Eric Morecambe Unseen

This is a book about the part the public didn’t see. In the wings, in the dressing room, at home or on holiday, Eric Morecambe had a compulsion to amuse. ‘Even if he didn’t have an audience or wasn’t getting paid, he’d still entertain people in his kitchen,’ says Gary. ‘He used to wake up thinking funny. It was almost like an illness.’ Unlike a lot of comics, he didn’t hoard his humour for his paying punters. He was always on.

Some of it ended up on the small screen, where the rest of us could relish it. Some of it vanished into thin air. And the rest is in this room. Here’s his address book – a veritable Who’s Who of the glory days of British showbiz: Ronnie Barker, Roy Castle, Tommy Cooper and Harry Secombe. There’s a number for Des O’Connor, the patient butt of so many put downs, plus sporting pals like Dickie Davies and Jimmy Hill. There are numbers for his writer, Eddie Braben, his producer, John Ammonds, and, naturally, Ernie Wise – plus the British Heart Foundation, an association that ended with his third and final, fatal heart attack, bringing their lifelong partnership to an abrupt and inconclusive end. ‘Eric Morecambe’ reads Eric’s own inscription on the inside cover. ‘Comedian – Retired.’ But Eric never hung up his boots. He worked until the day – the very evening – that he died.

There are other books in this cardboard box, but they’re not address books. They’re notebooks filled with jottings, from diary entries to old jokes. Some, in childlike copperplate, date back half a century. Others, in geriatric scrawl, look like they were scribbled down yesterday. But buried in amongst these reflections, reminiscences and corny old one-liners, two quotations arrest the eye. One is by TS Eliot, from The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock: ‘I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.’ 4The other must be from the Gospel of St. John, which is odd, since Eric wasn’t overtly religious: ‘That which was borne of this flesh is flesh – that which was borne of the spirit is spirit.’ Well, the flesh is gone – long gone – but in those photos and notebooks, and in this book, the daft, endearing spirit of Eric Morecambe lives on. ‘Even when he wasn’t here, it was as if this place was echoing with his infectious laugh,’ says Bill Drysdale. This book is all about the echo of that laughter.

My other car is a Rolls

My other car is a Skoda

Eric and Fiona Castle (Roy Castle’s wife) take each other’s photos

Eric, Joan and their daughter, Gail, along with additional family members Barney, the Retriever, and Chips.

Eric relaxing at Elbow Beach Hotel in Bermuda, on the way home from appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show in New York.

Gail points out her first boyfriend to her father.

Gail and Gary with Eric and Joan in the garden of their home in Harpenden, just after Gail’s confirmation.

Eric with his mother in law, Alice

Eric relaxes by the family pool with wife Joan and children Gail and Gary. In fact, Eric couldn’t swim and never once went in the water.

1969, the day Apollo 11 got back, carved by Eric, with his initials, on a tree in his front garden.

Chez Eric. Left to right: Gail, Joan, Eric and Gary.

A new addition to the family: Joan and Eric’s adopted son, Steven.

Eric and Ernie – tears of a clown.

Chapter 2

MORECAMBE

Eric: I’m not a complete fool.

Ernie: Why? What part’s missing?

‘I’m not saying his ears were big, but when you saw him from the front, he looked like the FA Cup.’ Eric, before his mother Sadie started taping back his ears, to stop them sticking out.