Gary Morecambe - You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone - The life and work of Eric Morecambe

People often approach me and say, ‘You look just like your dad.’ This I find very uplifting and flattering, for my brush-over grey-white hair makes me look much more like Ernie these days. Even friends and family remark about the similarity—to my father, that is, not Ernie. It’s also friends and family who express a quiet concern that I spend too much time working on Morecambe and Wise-related projects and issues, to the detriment of other things, but I’m too old to change. And although I do other projects I never tire of the Morecambe and Wise ones—indeed I would dispense with all the rest in favour of these, because first and foremost I’m as much a fan of Eric and Ernie as I am Eric’s son. I still sit at home and watch the DVDs, and amaze myself that I always laugh and laugh as much as ever. Some humour really is timeless.

It is summer 2008. While the birds twitter and the bees hum, and the man next door tries drowning them out with his lawnmower, I’m sitting at my computer writing the book you are now holding. I feel unbelievably excited. It’s always the same. When it’s to do with Morecambe and Wise I seem to ignite. This ignition is automatic, yet still I can’t resist going through all my favourite

routines of theirs for an excess of inspiration. It’s probably just an excuse to watch all their shows again. With the advent of YouTube I even spend my lunch break watching them getting up to mischief with the likes of John Lennon: I love the way he throws back his head in hysterics when Eric ad-libs. Then there’s André Previn and his wonderful orchestra performing Grieg’s Piano Concerto with Eric as soloist; Eric and Ernie ‘backing’ Tom Jones; Shirley Bassey having her shoe replaced with a workman’s boot; Glenda Jackson in that Cleopatra sketch (‘Sorry I’m late, but I’ve been irrigating the desert…not easy on your own!’); Eric and Ernie making breakfast to The Stripper ; or their homage to Gene Kelly with their beautifully shot Singin’ in the Rain . The list is endless.

It’s the going back to the many magical moments of their television career that reminds me—should I need reminding—that they were absolute masters of comedy; and that they are not just for ever but also inimitable. There is something dynamic and glittering about the two of them that prevents their work from tiring—something that goes beyond the fact they were mere comic entertainers providing light relief in an otherwise tragic world. Perhaps it is a combination of their wonderful talent as performers and the lost era from which they emerged. Arguably they are the last great ‘stars’ Britain produced—a legend that goes way beyond today’s vacuous notion of ‘celebrity’.

The novelist L. P. Hartley wrote: ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’ Many are the times that this observation comes to mind, and more often than not it is when I’m thinking about the heyday of Morecambe and Wise, which is basically any year in the seventies. What is it about that decade—that cringe-worthy, decadent, crudely flamboyant, sexist, gaudy, tasteless time—that allowed Morecambe and Wise to reign supreme as the kings of British comedy? This was still the era of the suit-and-tie comedian—‘alternative comedy’ hadn’t even been thought of, let alone given that title, and if a performer had the temerity to appear on TV minus a tie or indeed a jacket, you sensed they wouldn’t be making too many more screen appearances, while simultaneously concluding they must have been dragged out of some working men’s club to ‘have a go’ on the box. Now we can look back from today’s current crop of comedy entertainers and the boot is firmly on the other foot, as we wonder: yes, Eric and Ernie were and for ever will be a remarkable comedy act, but why did they dress like second-hand-car salesmen?

Author-playwright-novelist-lawyer the late John Mortimer wrote in 1983: ‘Eric is not only England’s most popular comedian, he must be near to being our most popular person.’

Which neatly sums up why, after fifty-two years on this planet, I still celebrate my father’s life and work in books such as this: frankly, there is a demand for him, and the fact that my father died suddenly mid-flow a quarter of a century ago has not remotely lessened the love for him felt by those who vividly remember the wonderful shows he and Ernie produced, and by others who are discovering them for the first time.

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