Abigoliah: Hello there. This is All British Comedy Explained, the podcast where I finally learn about all the British comedy shows I’ve been missing out on. I’m Abigoliah Schamaun, I’m a stand-up comedian, and guiding me through this comedy labyrinth is writer Tom Salinsky.
Tom: Hello there! What a pleasure to be back again.
Abigoliah: It’s so good. The last time I was at your house, we were celebrating my 40th.
Tom: Oh, yes.
Abigoliah: And we crashed your house.
Tom: Yes. And you drank all the wine.
Abigoliah: We did. I am very aware. I owe you a case of wine.
Tom: Absolutely not. No, no, no, I was happy to do it.
Abigoliah: I was telling some friends. I was like, you know, Tom’s a real adult because not only did he invite us to his house, but we showed up and he was like, “In here: six bottles of wine I just happened to have in a box in case I have an impromptu party.”
Tom: And merry Christmas.
Abigoliah: Merry Christmas.
Tom: This is our surprise episode coming out on Christmas Day. We didn’t announce we were going to do this, but we actually have an episode – just an ordinary scheduled episode – dropping on Christmas Day. So happy Christmas.
Abigoliah: Happy Christmas, everyone. I hope however you’re celebrating, you’re having a joyous time. And if the family’s getting too much, we’re here for you to stick on your earbuds and just take a break and spend a little of your Christmas Day with us.
Tom: And our listeners – and viewers – may have been surprised to see this turn up, but they will have seen the thumbnail. They would have read the title, they know what it is we’re going to watch, and you don’t.
Abigoliah: I have no idea.
Tom: But let’s just start by talking a little bit about the tradition of Christmas specials, because I think you said that’s not really a thing in America.
Abigoliah: No, I mean, there’ll be a Christmas episode of a show. Like I’m thinking of… certain shows might not have had one, say, their first season because they didn’t know how long they were going to go. And then in their second season, they might have a Christmas episode, but it’s not like the Christmas special.
Tom: SNL will have a Christmas-themed show for their last show of the year, yeah, but they wouldn’t have been off the air for six months and suddenly come back with a three-hour Christmas spectacular.
Abigoliah: Exactly. There’s never a longer version. It’s just like in the schedule that, hey, it’s Christmas, so we’ll talk about Christmas.
Tom: So as far as I can tell, this is a tradition which began in the UK in 1958, with a show called A Christmas Night with the Stars.
Abigoliah: So a shiny floor show.
Tom: Kind of. It was broadcast almost every year until 1972. And it would feature, yes, the kind of shiny-floor BBC star who would introduce music acts and special guests, and specially shot short editions of popular comedy and entertainment programmes. So there’d be a little, like, Dad’s Army sketch lasting seven or eight minutes, which would then just be dropped into A Christmas Night with the Stars.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: And there’s also Doctor Who.
Abigoliah: Oh.
Tom: Which, in late 1965, was devoting 12 whole weeks to one epic battle against the Daleks.
Abigoliah: And that was… were they wearing Christmas hats?
Tom: Well, one of those Saturday nights was Christmas Day.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: And so they thought, rather than subjecting the Christmas Day audience to more bloodshed and alien menace, they would do a Christmas-themed episode. So they sort of suspended the regular plot, and instead we have the TARDIS landing at Lord’s Cricket Ground, we have hijinks on a Hollywood movie set with some ersatz Keystone Cops, and then at the end, the Doctor, played by William Hartnell, turns to the camera and says, “And a merry Christmas to all of you at home.”
Abigoliah: So was that loved or did everyone hate that he broke the wall? Because I have mixed feelings about that. But I’m not a Doctor Who fan.
Tom: In ‘65, there wasn’t the same kind of rabid fandom that there is today. And that’s one of the lost episodes. And in fact, it’s one of the episodes which is least likely ever to be recovered because, unlike the other 11 parts of The Dalek Masterplan, that episode was never sold overseas, and most of the time when old Doctor Who episodes come back, it’s because they’re down the back of a filing cabinet in Hong Kong. So we’ll probably never be able to see that. But we do have the audio.
Abigoliah: Okay, cool.
Tom: So then you have the thing that we, you and I, were talking about with American shows: sitcoms or other shows which happen to be transmitting episodes in Christmas week, and so why not give that a Christmas theme?
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: So the second season of Till Death Us Do Part, which you might remember Ben Elton talking about, kicked off on the 26th of December 1966 with a Christmas episode. Season three of Nearest and Dearest concluded with a Christmas episode in 1969, and there’s also a standalone Christmas special. This is actually maybe the very first standalone Christmas special, even before A Christmas Night with the Stars: a bumper edition of Hancock’s Half Hour, which was entitled Hancock’s 43 Minutes.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: And that was the Tony Hancock character I don’t think we’ve seen.
Abigoliah: Yeah, I was gonna say, Hancock. What is – what is Tony Hancock? Is it a sketch show or is it a sitcom? Sitcom?
Tom: But it was a little bit of a loose sitcom, like it wasn’t exactly the same situation every week. Like one week he’d be a barrister, or one week he would just… he’d be an actor quite often. He was an actor. And on Hancock’s 43 Minutes, he gets to host his own variety show.
Abigoliah: Oh, fun.
Tom: But today, it’s quite common for long-running sitcoms not just to do a special Christmas-themed episode, but to use that captive audience to do something momentous.
Abigoliah: Yeah, it’s almost like it’s a sitcom, and then at Christmas they release a film.
Tom: Yes.
Abigoliah: Yeah. Are they always longer?
Tom: Often. So The Office concluded with a two-part Christmas special in 2003. And then very recently, Gavin & Stacey was resurrected for a feature-length Christmas special. Only Fools and Horses essentially ended up only being on television at Christmas. Rather than making a series every year, they’d do one feature-length special between 1991 and 2003, and you wouldn’t see Del Boy and Rodney for the whole of the rest of the year.
Abigoliah: Okay, so they only show up as a Christmas treat. They are Santa. They the Santa of British television.
Tom: But there is one standout purveyor of Christmas specials, and that is who we’re going to be watching today. So now is your opportunity. Do you know what we’re going to be watching?
Abigoliah: See, you already said what I thought it was. So I don’t think it is that now. I thought we were going to watch Gavin & Stacey.
Tom: Oh, I mean, that would have been great.
Abigoliah: The reason why is because when – of course, did I watch it? No. I like to stay on theme of never seen any British television. But I remember when that special came out and everyone was like… it was just all over the place because it was like, they’re back, the show’s been gone, and now they’re back and it’s going to be a Christmas special, and loads of people tuned in. And it was.
Tom: What a marketing agency would call a scarcity ploy.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: But I wouldn’t have shown you that cold, because the nostalgic buzz that you get from seeing these people again depends on you having watched earlier episodes.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: So no, there is a different choice. And even people who are listening to this and haven’t seen the thumbnail or read the title, they are going to know exactly which three words are going to come out of my mouth next. One more guess before I reveal.
Abigoliah: Can I have… so three words. The Black Adder. No. Okay.
Tom: There is a Blackadder Christmas special, which again Ben Elton talked about, which is great despite his slagging off. No, no, no. These three words are Morecambe and Wise.
Abigoliah: We’re gonna see Morecambe and Wise!
Tom: We absolutely are. Now, their shows would always top the ratings. They put out over a dozen Christmas specials, but it was a very, very easy choice for me to zero in on exactly one. So you have heard of Morecambe and Wise?
Abigoliah: Yes. Yes, yes. Who, as you know, I read Ben’s biography before we interviewed him. Ladies and gentlemen, if you haven’t checked out that special episode where we interview Ben Elton, please do. He was heavily influenced by Morecambe and Wise. He just talks… he talked about them in the interview and all through his book, he’s like, “But Morecambe and Wise,” and I’ve been like, I gotta check out these Morecambe and Wise fellas.
Tom: All right. So we’re going to watch the 1971 Christmas special.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: That’s the year that the UK got rid of pounds, shillings and pence and moved to decimal currency. The first Starbucks opened in Washington State. Walt Disney World opens in Florida, the second of the Disney theme parks. And Fiddler on the Roof is this year’s box office champ at the movies.
Abigoliah: Tradition. Tradition.
Tom: But our story starts in 1940.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Going back. This is when Ernest Wiseman met John Eric Bartholomew at the Nottingham Empire. Now, this was one of Britain’s variety theatres. And these are two young lads who became Ernie Wise and Eric Morecambe. And they were teenagers and they were what was called front-cloth comics. Does that mean anything to you?
Abigoliah: No. But are they the comics – I’m gonna guess – who come out before the full-on stage show in front of the curtain and do a little something to kind of warm up the audience? Or are they like a warm-up act?
Tom: More or less. Not just a warm-up act. Whenever scenery needed to be changed or a band needed to set up during the show, they’d bring the curtains across, and if you could entertain the audience standing in front of those curtains, you were therefore very, very useful to keep the show moving. So not just as a warm-up, but throughout the show. Front-cloth comics – sometimes double act, sometimes just one person on their own – but a crucial part of the variety circuit.
Abigoliah: Fun fact: as someone who has done warm-up, you also do that during warm-up because they’ll be filming and then they’ll be like, “We need to fix the makeup,” and you have to run on and just talk. You never know how long while they fix everything.
Tom: So you don’t want to start a seven-minute joke, because at six and a half minutes they could say, “Right, we’re ready.” Yep. And you don’t get to the punchline. Yeah.
Abigoliah: You just have to be like… “And we’ll come back to that later, folks.”
Tom: So as Morecambe and Wise grew up, they became stars on the variety circuit. And they were offered a BBC television show in 1954 called Running Wild.
Abigoliah: Are they… Are Morecambe and Wise like the Abbott and Costello of Britain?
Tom: That’s a pretty good comparison. Yeah.
Abigoliah: But Abbott and Costello are… this is happening around the same time. They would have been older.
Tom: Yeah. Abbott and Costello were ’40s, principally. They had long careers – again, radio, little bits of TV, and then movies.
Abigoliah: Yeah, yeah.
Tom: Yeah. Morecambe and Wise, as we’re coming to, were live and then principally TV. Okay. But their first TV show was broadcast live to the nation and no copies are known to exist. And this is probably quite a good thing because this series was not a success.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: There’s a famous review at the time which read: “New definition of a television set: the box they buried Morecambe and Wise in.”
Abigoliah: Oh no.
Tom: Yeah.
Abigoliah: No, no, no, no. It’s where they’re born in. It’s how we know and love them today.
Tom: Not so much. It was cancelled after six episodes and they went back to live work.
Abigoliah: Oh, you know what? As much as the live circuit – as someone who’s on it all the time – we complain and want to be on that box. We want to be buried in that box. At the end of the day, you can always go back to the live circuit.
Tom: So they sort of tested the water, making guest appearances on other people’s shows, and then eventually they were lured back to television in the early ‘60s with an ITV show called Two of a Kind. And by now they were a bit kind of more secure themselves. They understood what made their comedy work and the kind of writers they needed, and they leant very heavily on the talents of Dick Hills and Sid Green, who also appeared in some sketches.
Abigoliah: By the way, all of these names sound so old-timey.
Tom: Don’t they?
Abigoliah: And I know they’re British, but I just picture them, like with New York Jewish accents, being like, “All right, kids, here’s what we’re gonna do. We got some great gags, we got some great gags and a lot of pratfalls. That’s what we’re gonna do. That’s what the kids love.”
Tom: Have you ever seen The Sunshine Boys?
Abigoliah: No.
Tom: “Words with a K are funny.”
Abigoliah: Yeah, words with a K.
Tom: Yes. So around this time, some of their enduring catchphrases and regular bits of business began to emerge. And now the public began to take this northern double act to their hearts: fast-talking Eric and genial, if slightly pompous, Ernie. But television was changing. So two things come into play here. One is that colour was coming.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: The other is that overseas sales were becoming important. So for ITV, which was still in this kind of franchise model–
Abigoliah: Wait. Back up. What year is this that colour’s coming in?
Tom: This is the mid-’60s.
Abigoliah: Okay. Sorry.
Tom: So the Midlands-based ATV franchise they were making the show for couldn’t offer colour and the BBC could, but at the same time, ATV had tried to sell the show to the States and it hadn’t been successful.
Abigoliah: ATV is Kansas, BBC is Oz, I get it.
Tom: Yeah, exactly. So they jumped ship and they ended up making 71 episodes of The Morecambe & Wise Show for the BBC, swapping Hills and Green for a new writer after the first year.
Abigoliah: What happened to Hills and Green?
Tom: Well, Eric Morecambe suffered a heart attack.
Abigoliah: Jesus. How old? So when he… in his 30s or 40s?
Tom: 40s.
Abigoliah: That’s young for a heart attack.
Tom: And so the BBC said, listen, we’ve given these boys a three-year contract. We will honour that. As soon as Eric is better, we’ll start the clock again. But Hills and Green were like, “Nah, this isn’t going to work out,” and they jumped ship.
Abigoliah: Okay, so it was their choice.
Tom: But the new guy they got in was a guy called Eddie Braben, and he was a veteran comedy writer. But it’s his input which finally cemented the Eric and Ernie personas. He was the missing piece of the puzzle. He moved their on-screen interactions even closer to their off-stage behaviour. He wrote sketches in which the two of them shared a flat, often seen sleeping in the same bed together – again, something which struck Ben Elton as being almost surreal. But it’s really just a way of creating this sort of domestic life for them to have. He created the notion that Ernie, who’d often just been the straight man up to this point, was a self-important but deluded writer of terrible plays which he would insist upon staging. And these gave the now longer episodes something to build towards. And they started to become incredibly popular.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: One of the things that meant was they could attract bigger stars to be guests on their show. So there’s a running joke in early episodes, which involved Hollywood legend Peter Cushing continually interrupting proceedings to claim that he hadn’t been paid, and lots of other singers and actors made appearances. And you have the tradition here of the shows ending with the song “Bring Me Sunshine” and the two men skipping off towards the back of the set. That’s introduced in the second series. In ‘69, they delivered their first Christmas special, which got an audience of 20 million people.
Abigoliah: Whoa!
Tom: And by the fifth series, stars were clamouring to be allowed on the show in order to have Morecambe and Wise take the piss out of them. It’s the 1971 show in which everything comes together. So I will save further discussion until we’ve seen it. Okay. What are you expecting?
Abigoliah: So is… wait. What I don’t understand – is it a sketch show?
Tom: It’s sort of a sketch variety show. So without giving too much away, there’ll be bits where they’re kind of doing that front-cloth comic bit. There’ll be bits where they are playing characters in sketches. And there are these sort of quasi – is it a sketch, or isn’t it – where they’re kind of themselves, but they’re on a set and then it builds towards Ernie’s terrible play.
Abigoliah: Okay, so what I’m thinking is: with the stars – and this is where it all comes to a head – that we are going to see a very famous person that is now cancelled.
Tom: I wouldn’t do that to you.
Abigoliah: It wouldn’t be your fault. You know, like… like it’d be like, “Oh, remember when we could like him?” And we’re going to see a very famous person who is now tragically passed.
Tom: I mean, it was 1971, so that’s a lot of them.
Abigoliah: Yeah. Yeah, actually. Good point. And I think we’re gonna see a young upstart who this was maybe their first chance. And I think there’s going to be a cameo from a royal. But not like the Queen or something. That would be too much. But maybe… maybe a young Charles or… or something like that. Or Prince Andrew. There we go. Cancelled and royal. And then, as far – I think it’s going to be a lot of very clever wordplay because if they’re sitting in a bed, it’s going to be like Pete and Dud, where it’s about the language and not about the physical comedy. That’s what I think I’m going to see.
Tom: All right, let’s go and watch the 1971 Morecambe and Wise Christmas special.
Abigoliah: I’m really looking forward to this.
* * * * *
Tom: Okay. Welcome back. That was my Christmas present to you.
Abigoliah: Oh my God, I loved it. I – I am now a big fan of Morecambe and Wise. I wish they still did television like that. Yeah. Like first of all, right away, their chemistry is so genuine. Like they seem like really genuine friends. Like more so than just like, oh, they’re good on stage, or the laughs are good or the writing’s good. There’s like electricity between them.
Tom: So by this stage they’ve been performing together for 30 years.
Abigoliah: Wow. And did they like each other?
Tom: Oh, of course. Yeah. How could they not? Absolutely.
Abigoliah: I mean, you know, you never know. You never know.
Tom: That’s true.
Tom: That André Previn sketch in particular is incredibly famous.
Abigoliah: Who is he? Because I was, first of all, I couldn’t believe how long it was because I was like, okay, we make a big deal and then we play the song. That’s what’s gonna happen. And I was like, this is – I loved that. And who is this André Previn, who’s a conductor but has incredible comic timing?
Tom: Well, this was one of the questions. So like I said, this stage, it’s kind of the beginning of a peak, which actually lasted for some time. We’ll talk about this in a minute. But they were incredibly famous, the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show was the centrepiece of the BBC schedule, and André Previn was a great get, and they loved having really famous kind of classy people that they could make look ridiculous.
Abigoliah: That’s another thing about the guests was it wasn’t because this was in the ‘70s, so it’s like they could have had rock and rollers, they could have had like hip actors. And not to say that like – I mean, Shirley Bassey, but Shirley Bassey is like a class act. It’s not like it’s not like, you know, it’s not disco, it’s not rock and roll. It’s properly classic, shiny-floor television.
Tom: But André Previn, who was quite famous, is now known to generations of people for that sketch more than anything else. And the line at the end, “I’m playing all the right notes, not necessarily in the right order,” is so famous, and there will be people watching this and listening to this now who cannot believe that you have never seen that before.
Abigoliah: I loved it. So he was a famous – first of all, I like when you were like, “It’s André Previn, you know, the famous conductor.” I’m like, I don’t follow enough orchestras.
Tom: And you weren’t alive in 1971.
Abigoliah: I wasn’t to know famous conductors. So he was a famous conductor. But did he also – did he do a lot of cameos like this?
Tom: He was like a populariser of classical music. So he was often on talk shows and things like that.
Abigoliah: So, like Yo-Yo Ma. Yeah. Like someone who somehow brought classical music to the mainstream.
Tom: And it was a time when classical music was more mainstream as well, when Radio 3 regularly got huge audience figures before Classic FM, before people only knew classical music from commercials. But it was a risk. So first of all, he put a lot of money behind that sketch.
Abigoliah: They had to get a full orchestra.
Tom: They had a 40-piece orchestra. Exactly. But the producer pushed the boat out, and he was very keen on this idea. Now, this actually is an old sketch. There’s a previous version of this sketch where it’s just Eric annoying Ernie by not playing the piece properly, and it goes all the way back to Two of a Kind. But Eddie Braben thought that there was more potential there, and if they got the right guest star, they could really make it work. But they insisted that André Previn be there for five full days of rehearsal, and André Previn was not interested in doing five full days of rehearsal. I think they compromised on three.
Abigoliah: Well, that was another question is like, how much did they rehearse this?
Tom: Well, after the first day, André Previn’s mother was ill and he wasn’t able to attend the other two days of rehearsal.
Abigoliah: So he did that on one day.
Tom: Basically. They’d done the read-through and he hadn’t learned the lines yet, and then he had to fly home. So he came back on the day of the recording, learned the lines in the car on the way to Television Centre, and rehearsed with Eric and Ernie during the day before performing it in front of the audience. And Eric was not happy. He thought this was going to be a disaster, but there’s a moment when, after he comes out from behind the curtain and André Previn does his line about, “I’ll get my baton – it’s in Chicago,” and the audience laughs. You can see Eric go pow! Like he knows this is going to work now.
Abigoliah: And now I have to go back and watch it for just that moment right there.
Tom: But in rehearsals, Eric was really clear to André Previn. He said, none of the three of us at any stage have to give the slightest hint that there is anything funny happening.
Abigoliah: Yeah. I guess that, yeah, because he just – there’s no winking from André Previn. He seems annoyed the whole time, as you would if you’re – sorry – as you’re trying to like, you know, you’re a very serious musician and these comedians are mucking about. And how long was it?
Tom: About ten minutes, I think.
Abigoliah: Yeah. That’s like a short film.
Tom: Yeah. And like I say, it was the centrepiece of the episode and it constantly gets… We’ll come on to Morecambe and Wise best-ofs, of which there were a lot for many years, but it’s the one that always comes out first. But the thing I couldn’t kind of believe when I was reviewing this is the 1971 Christmas special is not only the one with the incredibly famous André Previn sketch, it’s got Shirley Bassey doing “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” as well, and Glenda Jackson and more and more and more. Yeah, it’s such a feast.
Abigoliah: Also, the – okay, the Glenda Jackson sketch, the reason why I was like, are they lip-syncing? Is that fake tapping? is because I genuinely thought it was so sweet. And even though the whole conceit is like, I can’t actually dance like Ginger and Fred, I was like, this is actually, like, choreographed really well, and it’s really pretty. And other than the long stick, I’m just enjoying watching like a little musical number. That’s why I kept looking for another like wink to the camera. I liked – I thought that one was sweet more than it was funny. I thought it was funny, but the André Previn one was great. And then the Shirley Bassey one.
Tom: It was also – yeah, it keeps getting dragged out for best-ofs and they’re in the same show.
Abigoliah: Well, and too, when she showed up on the set, I was like, okay, like the mariachi band… I think that’s a mariachi band. Should we call it a mariachi band? I thought it was just going to be like her singing. I was like, okay, and now we take a break from comedy, as you do in these types of shows, and when they show…
Tom: It’s such a good reveal!
Abigoliah: It’s such a good reveal. And then I was like, okay, does it stop there? And then it keeps going. And then the button on the end of “May I have my shoe back?” And you know, the camera is above her feet. And then she walks off. And I don’t know why, I guess ‘cause she’s such a powerhouse and she’s so, like, regal that in my head I’m like, oh, she’s such a good sport.
Tom: Yeah, we didn’t quite get the Queen. We got mention of the Queen.
Abigoliah: We got mention of the Queen. And I will say, other than Shirley Bassey, I didn’t know who they were.
Tom: I’m thinking about what Glenda Jackson has been in. Women in Love, I think, for Ken Russell – I think that’s her… a bunch of films, a big star in the ‘60s and ‘70s and then went into politics and became a Labour MP.
Abigoliah: Okay, cool. I mean, I’m sure if I look something up, I would know. But when I was like, what has she been in? And you were like, films… Whenever Tom Watts and I watched stuff together, it’ll be like, who’s that? And I’ll be like, that’s Al Pacino. And like, real obvious. And he goes, what has he been in? And like, maybe I’ll list one thing and he’ll be like, what else? And I’m like, I’m not in charge of this. I just want to watch the thing. Let me watch the thing.
Tom: When you go home, say André Previn to him and see what he says. Okay. There’s a 50% chance he’ll say Morecambe and Wise.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: But maybe if he has this cultural blind spot he won’t.
Abigoliah: I mean, he knows more than you’d think he would, but he thinks certain people look the same. He thinks Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman are the same person, and he thinks Christopher Meloni and Jon Hamm are the same person. He gets them confused. Which, as stupid as it sounds, you can also kind of see it.
Tom: Any other reflections on the ‘71 Christmas special before I tell you about what happened next?
Abigoliah: So the actor who was in the Robin Hood sketch…?
Tom: Francis Matthews has no big cultural footprint that I’m aware of. Maybe that’s a huge blind spot for me. Maybe people are shouting at their pod devices, shouting, “Francis Matthews! How could you not know?” But it means nothing to me.
Abigoliah: The Robin Hood sketch I thought was very fun towards the end, when they were just corpsing and being ridiculous. It just made me think of like almost like a college revue where you’re just like, but it’s your last night, so fuck it, let’s have fun. Like I thought it was very good, but compared to Shirley Bassey and André Previn, it wasn’t like the highlight of the show. It is good to know that those wound up on like, they are the most famous ones. But I liked the Robin Hood one. But yeah, yeah.
Tom: Good punchline. You’re not dealing with a mug, you know? Yeah.
Abigoliah: Good callback. Good callback to the beginning. Yeah, I loved it. I thought it was absolutely great. What – what happens next? Do you tell me.
Tom: Okay. Not all of this is good news. The first thing that happened was after the huge success of this show, Eddie Braben, their writer, suffered a nervous breakdown. There was no 1972 series, and new writers were drafted in for the 1972 Christmas special, which was still a triumph, although nothing quite has the same cultural legacy as André Previn. Braben was back for a 1973 series which saw guest appearances from Cliff Richard, Robert Morley, boxer Henry Cooper, Sooty and Sweep and, alas, The Black and White Minstrel Show.
Abigoliah: Oh… kay…
Tom: You know that The Black and White Minstrel Show was regularly on British television until the late 1970s?
Abigoliah: Well, we all grow and change at our own pace.
Tom: André Previn appeared in the final episode and in the 1973 Christmas special, and again in the first episode of the 1974 series. So instantly he became associated with Morecambe and Wise.
Abigoliah: That’s so interesting.
Tom: And now they’re absolute fixtures in the television landscape. The last full series on the BBC, which is the ‘76 series, also includes some classic sketches, including their breakfast routine set to “The Stripper,” you know…. (hums)
Abigoliah: Oh yeah.
Tom: And in the 1976 Christmas special, they upped the game of having BBC newsreaders appear in sketches, now doing full song-and-dance numbers.
Abigoliah: One thing I forgot to ask. What’s with the (slap slap slap)? There’s lots in the opening and then it keeps coming back. Is it just a signature thing?
Tom: There’s lots of little running jokes, some of which you saw and some which you didn’t. So, yeah. Eric chucking or slapping Ernie’s cheeks is one. “You can’t see the join” pointing to what is supposed to be Ernie Wise’s hairpiece, but I think actually was his real hair.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: The thing he does at the end, holding his hand under his chin, is supposed to be a judo move: “Get out of that.”
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: And there’s a bit he does in almost every show, except this one, where he takes a paper bag and throws a mime ball in the air, and then flicks the paper bag as if the ball has landed in it.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Which is very neat. In 1978, they switched back to ITV. This was the era of this real rivalry between the two networks. Hence that joke about Lew Grade. “Ready when you are.”
Abigoliah: Yeah. Which thank you for explaining it to me because I’m like, what does that mean?
Tom: They made a further 30 regular episodes for ITV and seven Christmas specials, but by now the strain is beginning to tell, and shows that used to get 20 or even 30 million viewers are now struggling to get ten. For a while, Eddie Braben–
Abigoliah: Sorry, just shows now would kill for ten million.
Tom: Eddie Braben, for a while, had an exclusive contract which tied him to the BBC. And so the early ITV shows had very capable scriptwriters who could follow his lead but didn’t quite have the same magic. And even when he comes back in 1980, it’s all starting to feel a bit tired, a bit like going through the motions, and shows start to get padded out with reworked sketches from earlier in their careers. Eric Morecambe had heart bypass surgery in 1979 and was forced to give up smoking and drinking. In 1984…
Abigoliah: He had had a heart attack before and he didn’t give it up?
Tom: Yeah.
Abigoliah: God bless the ‘70s.
Tom: Yes.
Abigoliah: I’ll just… it’s fine.
Tom: In 1984, he suffered a final fatal heart attack during the curtain call at a charity concert in Gloucestershire.
Abigoliah: Holy shit.
Tom: He was 58.
Abigoliah: That’s so young.
Tom: The pair’s final work together was a TV film called Night Train to Murder.
Abigoliah: Can you imagine being at the show?
Tom: Tommy Cooper died on stage.
Abigoliah: So did Ian Cognito.
Tom: And help was a long time coming because people thought it was part of the act.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: Ernie Wise spent the next several years mainly hosting tributes to his comedy partner and falling back on his song-and-dance skills. He died in 1999 at the age of 73.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: But for years the schedules were awash with Best of Morecambe and Wise, so a lot of these sketches only get seen now in isolation. But there was no need for me to do a special Tom Salinsky curation, because the ‘71 show is pretty–
Abigoliah: Perfect.
Tom: Yeah, pretty much perfect. Eddie Braben lived to 82. He died in 2013. Both Eric and Ernie earned OBEs and multiple BAFTAs and Writers’ Guild awards. And as we saw from our interview with Ben Elton, whole generations of Britons grew up watching them, or watched those compilations, or watched repeats, and they’re just a huge part of the cultural legacy.
Abigoliah: Is there a place in the streaming world where you can find these?
Tom: All the Christmas shows are on iPlayer at the moment.
Abigoliah: Okay. Oh, that’ll be such a fun thing to do over Christmas.
Tom: The ITV shows are on YouTube at the moment, but who knows when they’ll get taken down. I don’t know if any of the regular episodes are easy to find.
Abigoliah: That is another thing, like about the Christmas special. I said it when we were watching. It is like even though it’s a Christmas special, other than the opening – like the cold open sketch–
Tom: It’s not very Christmassy.
Abigoliah: It’s not Christmassy.
Tom: There’s the turkey sketch.
Abigoliah: Oh, I guess, yeah, they had the turkey sketch, which was really fun.
Tom: Yeah, which is great. But I’ve never seen that on any repeat compilation. So that’s like mid Morecambe and Wise.
Abigoliah: Oh wow. ‘Cause I quite liked that.
Tom: Yeah, I think it’s quite funny.
Abigoliah: I wrote it down. We didn’t talk about it but I like that it wasn’t overly Christmassy. But I thought when you said they’re gonna have special guests on in singing, I thought – yeah, I thought we were gonna hear “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and, you know, “White Christmas” and, you know, arranged. Yeah, that’s what I thought. But anyways. Sorry. Keep – keep talking. I’m interrupting.
Tom: The final thing to say is apart from watching compilations, of which, like I said, there are many, a great way to learn about Morecambe and Wise is the terrific 2011 television drama film Eric and Ernie, which stars Brian Dick as Ernie Wise, Daniel Rigby as Eric Morecambe, and features Victoria Wood as Eric’s mum, Sadie Bartholomew. She was the one who had the idea of putting Eric and Ernie together as a team, and Victoria Wood was the one who had the idea of making a TV film about the early career of Morecambe and Wise.
Abigoliah: Oh, cool. And when did that come out?
Tom: 2011. A little bit hard to find, but if you dig around, I bet you can turn it up somewhere. It’s really, really good. It was a good early showing for Daniel Rigby, who’s now quite a big star. And yeah, I love the fact that it was Victoria Wood’s idea, because they’re coming from the same tradition of these northern comedians working their way around the circuit. Victoria Wood a little bit later. She was just beginning when they were in their pomp. And that’s the other thing that occurs to me. Like, we’ve seen a number of comedians and you’ve pointed out that pattern tends to be some enormous early success, and then nothing else they do afterwards quite measures up. That’s basically true of The Goon Show. It’s sort of true of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore that their really big success was Beyond the Fringe, which actually was the very first thing they did, but they were still very popular with not only – but also. But these two worked their way up slowly. Got to the top around about this time, around 1971, and stayed there for like seven or eight years, just being brilliant week after week, year after year.
Abigoliah: I guess like in show business, there is a lot of luck. Right? There’s so much luck. But also with writing, with comedy, the more you do it, the more likely you’re able to succeed again quickly. Like, if you think about stand-up when you’re first writing and when you’re first, like, going to open mics, it’s almost by luck. You get laughs because you don’t know what you’re doing. So if you… I never really thought about this before, but if you have a huge success quite young like Beyond the Fringe when you’re still in uni, it doesn’t mean you’re not talented, but you don’t have the chops. You don’t have the practice to constantly recreate where they got their success. And they’re – what were they? 30s? 40s? They have been freaking grafting and have all of this back catalogue and know their workflow in order to recreate and recreate and recreate. Whereas at 20, if you get a hit at 20, you don’t necessarily know how you did it. So it’s harder to do it again. I’ve never really thought about that before. That’s why I’m glad I haven’t become an international success yet, or even a national success. I’m waiting.
Tom: Because when it comes, you’ll be ready.
Abigoliah: Yeah, that’s… well, you know, as we said, this is – I’ve turned 40. This is the year, this is the year, and my success is this podcast. Please like, subscribe, share it with your friends.
Tom: All right. Time for the big question. The shelf of fame or the bargain bin?
Abigoliah: Okay, so here’s what I was thinking. One, because it is a Christmas special. Does it count?
Tom: And it doesn’t have to. We can – we can say that it’s a special case if you want.
Abigoliah: And two, part of me loved it, but part of me is like, oh, it doesn’t go on the shelf of fame yet till I watch two normal episodes.
Tom: Okay.
Abigoliah: So I’m thinking because it was a very special episode, that it isn’t going to go in the bargain bin, but what it’s going to do is I’m going to put it on layaway. I’m gonna put it on layaway. And this is our Morecambe and Wise episode. We’re probably not going to revisit it, at least anytime soon.
Tom: That’s right.
Abigoliah: We’re not – good. I might go away and have a little looky-loo at stuff, and maybe it’ll wind up on the shelf of fame. I mean, let’s be honest, it should be there. But I refuse to because I’m like, no, I watched a Christmas special, and Christmas specials are specials. They don’t count as episodes. So right now we have on the shelf of fame Victoria Wood, Not Only… But Also, The Office and The Young Ones. And we are going to keep Morecambe and Wise off the shelf of fame for now. But who knows what happens in the future.
Tom: So maybe when we do our season one wrap-up, we have a final look at the shelf of fame. Make sure everything’s in the right place, make sure nothing needs to be added or taken away.
Abigoliah: Yeah, because I’ve been watching stuff which has made me go, oh, is things in the right order. Not saying I’ve made the wrong decisions, but are they in the right order. So yeah.
Tom: All right. And listeners, let us know what you think. Do you think this is a wise decision by Abigoliah to keep her powder dry for now? Do you think the Morecambe and Wise Christmas special should have gone to number one like a rocket? And what Christmas specials do you remember watching, either as an adult or growing up when you were a little kid?
Abigoliah: Oh, yeah. Please tell us that, please, because – oh, this is coming out Christmas Day. I was like, I want to watch them over Christmas. But yeah, what’s… I will say one – well, it’s not a television show – the Charlie Brown Christmas special, yes, is a classic in America. I give that one to you guys as my recommendation. And if you haven’t seen Morecambe and Wise, they’re on iPlayer. So let’s watch them. Let’s watch them together.
Tom: All right. So shall we talk about what we’re going to be watching next?
Abigoliah: Yes. Tell me.
Tom: Next up – and we did trail this in the previous episode, but we just snuck this Christmas special in as an extra treat. So you do know this already, but it’s going to be The Day Today.
Abigoliah: I’m very excited about it.
Tom: Which is the first television appearance of Alan Partridge, as played by Steve Coogan.
Abigoliah: I cannot wait, I’m looking forward to that. As always, guys, like we said, if you enjoy the podcast, share it with a friend. Please subscribe. Maybe give us a five-star review on your podcatcher app. Check out the Substack which you’ve been working on and I will add to. I actually have something I want to add to it, please. So yeah, please check us out on Substack and YouTube and Instagram and TikTok. We are on other social medias, Facebook. But I keep forgetting we have a Bluesky so you can join it. There’s not much–
Tom: There. Yes. All right, well, until next time.
Abigoliah: Have a good one, everyone.
Tom: Happy Christmas.
Abigoliah: Merry Christmas and a happy Hanukkah.