You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone (8 page)

When my family moved home in 1968, the drinks cabinet began to have more frequent use for my father, who never really had a major problem with alcohol yet seemed on occasion to be making up for its paucity in previous decades. My sister Gail later inherited the cabinet, but by then my father had a walk-in bar in the living room and it remains well stocked to this day. Indeed during a very recent examination I discovered many bottles of spirits still standing on shelves as he had left them anything from twenty-five to forty years ago.

It was time to move on from the training colliery. ‘But Eric was disappointed because he didn’t get the colliery he wanted to move to,’ explained Gordon. ‘I was as pleased as punch because I got the one I wanted. I’m not sure what Eric’s next mine was like.’

Awful! This I concluded long ago, on the basis that my father came out of the mines with a health rating of C3. He was sent home to his parents, spend
ing the next six months recuperating and the rest of his life bemoaning his days as a Bevin Boy.

‘We never exchanged addresses,’ said Gordon. ‘You would do in this day and age, but with the war on it all somehow seemed less relevant. Nowadays, of course, you’d just exchange mobile numbers or email addresses. I don’t think my parents even had a telephone at home back then. So we more or less shook hands, and with a “Cheerio!” and “Good luck!” walked off in our separate directions.

‘I often wondered if the gang we were together with doing the mining era ever realized who this young lad became. Probably not. It’s not the most obvious connection, and he worked under a different name soon after the war.’

Gordon wasn’t even sure himself how he made the connection between the young lad he had befriended in the pits and the comic icon Eric Morecambe. ‘It’s annoying, really. I can’t recall a definitive moment where I suddenly linked the two names. All these years on it just feels like it was something I’ve always known.’

But that wasn’t to be the end of Gordon’s association with Eric. When finally they reunited, Eric Bartholomew had by now transmogrified into Britain’s leading comedian, Eric Morecambe.

‘This reunion was obviously many years later and in very different circumstances,’ reminisced Gordon. ‘Bunny and I of course followed their double act, as everyone in the business was at some point being compared to Eric and Ernie.’

‘Strangely enough,’ said Bunny, ‘we got to know almost all the other double acts really well, except for Eric and Ernie.’

‘Particularly Jimmy Jewell and Ben Warriss,’ said Gordon. ‘They were the tops post-war, and then Eric and Ernie slowly took over.

‘We saw [Morecambe and Wise] at the Lyceum in Sheffield in the mid-fifties. They would have been on a Stan Stennett bill, I imagine. Then in 1961 we were in Bradford with Tommy Cooper doing
Puss in Boots.
Business was crap because there was an outbreak of smallpox, so hardly anyone was venturing outside their front door.

‘Tommy became a good mate, but was completely nuts even back then. He wasn’t supping in those days—not until after the show! At the same time, Eric and Ernie were performing at the Grand, Leeds, with David Whitfield in
Sleeping Beauty.
It was the big, big production that had prior to this been at the London Palladium with Bruce Forsyth and Ted Hockeridge. Tommy said, “I think we should all go over to Leeds to see the lads.”’ (This is easy to imagine as Eric and Ernie shared a lifelong friendship with the great comedian of the nonmagical trick.) ‘“You can pick me up and drive us there,” said Tommy, who I should mention would affectionately call me “My favourite long-nosed git”.

‘Me and Bunny got chatting with them after the show, and we realized neither of us had a matinée the following day, so we suggested they came over to Bradford for lunch. But the point of all this is that I still hadn’t told your father that I was the lad from the Bevin Boy days!

‘I went to the hotel to collect Tommy the following morning, and he came down the stairs looking like the wrath of God. The bar must have closed late the previous night! Meantime Eric has arrived at the theatre and gone to the dressing room and is just looking at the props. Bunny and I were playing Hurdy and Gurdy in
Puss in Boots,
which Eric and Ernie had played some years before while working with Harry Secombe at Coventry. And we were just chatting when Eric said,“I’m sure I’ve seen you somewhere before.” So I let on where it was.’

Bunny picked up the story, saying, ‘And I walked in to find the two of them in convulsions, and doing the reminiscing thing.’

‘Mind you, Eric had a go at me for not saying anything the day before,’ Gordon pointed out. ‘But you know, people can change and you don’t like to go blithering on. Also, you think they might have forgotten, and so you are avoiding that possibility. But we had a great time and talked about catching up another time soon, etc.—and we never saw each other again!’

In parting, Gordon made a point of saying something that I’ve long said: ‘When you watch Morecambe and Wise now and you closely study Ernie, you

realize what a bloody good feed he was for your father. But it’s the comedian who gets the laugh and the feed can get overlooked.’

I’m not sure the public understand the purpose of the feed, or straight man, if you prefer. I’m not sure the media do either. Maybe Ernie had the right idea in just accepting it. At least he got half the fame and half the money—even half the awards. It must have irritated at some moments, though. Probably around 3 a.m., when you find yourself wide awake sensing something is niggling you, but not quite sure what!

Their scriptwriter during Morecambe and Wise’s halcyon days at the BBC, Eddie Braben, said in an interview that ‘even today I don’t think we realize just how important Ernie was. I wrote a line once that has often been used since, and Eric said it was so right. He said it was absolutely spot on. They were doing a stand-up and Ernie had to go off quickly for a prop and Eric said, “Don’t be long; when you’re not here I feel a cold draught all down one side.”

‘Eric didn’t like standing on his own. He didn’t like performing on his own. He was OK for a couple of minutes then he’d start to feel uncomfortable.’

‘Between you and me, I don’t really mean all those insults I hurl at Des O’Connor. I think he’s one of the greatest singers in the country. He just struggles when he sings in the town, that’s all. Have you heard his latest record, Songs for Deaf Lovers? There’s a government health warning on every cover.’

T
he forties and fifties had been Eric’s bread-and-butter years before the jam arrived in the sixties in the shape of television. Most achievement in the earlier decades was through radio shows and theatre work, as mentioned in the previous chapter, but TV had lurked there, albeit in the form of appearances on other people’s shows, or through their own first BBC series in 1954,
Running Wild
, which seemed to have people running scared!

Below is a wonderful article from that year, published in the weekly magazine
TV Mirror
, about Eric and Ernie’s this failed series before it had aired for the first time. What interests me beyond the fact that
Running Wild
nearly finished their careers is that the writer of the piece—like the public at large—didn’t really know much about them and had to use physical descriptions to help him. Very different from twenty years later, when they were arguably the most famous faces in Britain.

Morecambe and Wise, the young comedians from the north, have gained a big reputation on radio. Tonight they begin a new comedy series on TV.

Ever since it was announced that a new fortnightly comedy series starring Morecambe and Wise was starting, the two bright lads from the North have been receiving good advice from their colleagues and friends.

‘You keep off TV—it’ll do you no good,’ was the general burden of their advice.

But Eric Bartholomew, who comes from Morecambe (hence the name), and Ernie Wiseman, who claims Leeds as his native town, think differently. After no fewer than forty-five appearances in
Variety Fanfare
, and their own weekly variety series
You’re Only Young Once
, they have no doubts about the power of sound radio to help an artist on his way.

And whatever the dismal Johnnies may say about the dangers of a TV series that gets panned by the critics—well, Morecambe and Wise just aren’t worrying.

‘The way we look at it is this,’ said Morecambe (he is the tall one with glasses), ‘TV has come to stay and we’ve been given our big opportunity. We’d be daft if we didn’t take it with both hands. You see, we’ve got everything to gain and nothing to lose.’

‘It isn’t as though we were at the end of our careers,’ added Wise (the small one with the fair hair). ‘You’re only young once, that’s quite true. But we’re young now, both of us. I’m 28 and Eric is 27. And I’d say we’ve got a few years to go yet.’

‘If the public don’t like us on Wednesday, that’s just too bad. But it won’t mean we’re finished. Why, we’ve hardly started yet!’

‘And there’s another radio series starting in May to keep the wolf from the door,’ said Morecambe.

‘Not that we’re going to flop,’ put in Wise, touching wood and stroking the nearest black cat. ‘We’ve had our TV flop already, years ago, in—what was the show called, Eric?’

‘Shh!’ said Morecambe, quickly. ‘You know we never talk about that one. Still, there was one good thing about it. Our producer on that occasion was good old Bryan Sears’—here they fell to their knees and touched their foreheads to the ground—‘and it’s Bryan who’s going to put us across in this new series.’

I tried to find out something about the new show.

The two boys looked at each other, scratched their hair and seemed a little embarrassed. ‘Well, it’s a comedy show—we know that much. And it’s a revue—there’s no harm in telling you that. But as for what it’s going to be—look, why don’t you watch it and find out?’

‘That’s what we’re going to do,’ said Morecambe, changing the subject.

Bryan seems a lucky name in the story of Morecambe and Wise. It was another well known Bryan—Michie this time—who first discovered the pair at a juvenile talent contest. That was in 1939, when Eric and Ernie were in their very early teens.

Two years later they were touring with Bryan Michie in his road show. In 1943 they went into
Strike a New Note
at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London—with that great comedian Sid Field.

That’s where they were when calling-up time came. Ernie went off with the Merchant Navy; Eric went down the mine, surely the only west-end comedian to become a Bevin Boy.

The war over, back they came to the halls, touring here, there and everywhere—and only just out of their teens! Then came a broadcast from Manchester in
Variety Fanfare
. And another. More followed. Finally they notched up that record of forty-five
Fanfare
appearances since the end of 1951.

‘But you’d better not put that in,’ advised Morecambe, ‘we’ve always depended on the fact that Ronnie Taylor, the producer, can’t count. If he reads that, he won’t book us again.’

When I could get them talking seriously I got some pretty definite opinions out of Morecambe about this new TV series. ‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘No one, with the possible exception of Arthur Askey, has yet managed to bring off a TV series with any real success.

‘Now don’t imagine that we’re comparing ourselves with Askey—we don’t wear the same size in combs. But we’re prepared to look on TV as a completely different medium. We’re ready to change our approach and our styles as much as is wanted.’

It is my opinion that they will be a big success.

The writer of the article probably came to doubt his own opinion thereafter.

In the fifties the trials and tribulations that would ultimately lead to a staggering television career were still some years off. In fact so uncertain was the future of what would become Britain’s most popular double act, and work of any performing kind so scarce around 1950, that, it has come to light, Ernie wrote to Eric to end the partnership. I have known about this incident since the seventies, when my father, with a reflective chuckle at the fact that it never happened and they had gone on to immense success, one day chose to tell me all about it. What I had
not
realized was that Ernie’s letter still existed. I had never seen it until my mother showed it to me while I was working on this book. So fascinated am I by the letter that I persuaded her to allow me to publish it. What strikes me most is the great dignity Ernie retains. Beautifully written with integrity, it expresses warm wishes and the desire to continue their great friendship outside the partnership.

This is the letter in its entirety:

My father’s response, he told me, was to write straight back basically saying he’d never heard such rubbish in his life and that Ernie should have a few days’ rest to get over it and then they should get back to finding some work—which essentially is what happened.

For me the world of theatre conjures up many images, some of which no doubt can be traced back to the conversations I had with my father throughout my childhood and the hours I spent in those times hanging around theatres and dressing rooms. Eric genuinely loved that era—even the struggle that went with it. ‘I would do everything the same only quicker!’ he once told me, and it is a line that amused not only me but my own children when I repeated it to them. Though he said it half in jest, I find myself wondering how he could have done any of it quicker—he moved like greased lightning as it was. Harry Secombe said Eric had a quicksilver brain and even nicknamed him ‘Quicksilver’. Incidentally, many years before that his mother used to call him ‘Jifflearse’, a name which is meaningless in the strictest sense yet suggests someone restless and always on the go. This was a total Sadie creation, a word that for her—and me, I should add—conjured an image of someone who can’t sit still for a moment, ‘jiffle’ being similar to ‘jiggle’, as in ‘jiggle about’, and ‘arse’, well…

Talking of theatres, Ernie recalled, ‘Some of the funniest things happen backstage in the theatre business. We were appearing at a tiny theatre in a very out-of-the-way town. The theatre was old, and the lighting equipment was even older. We asked the electrician backstage to throw the main switch of all the lights in the theatre as a pay-off line to a comedy sketch we were doing at the time. We wanted the whole theatre darkened for just one minute.

‘On the first night of the show, we checked with him that he knew exactly when to throw the switch and he nodded that he fully understood. But we were worried, for he was wearing huge rubber boots and thick rubber gloves.

‘When the time came for him to throw the switch there was a terrific blue flash and the little electrician was hurled almost from one side of the wings to the other.

‘We rushed to pick him up for fear he might have been electrocuted.
“Are you all right?” we asked anxiously. “What happened?”

‘“Nothing,” replied the charred prostrate little man taking off one of his rubber gloves. “It happens every time I throw that switch!”’

And Eric recalled a time in 1960 when they were working the theatres.‘A cousin [of mine], a rather irresponsible lad with a natural ability to upset other people, asked us if we could get him holiday digs using our names to help him obtain some very pleasant accommodation.

‘Naturally we used some influence and fixed up a hotel in Torquay. After a week we had a letter from him saying he was fed up because he had been thrown out of the place.The proprietor had had enough of his practical jokes. He asked us to help him again.

‘We managed to fix him some accommodation in Exmouth. Everything was quiet for a few days then another letter arrived.The same thing had happened. He was out, and he wanted help.

‘We were tired by this time. But we thought we’d do our best for him just once more.We secured a room for him atWeymouth, and wrote back warning him we had tolerated his troubles long enough.

‘For a few weeks all was calm then we received a telephone call:“I’m thrown out again, and I’m mad!” he said.“You ought to get in touch with these proprietors. Tell them, how dare they do this to
You
!”’

Eric and Ernie would keep in touch with theatre work even after the ‘jam’
had arrived and they no longer really needed panto and summer season. Once they were regular fixtures on television, and this was evident around 1962, they continued the theatre seasons more out of habit than need. It was a habit which lasted right up to Eric’s heart attack in November 1968, which would signal the end of many things—including winter and summer seasons—but also the beginning of their television superstardom.

If they thought they were stars in the sixties, then the seventies would show them just how far they could still go.