You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone Page 16

  E.W.: I’m the favourite.

  E.M.: (Snatching his glasses back from Ernie) I get fan mail too, matey. You don’t think so, do you?

  E.W.: No, I don’t.

  E.M.:Well, I do.

  E.W.: Not as good as me.

  E.M.: Better than your fan mail, matey (feeling jacket)…if I’ve got the right jacket on! If I haven’t then there could be a minute’s silence! (Both men suddenly face the audience perfectly still and silent. Then Eric rechecks his pockets and produces a piece of paper.) Wanna hear this?

  E.W.: Yes, please.

  E.M.: (Rustles paper in microphone. Clears his throat.) Dear Mr Morecambe, you can’t sing, you can’t dance, you’re not funny. (Ernie smiles smugly.) P.S. Get rid of your partner, he’s dragging you down!

  E.W.: It doesn’t say that.

  E.M.: Oh yes it does.

  E.W.: We’ve had another special request.

  E.M.: What?

  E.W.: You can stay!

  E.M.: (Laughing) Oh! Another gem hit the dust.

  E.W.: I’m going to sing a little song.

  E.M.: What?

  E.W.: It goes something like this…

  E.M.: (To audience) Any questions you want to ask us? Anything at all? We don’t mind. Anything? (Nervous laughter from audience, clearly not expecting this.)

  E.M.: Eh?

  Voice from audience: Who’s going to win the cup?

  E.M.: It won’t be Crystal Palace, I can promise you that! Not doing too bad, Luton. Doing very well Luton are at the moment. We play Middlesbrough next week. If we beat Middlesbrough at Middlesbrough that’s four points to us that, because we cheat! Very good, that. Any other questions?

  (Indistinct voice from audience.)

  E.M.: Pardon? When are we coming back? We’ll be here tomorrow! Pardon? The ‘Two Old Men Sitting in Deckchairs’ joke? Well, there were two old men sitting in deckchairs and one old man says,’ It’s nice out’ and the other says,’ Yes it is, I think I’ll take mine out!’ (Pause till laughter subsides) Any other questions? Any at all?

  E.M.: I’ve gotta stop doing that you know. (Playing with his hands in his pockets) No I mustn’t, it’s becoming a habit that. It’s getting to the point where it’s fun.

  E.W.: Anything else?

  E.M.: Pardon?

  E.W.: Anything else?

  E.M.: Anything else?

  E.W.: Sex life?

  E.M.:You want to know about his sex life?

  (‘Yes!’ chorused back from the audience.)

  E.M.: I thought you would. I thought you would, you’ll have to buy the book, it’s called Eric and Ern and it’s all about his sex life.

  E.W.: Yes, yes.

  E.M.: One chapter, 24 blank pages, and a full stop at the end.

  (Question suddenly from the audience.)

  E.M.: Pardon, love?

  Voice from audience:Are you signing autographs later?

  E.M. + E.W.:Yes, yes.

  E.M.: We’ll do it now if you’ve got a long arm. (Long pause while laughter sub-sides)You see this is a special year for Ern and I, you see, because we are celebrating er, de, lum, er…

  E.W.: Thirty-four years together.

  E.M.: Thirty-four years together, ever since we were kids, it’s true that.

  (More prolonged applause) Marvellous, really. (Turning to Ernie) If we ever split, you’d never forget me would you? Ha, ha, ha, look at me when I’m talking to you. If we split you’d never forget me would you? Hey!

  E.W.: After thirty-four years together.

  E.M.: What?

  E.W.: Kids together.

  E.M.:We haven’t, have we?

  (Eric laughs.)

  E.W.: No. I’ll never forget you (gives Eric friendly punch on the arm. Eric grabs his arm as if it to hurt him). No! I’ll never forget you. Never!

  E.M.: Knock-knock.

  E.W.: Who’s there?

  E.M.:You see what I mean, you’ve forgotten me already, haven’t you!

  (Both leave stage to the band playing Bring Me Sunshine, both walk back on, bow and walk off. Eric goes and shakes Johnny Wiltshire’s hand then waves to audi ence and exits. Both return to continued applause.)

  E.W.: (Having removed jacket and undone his shirt) Honestly, we were coming back.

  E.M.: No, it’s been marvellous. Do me a favour, look at that (points to Ernie’s chest hair). Now, were you born or trapped? (Back to audience) It’s been lovely—no, you’ve been a marvellous audience, but we can’t stay any longer purely because we’ve got a large queue of people round for the next house—and we’ve run out of jokes. We’ll take one more question—anything at all.

  (Murmur from audience.)

  E.M.: ‘Fracas’! We never found out. It’s one of those that we’re not bothered about. (To side of stage) What’s ‘fracas’? Good Lord, he’s fainted. (Both laugh) He’s just found out! (To audience)What was that about the hairy legs? Just a quick flash, Ern (Ernie pulls up trouser leg to cheers and applause. Eric puts his glasses on Ernie’s leg, giving the impression of a hairy face).

  E.M.:Thanks folks, that’s all!

  (Both exit side stage for the last time to theme of Bring Me Sunshine, played by the band.)

  Ends…

  In Eric’s words

  Morecambe on Fishing

  People always ask me if Ernie really does wear a wig. I’m sworn to secrecy, but let’s just say that he keeps Axminster Carpets in business. Without him, they’d be on the floor.

  Much of my father’s childhood, as we have seen, was coloured by days spent fishing, mostly with his dad.

  In the room which was once his office and was also the subject of an unusual documentary for Channel 4 a few years ago, I found, among his myriad possessions, a handful of pages on his great passion for fishing. These were destined for a book he wrote about fishing in 1983 and which was published posthumously the following year.

  What grabbed me about the first section, entitled ‘The Anti-Fishermen’, was the frankness with which he wrote. His views are balanced, yet I still came away from reading it feeling a little uncomfortable that a gentle and loving comedian, who worked quite hard at avoiding controversial topics, could suddenly let himself go. A part of me is also very proud that he did: it would be so easy for him to have ignored the issue in such a book and just gone for easy laughs. Mind you, I think the line about the African elephant is more controversial now than it was back then.

  Eric typed the following material on his own office typewriter some six months before his sudden death in May 1984.

  The Anti-Fishermen

  In recent months there have been fresh eruptions from the hunt saboteurs, who threaten to move in on our sport and disrupt it. The saboteurs would have you believe that fishing is cruel and should be completely banned. By fishing they mean freshwater fishing in rivers, lakes and reservoirs. Sea fishing, for some odd reason, is always left out of their arguments.

  Strangely enough I have some sympathy for some of the ideas put forward by the anti-hunting lobby. At the same time, I have a strong feeling that if any hunt saboteurs came barging in on the stretch where I fish, then the shotguns would be out and the saboteurs could well be threatened with a dose of pellets in the pants. And I wouldn’t mind that at all.

  If I seem to be facing both ways at once in this controversy, let me quickly say that I am fundamentally on the side of the people who enjoy their country sports and wish to continue doing so. Where I have reservations, increasingly as I grow older, is in the quantity of animals killed and in some of the methods applied.

  In fishing, I wish there could be almost no killing, but until someone invents a rubber hook I can’t see that happening. I don’t personally like live-baiting, the process whereby a live fish—a Dace, say, or a Roach or Rudd—is impaled on a hook, or Jardine snaptackle, and set as bait to lure a bigger fish such as a Pike. Fewer people go in for live-baiting nowadays than used to in Victorian times, but it is still an accepted method in the fishing community. Deadbaiting I do not
mind so much. If the fish is already dead, then the question of its feeling pain does not arise. But, as I said in a previous

  chapter, it is the quality of the individual catch that really matters, not how many fish end up in your keep-net or freezer-bags. Some fishermen are a little bit inclined to see their sport too much in terms of match-angling, of collecting fish by the bagful, and not enough in terms of hunting for the best single adversary to be found in a particular stretch of water.

  What the anti-fishing lobby does not seem to understand, often because its members have no day-to-day contact with the countryside, is that it is necessary to cull certain species of wildlife if we are to preserve the present balance in nature. No one could manage a dairy farm that has more foxes than cows, and no one wants a river that is so full of fish you could walk across it on their backs; it’s no good for the fish, quite apart from anything else.

  In Africa, too, it may seem sad that men have to go out and shoot

  such magnificent creatures as the elephants, and yet it has been proved time and time again that the well-run game reserve, with its organised programme of culling, is by far the best means of preserving a good balance in nature. Take away the game reserve, and what you get is the terrible greed and savagery of poachers, and the region loses many more elephants than it would have done, or needs to do, given a properly organised system.

  Fishing in Britain is well organised. It has to be. About three million people go fishing each year and it is essential that the places they go to are properly controlled. The National Federation of Anglers plays a big part in this, seeing that competitions are run according to a fixed set of rules and that people enjoy their sport in a sensible, restrained way. On privately owned waters, the bailiffs keep out the poachers—or try to—and the number of fishermen per stretch of

  water is carefully limited. On that basis, no saboteur or anyone else could really claim that fishing is the unthinking slaughter it is sometimes made out to be.

  His next chapter is more reflective than combative, yet no less fascinating. I’d never taken time out to read his thoughts on fishing before, and the man writing about his favourite pastime is a long way from the comic father I remember so vividly.

  Wherever Next?

  Although we have our seasons for coarse and game fishing, no one has told the fish. As a result, they will accept our baits, lures and flies just about all the year round. The seasons are part of a system of man-made rules, and we stick to them because it makes sense to respect the breeding patterns of the fish and not to overwork the waters they live in. Nevertheless, you can find variations.

  Trout fishing on the Test is from May to September, but on the local reservoirs near me they start around the beginning of March. Finding a place to fish is really a bit like getting a drink in a pub or hotel. If you try hard enough, and are prepared to travel around a bit—like to the old Covent Garden market in the early hours of the morning—you can always get one. With trout, too, there’s always somewhere open. You may have to go abroad, but that is usually no hardship. Not to me, it isn’t, although I must say I haven’t yet been abroad on an out-and-out fishing holiday. Blame it on the wife, if you like, but on a family holiday we always prefer to go around together and do the same things. Joan isn’t interested in fishing, and my son (Steven) prefers coarse fishing, so we aren’t exactly three minds with but a single thought. Blame it on work as well. I have had one or two nice offers of trips abroad but couldn’t go because I had to work for some or all of the period of the holiday.

  Before the 1982 World Cup, I was invited to go to Spain and do a commentary for New Zealand Radio on the New Zealand team. That would give me two weeks in Spain—they didn’t expect to last more than three games—and then we hit the real perk. This was to fly, with my wife, to New Zealand for six weeks of trout fishing in the big lakes they have there. I couldn’t do it for the simple reason that I was working. It’s funny that, but it always seems to happen. On the other hand, I’ve had plenty of times when I’ve wanted to work and couldn’t get a job. There’s no justice…

  The really big trips for the holiday fisherman take him nowadays to places like Iceland and Alaska. Just the sort of country you’ve always wanted to visit? Probably not, if you aren’t a fisherman. If you are, and money is little or no object, then a magnificent holiday awaits.

  I have several friends whose addiction for hanging about near the Arctic Circle for a few weeks each year is getting serious. They fish for salmon, which are not in short supply over there. The only trouble with that is what do you do at the end of your holiday with twenty-five salmon? In fact you could even make friends with people you didn’t want to be friends with. There is just one snag. What about the transport; the excess baggage? Work out, if you can, how much excess you would have to pay on twenty-five salmon weighing twenty pounds (9kg) each, given a free allowance, assuming you travel First Class (which you would) of sixty-six pounds (30kg) with unlimited excess (which you wouldn’t get) charged at a rate to be agreed with the airline. Not easy. The upshot is, my friends come home with about four fish each, which they have had smoked to get their weight down as far as possible.

  Now, they will forgive me, I hope, but I don’t altogether see the point of that. It may sound a bit eccentric but if I had caught twenty-five salmon in Alaska, I’d want to bring the whole lot home. It may not be easy, but that is what I would want to do. When I got them back here, I wouldn’t necessarily give them away—not all of them. I expect I would invest in an enormous freezer and stick them in there while I thought about it for a few weeks. After all, if I could afford a mediumsized fortune to go and catch them in Alaska, I could certainly afford an enormous freezer to house them in back home. Any offers?

  Two Old Men in Deckchairs

  I was at Luton Football Club last Saturday. We were playing Arsenal. It was nice to meet the directors of their board. Nice club, Arsenal. Well, the first four letters are right.

  I started following Chelsea FC when I was twelve. My parents bought me their team strip—that wonderful all-blue shirt and shorts that somehow even managed to look blue on black and white TV—and I was hooked. Then Eric became involved with Luton Town FC and for the next fourteen years Chelsea came a poor second in my football affiliations. But in 1985, when Chelsea were struggling more than Luton Town, I ended up moving to that part of west London. Those days were the dizzy heights when fixtures with Watford or Grimsby on a wet Wednesday evening meant acquiring a ticket wasn’t exactly a challenge or a great expense. Not like it is now, as Chelsea have become Chelski under owner Roman Abramovich.

  I’ve always kept an eye out for Luton, and was sorry to see them freefall and eventually leave the Football League for the first time in their history. I recall the days when they were sixth from top in the Premier League (then Division One) and beating sides like Manchester United and Arsenal. As Luton slip, Morecambe FC rise and for the first time in their history they have entered the Football League. What a thrill it would have given my father, who used to watch ‘half the game’, as he put it, from his bedroom window as one of the stands at the ground shielded his view and meant he could only see half the pitch.

  I returned to the town last year after being invited to see a match between Luton and Coventry. People at the club are always so kind, and everyone seems to have a memory of Eric from the days when he was a director there.

  The man in charge of car parking was quick to tell me of the time someone threw a coin on the pitch and hit the referee. ‘It cut him quite badly, and he had to go off for a minute. After the match, Eric came straight down from the directors’ box to see him. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Yes, fine, Eric,” he replied. “Are you sure you don’t want to go for further medical checks?” said Eric.“No, really, I’m OK,” said the ref. “Oh, good,” said Eric. “Then can I have my coin back?”’

  There’s an often repeated piece of radio commentary where Eric is being interviewed during the middle of a Luton match.
Everything is how one would expect when someone is being interviewed on radio, then Luton score and suddenly one gets a genuine insight into Eric’s boy-like love of ‘the beautiful game’ and the club he supports. Whenever it crops up it makes me smile, because this is my father as I knew him, not Eric Morecambe the comedian, being interviewed. It’s the closest you will ever get to touching the real human being.

  Eric was also a big cricket fan. In his final years he claimed he took more pleasure from an afternoon at Lord’s watching England bat—or, to put it Rory Bremner’s way, ‘Listening to the sound of leather on stump!’—than sitting in the directors’ box at Luton watching another struggle on the artificial turf they were then playing on.

  My father’s involvement with the charitable organization the Lord’s Taverners was based on his love of cricket. The following piece of writing is something I found in his desk a while back. Whether it was ever published in the Taverners’ magazine or not, I cannot say, but it makes interesting reading and shows as much of Eric the man as it does of Eric the comedian.

  But first a little background to the content of the piece: in the early sixties, when Morecambe and Wise were suddenly making it big for Lew Grade’s ATV, it became a running gag for a while to end each show with Eric telling a supposedly risky joke but unable to complete it because Ernie interrupts to say that they’ve run out of time. The joke always began, ‘There were two old men sat in deckchairs, and one old man says to the other, “It’s nice out,” and the other old man says…‘At this point Ernie would interrupt, explaining either that time had run out or it was too rude to say on television. As far as I know, they never did complete the joke, though in the seventies, when doing their UK ‘Live’ tour, they would often get asked what the whole gag was during a Q&A at the end of each performance. And they would tell it in full. It was short and simple. ‘There were two old men sat in deckchairs, and one old man says to the other,“It’s nice out,” and the other old man says, “Yes, it is; I think I’ll take mine out!”’