'He could never switch off, even at home with me and mum. And it killed him': Eric Morecambe's son reveals the obsessive dark side of the 'Bring Me Sunshine' boys...
By GARY MORECAMBE
In its heyday, The Morecambe And Wise Show would attract 28 million viewers across Britain. In his compelling new biography, Gary Morecambe talks about his father's relationship with Ernie Wise, the classic Andre Previn Christmas special and how he continued to make them laugh even up until the end
DOWN TIME: Even family snaps were an excuse for Eric Morecambe (at home with Joan, Gary and their border terrier Chips) to clown around for the camera
Throughout my teenage years, my family had a tradition we shared with 28 million other people across Britain.
Every Christmas Day, my mother, father, sister, brother and I would settle down in front of the television to watch our favourite TV programme, The Morecambe And Wise Show. My father would laugh uproariously at the show.
For the rest of us, much as we loved the legendary double act, there was even more pleasure to be taken from watching my father, Eric Morecambe, watching himself.
Curiously, he referred to the duo in the third person, saying: ‘Morecambe and Wise got that just right.’ He often praised his partner, declaring at the end: ‘Ernie was great.’ It’s no exaggeration to say that he was the show’s biggest fan.
The 1983 Christmas show was different. We watched it together, as usual, but my father’s mood was far less buoyant. Now made by Thames TV, rather than the BBC, the programme looked tired. Whenever a Thames show transmitted, he’d look to us for reassurance. ‘It was good, though, don’t you think?’ he often asked.
It was a difficult question to answer. With a lack of decent new material, Eric and Ernie had resorted to rehashing old routines. They looked older, and there was a spark missing. That day, my father was slightly defensive about the show, which was very weak by their own high standards, and I found it very sad.
Eric and Ernie were together virtually all day every day because of work; so when they became successful, they had an unspoken agreement that they wouldn't socialise with one another
It would be their last. What we didn’t realise was that he was dying from heart disease, and quite quickly.
In May 1984, while doing a Q&A evening for Stan Stennett, an old pal, at Stan’s Roses Theatre in Tewkesbury, he left the stage to a standing ovation and collapsed in the wings. He died in the early hours of May 28.
I was born in 1956, Eric’s second child (after my sister, Gail) with our mum Joan, a former dancer. Morecambe and Wise had just started to make a good living from their superb live act. But variety was dying rapidly, and they needed to break into television.
They found a specialist agent, Billy Marsh, who got them a series and writers – Dick Hills and Sid Green – who would work with them on material.
They never looked back. Two Of A Kind, for Lew Grade’s ATV, became a hit. I was a small child who had just started at primary school.
START HIM YOUNG: Eric and family with ukuleles, in 1932
By my second term, everyone suddenly knew who my dad was, which was very exciting.
By 1963, the show was second only to Coronation Street in the top 20 television ratings, and Morecambe and Wise were voted Television Light Entertainment Personalities of the Year.
As long as I’d been alive, Ernie had been there. I called him ‘Uncle Ernie’ and loved him: he always took time to ask me about school and what was happening in my life when I visited the studio (as I loved to do). My father would shake his head as Ernie chatted to me during rehearsals: at work: Eric was extremely focused.
The height of their fame coincided with my teenage years, when I thought my father was deeply embarrassing. At home, he was a diluted version of what everyone saw on TV. When my friends came round, he’d answer the door, invite them in to watch Morecambe And Wise and offer them cigars and whisky. They loved it, but I’d beg my mother to rein him in.
He wasn’t big-headed: he just wanted to be part of whatever was going on. On one occasion, the bell rang and he got there first. Five girls had turned up to see me.
He said: ‘Oh, look Gary, two and a half each.’
He’d materialise at an intimate moment when I had girlfriends over. Or I’d be playing badminton with a friend in the garden and he’d appear from behind a hedge. In restaurants, he’d do routines in front of the waiters.
If they poured wine, he’d lift the empty glass instead while the family groaned. He lived to entertain, and would have done his routines in the kitchen if he hadn’t been on television.
Eric and Ernie were as close as brothers, as you’d imagine for a pair who grew up together. They met in 1940, when 14-year-old Eric Bartholomew was chosen to appear in touring show Youth Takes A Bow with Ernie, already a West End star in the making.
They whiled away their time doing gags and impressions, and it was my grandmother, Sadie, who suggested they form a double act.
WHEN ERIC MET ERNIE: Ernie (far left) was already a child star when he teamed up with Eric (left) in 1941
From then on, they were together
virtually all day every day because of work; so when they became
successful, they had an unspoken agreement that they wouldn’t socialise
with one another. But their incredible bond was clear.
I
marvelled at their habit of finishing one another’s sentences. They did
it without interrupting each other; they’d simply leave a gap, knowing
the other would step seamlessly in.
Both
of them were proud of and delighted by their newfound success. But
being a star of television – maintaining the high standard and
satisfying audience expectation – was the start of an inexorable rise in
stress and tension for my father.
He once told me he dared not switch off in case he could never switch on again.
Eric, as the one fated to become known as the comic genius, was always aware he was carrying the show. Supremely brilliant as Ernie was – ‘irreplaceable’ was how my father put it to me – he was always destined to be ‘… and Wise’.
Long road to the top: The pair break for fish and chips on Blackpool beach
Eric’s constant need to perform and entertain had a profound impact on our family. Put simply, he burned himself out. It was at Jimmy Corrigan’s club in Batley, West Yorkshire, in 1968, that he had his first heart attack, which almost killed him.
Looking back at the treadmill he and Ernie were on, his inability to relax and his chain smoking, it is clear that, even at 42, it was quite predictable.
Suddenly, we had a very frail, elderly man convalescing at home – or so he seemed. He spent the weeks playing endless Subbuteo matches with me and, when he was feeling better, we started going to Luton matches [Eric became a director of Luton Town FC].
It was then my sister Gail and I realised the other side to our father’s job. Before that, we’d just thought it was all tremendous fun.
Now, everything was geared round Dad’s health. So more rehearsals, the end of the rushed 30-minute shows recorded as live, and the start of thoughtfully rehearsed, 45-minute pre-recorded shows.
A new writer, talented Liverpudlian Eddie Braben, developed their on-stage personalities and added a new dimension to Morecambe and Wise.
Eric’s persona became harder. He now shared his mischief and mayhem via looks to the camera and a relentless sending-up of Ernie – slaps around the face; wig gags; short fat hairy legs gags.
Ernie became softer, dreamier, with pretensions to penning the greatest plays ‘since wot Shakespeare wrote!’
It was Braben who suggested they share a bed, with Eric smoking his pipe and reading the Dandy and Ernie either writing a play or reading The Financial Times.
Of all their shows, the one my father was proudest of was the André Previn Christmas special. He said to me on Boxing Day 1971, the morning after it went out, ‘Whatever we do in the rest of our careers, at best we can only equal that.’
But the journey between Previn agreeing and Previn appearing in a piece of comedy brilliance was scary for my father.
His agent agreed on three rehearsal days, but then his mother fell ill over in the States, meaning he could only arrive the evening before the show recorded. Previn turned up at the studios claiming that he had learnt the script in the back of the taxi from the airport.
The duo in the late 40s, reunited after being interrupted by World War 2
If you watch closely, there’s a moment in the show where you can see my father relax, because he knows it’s going to work.
Over 40 years after that routine was performed, I can only sympathise with André Previn when, on arriving in London, he is still greeted by cabbies saying, ‘Where to Mr Preview?’
During the 1970s, the number of guest stars in the Morecambe and Wise Christmas specials not only increased, but they became altogether more musical.
This was a specific demand of Eric and Ernie’s – they wanted to send up a bit of old Hollywood. That’s why we were treated to Angela Rippon, Vanessa Redgrave, Elton John, Glenda Jackson, Hannah Gordon, Michelle Dotrice, Diana Rigg, Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey.
But because of the repetition throughout that decade of the format, they did begin to tire of doing the shows. They wanted to try something different.
It came as little surprise to the family, therefore, when in January 1978 Eric and Ernie announced they were going to leave the BBC and move to Thames Television.
With hindsight, it wasn’t the right thing to do. Besides the paucity of decent material and the lack of big names, the biggest problem was my father’s failing health.
No sooner had the first shows been transmitted than he collapsed from a second heart attack early one morning in March 1979 while opening the fridge at the family home in Hertfordshire. I was standing a couple of feet away, dressed and ready to get the train to work in London, when he fell backwards on top of me.
‘I think I’ll be alright in a minute,’ he said. But he didn’t look alright to me. Off he went to St Albans’ hospital, where he recovered, but with a diagnosis recommending bypass surgery.
The operation was considered a great success, and we assumed he was cured. During his recuperation, Eric began writing his first novel, Mr Lonely. His love for writing enthused him so much he began to talk about it as an alternative to comedy.
Years later, Ernie told me about a moment in a dressing room at that time, when Eric vaguely alluded to the idea they might call it a day. Ernie replied he must choose to do what he felt was best. And as it was neither a wholly direct question nor a definitive answer, the obvious outcome was that nothing changed.
Eric debuts his familiar glasses routine as he and Ernie pose during a panto season in the 50s
In truth, I don’t think my father would ever have quit. It just wasn’t in his nature to turn down work; the fear of it drying up had been drummed into him at a very early age. Someone once described him as being a ‘victim of comedy’, which I think is apt. Comedy had its hooks in him and it wouldn’t let go until he dropped.
But increasingly, I sen-sed his exhaustion with it all. I often found him exhausting to be around in later years as he never stopped trying to entertain. I never saw him quiet. He loved fishing and bird-watching, but never made these escapes a regular part of his life. Life was making people laugh, and if he’d been a different character – one more capable of relaxing – he’d probably have been half as happy.
Second on the bill in the 50s
It’s easy with hindsight but someone should have said ‘enough is enough’. I sensed at this time that their belief in each other was sorely tested. After his bypass, my father’s comic timing, once impeccable, was often slightly off, and Ernie struggled to remember lines.
Rehearsals became tough, and much of the joy had gone.
When my father died, Ernie would feel bad for ever afterwards about not having been with his partner, as it was so rare that they worked alone. In the first five or six years after his death, when we were all coming to terms with our loss, I found him much whiter, thinner and older.
Later, during the 1990s, he was more bubbly and keen to chat about the past, from the days he and Eric shared a bed in their digs as teenagers treading the boards to the childish pranks my father loved to play – like pretending, if there was a red napkin in a restaurant, to have cut his throat and laying down on the table.
In March 1999, Ernie died at a relatively young 73. We were shocked he succumbed to strokes and heart problems, as Ernie had been the stalwart of the act; the one never to suffer even a cold during the Morecambe and Wise heyday. Part of me will forever be convinced Eric’s death at just 58 had a much more profound effect on Ernie than was appreciated.
For fans, continual repeats ensured the duo lived on. But for me, Ernie’s death changed everything.
He had always been there to talk to about their early days on the road, about my father’s mischief and boyhood pranks. It wasn’t until he died that for me Morecambe and Wise, the brilliant comedic force which had captivated me as long as I could remember, finally came to an end.
‘Morecambe & Wise: Bring Me Sunshine’ by Gary Morecambe is published by Carlton, £29.99.
To order at the special price of £22 with free p&p call The Event Bookstore on 0844 472 4157 or go to mailbookshop.co.uk
Eric's one from the heart
Eric wrote this note shortly before his 1979 operation
4.55AM, HAREFIELD HOSPITAL
‘I’m surprised how calm I feel considering my temperature is 115 – my blood pressure is 206 over 200 and my pulse rate is 192 a minute – Monday morning early – June 25 ’79. The birds, like Des O’Conner, have just stopped singing - the condemned man ate a hearty valium, and the bravest words I can think of are two “helps”. ‘The Greeks have a word for it, the French have a movement for it, and I’m sure the Americans have an ice cream named after it. But as an Englishman, I can only say – I hope I’ve got the heart for it.’
