Gary Morecambe seems to have carved out quite a career for himself writing books about his late father. Luckily for him, his late father happens to be Eric Morecambe. I have read a lot of books about Morecambe and Wise as a double act, and books about the individual Eric and Ernie so I know quite a lot about how they came together as kids and survived tough years to become the institution we know and love today.
Any true fan will know that the first television series was not a hit, but they persisted. We also know that they shared a genuine friendship, not requisite for a comedy double act (Abbott and Costello hated each other for example). In fact, from the books I have read, I am sure I could write a book of my own about Eric and Ern.
But Gary Morecambe has unearthed a letter from Wise to Morecambe while rummaging through his dad’s archives. Just when I thought that every letter, diary and notepad had been aired in public, along comes something that skews everything we already knew.
Written around 1950, before they had their own television show, Ernie Wise wrote a letter to Eric Morecambe:
Dear Eric
Thanks for your letter. Well Eric I want to get straight to the point. I want us to break up the act. I’m afraid it won’t work. I have such a terrific amount of animosity to put up with at home. I feel it would be better if we parted. I know this will be quite a shock to you but I had to come to some decision, I can’t go on the way things are.
I am not satisfied with my work, I have lost a lot of my zip and it will take time to regain it. I can’t keep you waiting around for me, I don’t know definitely when I will be out. I feel it’s a great pity after we planned so much, but my mind’s made up. I have no idea what to do in the future, all I know is that I want us to remain friends.
Hoping to hear from you
Your best pal
Ernie
Many editorials have gone down the road of saying we would have been deprived of such a comic legacy, but I am not sure. Eric Morecambe did most of the writing, but professional scriptwriters did the most work. He was a great ad-libber and a gifted technician of a joke. He would have been a comedian still with or without Ernie.
Ernie regretted not giving America a serious go, to capitalise on their appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Realising that it would mean a start from the bottom rung of the ladder again, Eric was not keen.
Wise was a song and dance man by trade before adding the jokes to his act; in fact, if you look at the earliest television appearances by the pair, Ernie is the gagman. His career might have gone in a different direction once he regained his ‘zip’, possibly down the Tommy Steele route of musical theatre and pantomime.
Life is full of ‘what ifs’. If there were no Morecambe and Wise, how would comedy look today? Rowan Atkinson was a school friend of Gary Morecambe and went round for dinner one night and Eric spent the whole time advising him on comedy technique. Without advice from one of the country’s top comedians, would he have bothered?
Eric Morcambe visibly influences Vic Reeves. Although Vic Reeves Big Night Out was closer in style to Spike Milligan’s Q series, his on stage manner owed a debt to Morecambe.
This throws a hole in the story I thought I knew about the pair from the struggle of the early days and the ambition to get to the top. No mention was ever made before about this ‘terrific amount of animosity’ Ernie was getting from home. He didn’t even write about it in his autobiography Still On My Way To Hollywood or in any of the interviews he gave following Morecambe’s death in 1984.
There is a lot to be said for hoarding, I really hope the reply letter is found. Gary Morecambe knew this letter existed but has only just seen it for himself. “My father’s response, he told me, was to write 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 work- which essentially is what happened”
What I find the most fascinating about this whole episode though, is not a new bit of comedy history. It is the fact that they communicated such discussion by letter. I am not going to go on again about the loss of our postal service, but does anyone agree that the written word is disappearing?
In years to come such discoveries will simply not happen. Someone goes through a box in a cellar or attic and finds handwritten words by Shakespeare, or a rough draft of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' scrawled on a cigarette packet, or letters to and from people in the public domain and it is big news. However, in the future no ability to build such an archive will be available. Most writers (me included) type straight onto computer now. Although I do sometimes revert to longhand. If I ever do become a notable author, my memory stick will not be useful to anyone in a hundred years because technology will have moved. I still have old works from my earliest journalism days on a three and a half inch floppy disk, and if I can’t access it who will?
The same goes for communication. I very much doubt Mitchell and Webb write letters to each other, or that Frankie Boyle got out his Basildon Bond to write ‘Dear Dara, I’m leaving Mock The Week…’
I cannot see the same excitement and column inches being devoted to someone’s emails being found years after their deaths.
Unless they do what I have done and included all my passwords in my will!
