You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone Read online

  In my own mother’s view, ‘Sadie was a very determined lady. She always knew what she wanted. She knew what she thought was right and what she thought was wrong, and you weren’t going to make her waver. Although tremendously content with her life, in a way she was in the wrong environment

  because she was very clever but with no place to express this cleverness.’

  My sister, Gail, agreed with this assessment. ‘She was someone who would read and read and read. When you consider her circumstances she was surprisingly self-educated.’

  Sadie was never shy when it came to pushing and promoting her own son. It is important to emphasize that she was never in the game of trying to score points off Eric’s own successes, this being the pastime of many mums of the era who flaunted their ‘talented’ child. Sadie genuinely wanted the best for her only child for his sake. She was wide-seeing and wanted him to have at least the chance to improve his lot in life.

  Joyce Blacow, née Bennett, another lady who remembers Eric from both school and dance classes, found Sadie a little daunting. ‘First of all,’ she explains, ‘my own mother wouldn’t let me speak to Eric, or any of the “rough” boys of the Christie estate. It was a snob thing. This was silly, really, because we were both at the Lancaster Road School. But I used to speak to Eric,’ she recalled with a smile, ‘because I liked him.’

  And Eric liked her, it seemed, as down the years on his occasional excursions to his childhood roots, Joyce would only have to ring and Eric would go over and meet up with her and her husband. I find this particularly interesting about my father: while he was not so bothered about the town and the familiar places of his young days, he was fond of the one-time school chums who had peopled that past. And this remained true throughout his life: where he lived or visited—whether it was Harpenden, Portugal, Florida, or other places—was far less relevant to him than the people he encountered there.

  ‘Sadie was never shy when it came to pushing and promoting her own son.’

  Joyce remembers Eric mostly from dancing class. ‘But his mother, Sadie, I felt was awfully hard on him,’ she recalled. ‘She made Eric do what she wanted him to do. She used to stand there overlooking proceedings. Can you imagine this young lad being brought into the all-girl dance school at the bottom of Queen Street in Morecambe, and he’d have to make his entrance with his mother hovering for some time in the background? At least he had separate lessons from our group, which was something, but it wasn’t very nice for Eric, who was such a lovely young lad; he really was. All us girls in the class felt sorry for him, because you could tell he personally wasn’t the least bothered about being there. But his mother was very determined that he made a better life for himself. And of course,’ she added, ‘who is to say she wasn’t right long-term? It served him as training for his later career in show business.’

  My mother obviously got to know my father’s parents very well over the years. ‘Sadie loved it whenever Eric visited,’ she said. ‘But the problem was, Sadie would never let you get to bed at night. She would keep us up half the night just talking, and in the end—particularly next day—we’d be absolutely

  exhausted. And what she was doing was repeating the same stories over and over again. It was the stories of Eric’s whole life from childhood through the touring years. Eventually Eric would give in through tiredness and say, “That’s it, I’m off to bed.” George would go to bed too. I was too soft. Somehow I allowed her to keep making us endless cups of tea through the night as we carried on with the same stories. The amazing thing was how she would still manage to be up bright and early the following morning as if nothing had happened.’

  I know from my personal experience that however repetitive Sadie was she was a gifted speaker who could easily entice you into her world. ‘She knew how to tell a story,’ agreed my mother, Joan. ‘This must partly be where Eric got the gift from.’

  Joan’s relationship with Sadie and George began when she first became serious with Eric. ‘I don’t know why, but Sadie was in awe of the fact that my parents owned a hotel in Margate. Eric and I got engaged, which she was thrilled about, and we had the notice put in the local Morecambe paper. Then, a few weeks later, we decided to announce that we were getting married. “We’ve only just announced the engagement,” Sadie said. It was almost as if we were forced into getting married, but we weren’t at all. It was more about Eric’s

  work. He had a few days off in December, so we went for it. Plus the fact my mother and family were really obliging and offered us the hotel, which made it all possible.

  ‘Sadie was filled with horror at going to Margate for the wedding and meeting everyone. People didn’t travel nearly so much back then, and she also had a slight inferiority complex about it. It was about my family being southerners. That was out of the northern working-class realm in which they existed: the social divide, as it was seen to be. But then within a couple of hours of being down there they loved it and they got along perfectly with my family.’

  George enjoyed himself too, but of course George enjoyed most things that made Sadie happy. ‘Both Sadie and George loved Westerns,’ my mother explained. ‘And I think George liked to see a bit of the Hollywood star in himself.’

  I remember him as tall, slim and good-looking, with a thin, Ronald Cole-man-style moustache. ‘It was the likes of John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Glen Ford who influenced them,’ said Joan. ‘These film characters were almost real for Sadie and George. And George modelled himself a little bit on them.’ I find this fascinating, considering George was relatively indifferent when it came to his own son’s later stardom.

  ‘Sadie and I in so many ways were so different, and lived in such a completely different world,’ said my mother, ‘and yet she came to rely so much on me as a friend. She relied on me to give her all the news on our lives, because she could never get much sense out of Eric, who was a typical young man—very impatient and not bothered about lengthy discussions on the state of everything.’

  I certainly recognized, even as a kid, that my grandparents were not sophisticated people—they didn’t need to be. But Eric’s path in life meant that he did need to be, and I had trouble trying to equate his humble background with his starry present.

  Watching a programme on David Beckham I felt such empathy on my father’s behalf. In Beckham’s case, he was the boy-made-good Londoner, who in a relatively short time had become a multi-millionaire sports star whose features would adorn myriad magazines, papers, and merchandise. In his earliest of interviews the wide-eyed lad still talked and behaved in a rough, artless way natural to his upbringing. But, fifteen years on, listen to him now. Look at his deportment and the calm, intelligent way he handles the media. And I believe Eric, if in a less intense way, went through something very similar.

  My mother explained to me how little Sadie and George wanted to travel away from Morecambe. ‘The only time they loved it was when we did the summer seasons and they would be dropped off at our rented house by their friends and neighbours, Madge and Tom Shaw.’

  I heard quite a bit about Madge and Tom from various people still living in Morecambe, and eventually caught up with their son, John, who kindly lent me some photos for this book which are published here for the first time.

  As Eric’s career progressed, Sadie and George would become less involved with his everyday life. That would become my mother’s domain—and it would soon embrace another young entertainment hopeful: a certain Ernest Wiseman.

  When Eric Met Ernie

  I’m Not All There

  I’m not all there, there’s something missing

  I’m not all there, so folks declare

  They call me ‘Looby’ ‘Looby’, nothing but a great big ‘Booby’

  Point and say that’s where you want it

  But that’s just where I’ve got it

  I know they think I’m slow

  Let them think, let them think, I don’t care

  When I go to the races, my fancy to back

/>   If I back a winner, they give me my money back

  ‘Cause I’m not supposed to be all there

  Let them think, let them think, I don’t mind

  Courting couples in the park, on any night you’ll find

  If you stay, they’ll separate, for love’s not always blind

  But they let me stay and watch them, and they never seem to mind

  ‘Cause I’m not supposed to be all there.

  (THE WORDS TO THE SONG THAT ERIC AUDITIONED WITH FOR THE IMPRESARIO JACK HYLTON)

  In his 1990 autobiography, Still On My Way To Hollywood, Ernie Wise recalled the first time he set eyes on Eric. ‘I first met Eric in the spring of 1939. I was on tour with Jack Hylton, doing a concert at a cinema in Manchester, and all of five months in the business…It was my usual practice…to sit out front

  casting an “experienced” eye over the ever-hopeful acts. At this point enter Eric Bartholomew accompanied by his mother, the redoubtable Sadie.

  ‘Eric took the stage and went into a number called “I’m Not All There”. This he followed with a very polished impression of Flanagan and Allen. How the hell he did it I don’t know! He played each character separately but somehow wove them together in such a way that we were convinced there were two people up there on stage. Everybody was terribly impressed. The Flanagan and Allen brought gasps of admiration and I began to get seriously worried about my future career. I had a lot of push in those days, a hard core, but I have to admit my self-esteem took a bit of a knock from Eric even though we never said a word to each other…’

  In looking back at the beginnings of Eric and Ernie’s working relationship it is interesting also to consider briefly the beginnings of northern comedy, of which both men were a product.

  Northern humour developed mostly in the mill towns. From the start of industrialization until well into the twentieth century most working people in the north of England spent tedious and soul-destroying days toiling in vast spaces in large numbers, and humour and song became the only way they could express themselves, feel a little alive, and generally relieve the monotony of everyday life. No better example of this can be found than the wealth of comedians produced by the industrial heartland of the northwest. This tradition stretches back to Victorian times, but among the great names of comedy of more recent years are Jimmy Clitheroe, Ken Dodd, Tommy Handley, Victoria

  Wood, Stan Laurel, Thora Hird, George Formby, Albert Modley, Al Read, Les Dawson, Sandy Powell, Peter Kay, Jewell and Warriss, Morecambe and Wise, and scores of others. (In passing, Sandy Powell is the only entertainer to whom Eric ever sent a fan letter.)

  All made their mark in their time. For Victoria Wood and Peter Kay, that time is right now, but for those who know their British comedy history, the others never seem that far away. The late Les Dawson remains perhaps still the most quotable comedian on mother-in-laws. While his material is now widely viewed as outmoded, a form of comedy done to death in pubs, clubs, and variety theatres over too many decades to remember, the natural humour of his gags, reinforced by his deadpan delivery, still survives and surely always will. ‘The wife’s mother has been married three times. Her first two died through eating poisoned mushrooms!’ (In the comedian Jack Dee the deadpan melancholic embodied by Les Dawson lives on, though the mother-in-law jokes are sacrificed for observations of people in general.)

  Those bright lights of the north, and many more like them, illuminated the entertainment industry that was born during the Industrial Revolution and reached its zenith in the first half of the twentieth century. Of course the north of England wasn’t the sole purveyor of comedy. The humour served up in the south, particularly London, was and is profound—from Charlie Chaplin to

  Peter Sellers, from Max Miller to Mike Reid, from Flanagan and Allen to Norman Wisdom, Kenneth Williams, Ben Elton, and Harry Enfield.

  It’s important to remember that over the decades other regions of the United Kingdom, notably the mining towns and shipyard areas, have also produced great comic entertainers, from Tommy Cooper (Wales) to Billy Connolly (Scotland). But the northwest corner of England has consistently yielded up an astounding plethora of talent.

  In the eighty or ninety years after 1780 the population of Britain as a whole nearly tripled and the average income more than doubled. The share of farming fell from under a half of the nation’s output to just under a fifth, and the making of textiles and iron moved into steam-driven factories. As a result the north experienced exceptionally rapid growth, with the towns of Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield becoming teeming cities during the nineteenth century. Such monumental changes had not been fully anticipated and were not fully comprehended at the time.

  In the early decades of the twentieth century, with much of Europe and

  America fully industrialized, a comic voice emerged that spoke for the age: Charlie Chaplin in his mocking role of Hitler in The Great Dictator and as the Tramp in Modern Times. In the former film he makes a long speech as the dictator. This is a small part of it and for us, with the benefit of hindsight, it expresses the fallibility of that era:

  Greed has poisoned men’s souls—has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

  We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.

  Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

  Yet out of it all, with Chaplin’s huge impetus, grew British comedy, which has continued to thrive and expand as quickly as our great cities did during the nineteenth century. Today saying you are a stand-up comic working the comedy circuit is as cool as saying you’re a rock star. Being a comedian in the last part of the twentieth century and the first part of the twenty-first century has meant elevated status. When I was a child at my first school it was nothing short of an embarrassment, and I kept very quiet about my father’s work.

  Morecambe and Wise were aware of the tradition of northern comedy in Britain at the time of their coming together, even if they were uncertain of the how and why of it. But they were expansive in their taste and deeply curious about the comedy coming out of America as much as the home-grown comedy they themselves would soon be presenting to the world at large.

  ‘Morecambe and Wise were aware of the tradition of northern comedy in Britain at the time of their coming together.’

  Although Ernie saw Eric perform for Bryan Michie and Jack Hylton in Manchester, it wasn’t until Eric passed the audition and joined them on the road that he got to know his future partner well.

  Ernie, who hailed from East Ardsley, Leeds, began his career in show business by performing with his father in clubs around the region. They were billed as Carson and Kid. But Ernie also did plenty of solo work. An article from the Morley Observer of Friday, 18 March 1938 bears the headline: ‘Youngsters Are Favourites On Morley Stage’. It goes on to list various young acts appearing in a local talent competition—a sort of regional version of today’s TV show Britain’s Got Talent. Out of around twenty finalists, the list was whittled down to five contestants.

  An extract from a book entitled Morley Entertainers says of the contest: ‘The voting by the audience on ballot papers was close. Each of the runners up

  received an award of half a guinea while an additional prize of a special course in tap dancing, given by the society’s ballet mistress, went to Hetty Harris. The first prize of three guineas was awarded to Ernest Wiseman whose comedy song and clever tap dance routine brought the house down.’

  Over the next two years Ernie would go on to become a child star, a rise culminating in performances at the London Palladium with the popular comic entertainer of the day Arthur Askey.

  ‘It was the beginning of a friendship which would last another forty-three years.’

 
; Shortly after this success Eric and Ernie found themselves travelling together, though each was still a solo act. They shared digs, even shared a bed, which would gently be nodded to in later years when they put a much-loved

  bed routine in their TV shows. Sadie spotted the chemistry and it was she who encouraged them to form a double act.

  It was at the Empire Liverpool in August 1941 that Eric and Ernie first performed as the double act Bartholomew and Wiseman. This wasn’t a moment that heralded the arrival of a new and wonderful double act—that was still a decade and a half away—but it was the beginning of a friendship and a working partnership which would endure until Eric’s death forty-three years later.

  Eric and Ernie hadn’t been teamed up for very long when they were to see their partnership put on hold. The Second World War began.

  Eric’s World War

  ‘When the war was on, I went down the mines as a Bevin Boy. My height was no handicap, as I worked lying down. Happy days? Yes, the days were very happy indeed—I was working nights.’

  Gordon and Bunny Jay (brothers whose real name was Jones) were the doyens of British variety bills, appearing in countless pantomime seasons over countless decades, and only recently announced their retirement. Catching up with them face to face was a privilege, but I would be lying if I said there wasn’t an ulterior motive to my wanting to interview them. For quite unbelievably it emerged, during a street-corner conversation with Bunny, that not only was his brother down the mines during the war as a Bevin Boy, as Eric was, but that Gordon and my father worked in the same pit and shared the same digs.