness, and will guarantee a smile on everyone’s face for generations to come.
That’s not a bad legacy.
Even today people say to me that they can’t believe Eric has gone. I just point out that by now he is returned—reincarnated and probably sitting in some classroom, unaware of his previous life, yet biding his time before letting his comic mayhem run riot again.
Two of a Kind
Two of a kind,
For your information,
We’re two of a kind.
Two of a kind,
It’s my observation,
We’re two of a kind.
Just like peas in a pod,
Birds of a feather,
Alone or together, you’ll find.
That we are two…Two of a kind.