Britain's Most Loved and Best Comedy Double Act

Eric and Ernie's Public Secret

1980 Article



Ken Dodd

Attracting big stars

Thames shows - not as good
Continued…

The size of objects is another area they exploit. We’ve had some of the best reactions to size sketches, like the one with a giant ventriloquist’s dummy; or when Ernie pulled a Longfellow book from a shelf that kept coming for yards and the radio that Eric boasted did everything which turned out to be not a miracle of micro-technology but a huge machine thast filled half the room.

If you're good enough for Ken Dodd you're good enough for us

It was our producer director John Ammonds who mixed the ingredients together so successfully. John is one of the most experienced men in the business. He is very honest; if he doesn’t think a sketch works he will say so and we’ll trust his judgement totally and abandon it. Or he can suggest the single gesture or line that could bring it to life. He is a great Music Hall fan too. He concentrates on getting the comedy right and the camera angles can look after themselves. His shots often stay ‘wide’ so the viewers get the same effect as if they were sitting in a variety theatre.

But John isn’t just a technician. In his seven years with Morecambe and Wise he has come up with some great ideas, like the skip and slap dance they do at the end which he spotted in a Groucho Marx movie.

And he put the perfect finishing touch to the famous Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers type routine, by suggesting that Eric’s stick should get gradually longer and longer during the course of that sketch.

It was John who saw The Times interview in which Glenda Jackson said she would love to play comedy, and bravely phoned her agent to book her. He expected a snub but got a one-word answer – “When?” It is surprising but true that Glenda was offered her Oscar-winning part in A Touch Of Class on the strength of her appearance as Cleopatra in the show, while it gave us access to other illustrious names.

I write my gags in a small first floor office on the outskirts of Liverpool, my hometown and the only place I can work. I send the material by mail and from then on it’s up to Eric, Ernie and John. They sit around the Long Table at the Richmond Athletics Club and read through it. No, not read, perform. The lads have to give a script everything, even in private. And if a cleaner happens to wander past and giggle, they’ll ham it up even more.

In the evenings John will phone me with changes or suggestions for new sketches, which I’ll do to order. There would be no point in me coming down for conferences or rehearsals, because I work better alone, when I don’t have to think on my feet.

Eric and Ernie always give my scripts the final polish, those extra personal touches that come up in rehearsal. “What do you think of it so far?” – “Rubbish!” occurred to Eric during the Antony and Cleopatra sketch. It took off and became part of the nation’s vernacular.

Many writers wouldn’t allow their scripts to be messed around with; to them every word is holy and un-changeable except by themselves. But it is different for us. I know that if I wrote a bad script they would make it acceptable; if I wrote a good script, they would make it brilliant.

They are perfectionists and expect everyone working with them to put everything into the show. Eric and Ernie can spot a poor worker a mile off and he doesn’t last five minutes.

They believe they have got where they are through hard work and a long slog. They don’t have a lot of respect for entertainers who earn their Rolls-Royces after two or three years in the business.

Eric and Ernie started without social advantages. Eric’s mother scrubbed floors and worked as an usherette in Morecambe to help support the family when his father wasn’t working. Ernie’s father, a Leeds railway porter, had him and four other children to feed. My family were poor, working class too. None of us was academically bright, and the only way we could work our way up was with our sense of humour.

Now Morecambe and Wise reach all levels. We get letters from dustmen and from the lords of the Realm. We have proved that when you cut through the façade everyone is the same. And deep down we’re also all still children. When Eric and Ernie are being pupils at ‘Milverton Street Infants School’, making cheeky observations about ‘Miss’, they don’t have to change their delivery.

Morecambe and Wise reach all levels. We get letters from dustmen and from lords

The fantasy they create helps the audience escape the real world. Because Eric is such a perfectionist, his health has suffered most in the process. But he has always understood the pressures on everyone else. Neither of them has ever badgered me, but I got the inevitable ulcer and the other illnesses anyway.

When Eric and Ernie moved from the BBC to Thames I didn’t watch their shows, but my family did and they would tell me they were ‘okay’. By which I knew they were very good. Now we’re back together after a two-year break, and working better than ever.

Ernie once told me: “Eddie, we would like to think that together we have given the public a lot of pleasure and never hurt anyone. To be stopped on the street and told how much our show has meant to people is the greatest joy in life.”

“And the cheque…” added Eric.


© TV Times 1980
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