Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise return to our screens tonight in Victoria Wood's lovingly recreated biopic chronicling their early years
Victoria Wood says she only met Morecambe and Wise, separately, on one occasion each. Wise when she accepted a comedy award some years ago, and Morecambe when she was 25, at the Midland hotel in Morecambe. He said to her: "Oh you're that girl from Morecambe." In fact she's from Bury. She didn't mind.
Wood decided to tell the story of the pair's early days around a decade ago. The result finally hits screens on New Year's Day in the form of a BBC2 biopic, Eric and Ernie, which focuses on the pair's lives before they were famous because, as Wood puts it: "They were not born middle aged."
"This is not about the middle-aged comedians in suits that everyone remembers. It is a story that nobody has told," Wood says. We meet Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise when they are young children ? Ernie was a child star clog dancing in Leeds and Bradford ? and follow them until they are the cusp on finding fame in their late 20s.
Wood herself plays Sadie, Eric's mother. (The most difficult part of the process, she jokes, was having her hair finger waved every day.) Wood defends her from accusations of being a pushy mother: "Sadie made Eric take dancing lessons and thought he'd never be happy doing a boring job at the gas board so she manoeuvred him into talent contests," she says.
She shares a great scene with Jim Moir, aka Vic Reeves, who plays her husband George, in which she is considering her son's new stage name, which has to be catchier than Bartholomew. Sadie holds up a copy of the Morecambe Visitor. "What, Visitor?" says George, deadpan. It seems apparent that unassuming George may be the key to his son's comedy.
Moir says that members of Eric's family have watched the rushes and seem to think he has accurately portrayed George. He recalls filming on a particularly rainy day in Morecambe. "We were sitting on a bench thinking we'd have to rewrite the scene. Then there was suddenly the most beautiful sunset."
Bafta-winning screenwriter Peter Bowker (Occupation, Blackpool) wrote the script ? a huge responsibility, he admits, because he wanted to serve the stars well, but also great fun. "My wife kept hearing all this laughter as I was watching clips of them while I was doing my research," he says. "Luckily there were no dark secrets. I was glad about that."
The drama "shows stars working for 20 years grafting not just overnight X Factor stars," Bowker says, and Eric and Ernie portrays, in all its cringeworthy glory, the pair's disastrous foray into television in 1954 ? when they were forced to abandon their own material by the BBC. On the day of the debut, Sadie is in the fishmongers in Morecambe. The fishmonger leans forward, conspiratorially, and tells her he's got some finny haddock. She buys shrimp because there's a queue and she doesn't want to seem to be bigheaded.
As a result of their below-par television debut, the pair ended up fourth on the bill at the Ardwick Hippodrome. Bowker says Eric kept one review in his wallet for decades to remind him of where the duo had come from. It suggested the definition of TV as "the box in which they buried Morecambe and Wise". The clipping was still in his wallet when he died.
Wigan Athletic Housing market Household bills Post-traumatic stress disorder Soap opera Comedy
No comments:
Post a Comment