The Unseen Eric Morecambe
On the television...
Eric's study
An idea for a sketch
That idea on screen
Amongst the old newspaper cuttings, theatre programs and paintings are his private diary entries and personal Dictaphone tapes.
Gary, his son, admitted it felt strange to hear his voice again, but the tapes are a remarkable find, sharing with us Eric’s ideas and feelings, and giving us a glimpse of how ideas were formed.
As each new thought came, Eric would grab his tape and record it, no matter how short or simple. From these labelled and stored tapes he would harvest the best ones and modify them or improve them until we got the finished product that appeared in the shows.
One-liners would often not be changed, but just waited for an opportunity to arise where they could be used.
“What do you do for a living? You are living aren’t you?”
His diaries offer another look at how Eric’s ideas were formed, with drawings and camera angles all noted, along with direction and gags. Many of them already used, have been marked as such along with the relevant date.
Some of the clips are shown to demonstrate the link, and this gives us an idea of how much writing Eric did for the shows.
The programme explores his family life through the early years by use of cine film, along with comments from Gary, Gail, Stephen and Joan, as well as friends who shared those times.
Tracing his life from these early beginnings we see a change happening as the happy and car-free man begins his second attempt at television after the disastrous Running Wild. Together with Ernie, he becomes more focussed which leads to a relentless work schedule.
We all know the outcome of this increase in stress and constant pressure for Eric, Ern and their writer Eddie Braben. Striving to better their previous shows finally caught up with Eric at the age of 42, and these events are covered, often too much, in the later parts of the programme.
Containing masses of archive material; letters, cine film, photographs and more, this proves to be an intriguing programme and well worth watching.
© morecambeandwise.com 2007