Читать книгу You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone: The life and work of Eric Morecambe - Gary Morecambe - Страница 15

‘I was born in 1926 and when I was eight months old we moved to Christie Avenue into a new council house with three bedrooms and an outside loo. There was just me, my mother, Sadie, and my father, George…’

Has there ever been an iconic entertainer who during his life generated such profound and continuous affection as Eric Morecambe? Probably not. Well, maybe Stephen Fry comes close. Mr Fry’s ability to jolly along as one of us, as it were, while intellectually towering above us Gandalf-like in a world of Hobbits, is very endearing. Just as with Eric, you can’t help but like Stephen. Whatever such persons’ problems might be—and they’re human, so they have problems—there remains this lovable, vulnerable, yet simultaneously optimistic air about them. As TV presenter Nick Owen wrote of Eric in his autobiography: ‘He had the ability to make you laugh just by entering the room…’

Morecambe and Wise emerged from an era when a performer was slowly nurtured and judged purely on talent and not tabloid-style TV programmes bolstered by self-interested tabloid newspapers. You didn’t grade Morecambe and Wise on an A-Z list—they were simply undisputed stars of the small screen, and hugely admired and loved stars at that.

The author Sidney Sheldon observed of his friend Groucho Marx, ‘Even when Groucho wanted to insult someone he couldn’t, because no one would take the insult seriously.’ That straightaway makes me think of my father and his forays into attempting to be serious—which he would have enjoyed more frequently had people been able to take him more seriously. But as well as being plain and simple Dad, he was plainly and simply hilarious almost all the time. Part of it was his nature and part was the burden he carried of not wishing to disappoint anyone. Being a living comic legend was certainly a two-edged sword.

Although I’m now in my fifties it all seems so incredibly recent and fresh in my mind. But that’s the Morecambe and Wise effect; that’s what living with such a master of comedy does to you—it preserved the moments as they occurred. And I know I’m not alone. People still come up to me in the street and say, ‘It must be nearly ten years since your dad died.’ And when I say, ‘No. It’s nearer a quarter of a century,’ a look of incredulity sweeps across their face.