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Eric Morecambe Unseen. Группа авторов
Читать онлайн.Название Eric Morecambe Unseen
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780008363451
Автор произведения Группа авторов
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство HarperCollins
Ernest Wiseman was born in Leeds on 27 November 1925. His father, Harry, had been decorated for bravery during the First World War, but like a lot of war heroes, he didn’t take too well to peacetime. He worked on the railways in a variety of fairly menial occupations, but his meagre wages did nothing to quell his extravagant nature. He met Ernie’s mother, Connie, on a local tram. It was love at first sight. Connie’s father thought Harry was far too common for his daughter, and threatened to cut her off without a penny if she married him. He was a man of his word. When Connie and Harry got married and moved into a rented room together, the only thing she was allowed to take with her was the piano she’d saved up to buy.
Ernie was the first of five children, and Connie had to be incredibly careful and resourceful to feed a family of seven on just a couple of pounds a week. From his mum, Ernie learnt that your bank book is your best friend, a motto which stood him in good stead as the business brains behind Britain’s most successful comic duo. In the years to come, Eric would make countless quips about Ernie’s cautious attitude to money. Like all the best jokes, this running gag was based on painful experience. Long after he became a wealthy man, with more cash than he could ever hope to spend, Ernie would still maintain that the main thing in life is being able to pay your bills.
Thankfully for everyone concerned (except, perhaps, Connie’s father) Harry’s paltry salary was supplemented – and then rapidly superseded – when Ernie joined his dad onstage. Harry was already a part time performer on the local working men’s club circuit, but his act really took off when he teamed up with Ernie, who’d shown similar showbiz flair as Eric from a similarly early age. ‘I’d come on and do a clog dance and members of the audience used to throw pennies,’ he recalled.1 Still only seven years old, he found it hard to stay awake at school, but performing trumped anything the classroom had to offer. Soon Carson & Kid, as they called themselves, were earning several pounds every weekend – more than Harry earned in a whole week on the railway. By the time Ernie played the Bradford Alhambra, aged eleven, in the Nignog Revue (political correctness had yet to be invented) he was already a veteran. Now called Bert Carson & His Little Wonder, Harry and Ernie were fast becoming the toast of the Yorkshire halls.
I’m not all there . . . Eric’s first professional act, showing off the results of all those song and dance lessons that his mother made him undergo in Morecambe.
It’s tantalising to wonder whether Harry and Ernie could have gone on to even greater things, but their partnership ended in 1938 when a man called Bryan Michie came to town. Michie was scouring the country for fresh talent for Jack Hylton’s latest juvenile revue, and when he saw Ernie do a turn at the Leeds Empire, he sent him straight down to London so Hylton could see this Little Wonder for himself. Hylton was so impressed, he put Ernie in a West End show that very evening. The show was Band Waggon, starring Arthur Askey, but it was Ernie who was singled out for special praise in the overnight reviews. ‘His timing and confidence are remarkable,’ raved the Daily Express. ‘At thirteen he is an old time performer.’2 His surname shortened to Wise, at Hylton’s instigation, when Eric first set eyes on him, in Manchester in 1939, he’d already matured into a seasoned pro.
Eric was still raw compared to Ernie, but there was no mistaking his talent. ‘Go out there and give them all you’ve got,’ Sadie told him, as they waited in the wings. ‘If you pull it off I’ll buy you an airgun.’3 Eric gave it both barrels. Ernie spotted Eric’s star potential straight away, and so did the boys in the band. ‘Bye, then, Ernie,’ they teased him. ‘Things won’t be the same with this new lad around, but I dare say we’ll soon get used to him. What are you going to do now?’4 Hylton was complimentary but non-committal. ‘Your boy has talent,’ he told Sadie. ‘Maybe we can use him.’5 Eric returned home to Morecambe without exchanging a word with Ernie, but it wouldn’t be long before their paths crossed again.
I’m not all there . . . Eric’s first professional act, showing off the results of all those song and dance lessons that his mother made him undergo in Morecambe.
After several agonising months, Eric finally received the call that he (or rather Sadie) had been waiting for. Hylton wanted him to join the cast of Michie’s new touring show, Youth Takes A Bow. Sadie had always been determined that her only son wouldn’t end up ‘tied to a whistle’ like his father. This was only the beginning, but in a way, it was the biggest break he ever got. Eric made his professional debut at the Nottingham Empire, on a salary of £5 a week, plus expenses. Sadie went with him, as his chaperone.
Eric was lucky to have such supportive parents – a mother sufficiently committed and resourceful to accompany him on this Light Ent trek around the country, and a father sufficiently easy going to let her go. Such an arrangement would have been impossible if they’d had any other children. It was only because Eric was an only child that Sadie was able to spend so long away from home. When Ernie joined the cast in Swansea, he travelled there alone, as he had done ever since his first trip to London. His dad had long since returned to Leeds, to help Connie raise their other children. Harry Wiseman never found another partner to replace his son, but Ernie was more fortunate. Finally, at the Swansea Empire, the two halves of Britain’s greatest double act were introduced to one another. Little did they know it, but their respective destinies were staring each other in the face.
Despite the affection that flowed between them during the forty five years that followed, Eric and Ernie’s first encounter was hardly love at first sight. Ernie was already an established name. Eric was still a beginner. Ernie was on seven quid a week, compared with Eric’s fiver. Far from greeting him as a kindred spirit, Eric thought Ernie was a bit of a bighead (although, as one of Britain’s best known child stars, he actually had quite a lot to be bigheaded about). The first time Ernie caught Eric’s act was when he saw him audition for Jack Hylton. The first time Eric caught Ernie’s act was on the radio, performing with his hero, Arthur Askey. Ernie was fifteen and had already graduated to long trousers. Eric was still fourteen and still wore shorts that showed off his knobbly knees. Eric’s jokes about Ernie’s modest height and his short fat hairy legs had their origins in a time when Ernie towered over Eric, and the only short fat hairy legs on show were Eric’s.
Although Eric and Ernie were now in the same show, they still carried on performing separately, and things probably would have stayed that way if it they hadn’t ended up sharing the same room – and often the same bed. In those days, travelling entertainers were expected to sort out their own accommodation – and extraordinary as it may seem today, child entertainers were no different. Eric lodged with Sadie, but Ernie had to find his own digs. That he ended up with Eric and Sadie, rather than on his own, was largely the result of a little international dispute called World War Two.
At first, Adolf Hitler’s impact on Youth Takes A Bow was confined to the odd air raid, but by the time the show reached Oxford in 1940, hostilities were in full swing. The town was full of troops, soldiers had snapped up virtually every bed, and Ernie found himself traipsing the darkened streets, without anywhere to spend the night. He called at every guest house he could find, until he arrived at the house were Eric and Sadie were lodging. The landlady told him they were fully booked, but Sadie took pity on him and invited him in to share Eric’s bed. It was an arrangement they would repeat countless times on tour, and countless times on TV. From then on, Sadie took Ernie under her protective wing, treating him like an adoptive son.
Hitler also played his part in uniting Eric and Ernie as performers. When the boys reached Coventry, they found the city flattened by the Luftwaffe, and though the theatre was still standing, accommodation was so scarce throughout this devastated city that they had to lodge in Birmingham and travel into Coventry every day by train. Confined to a railway carriage for hours on end, their banter and tomfoolery became more and more frenetic, until a frazzled Sadie suggested they channel their energies into something