The BBC’s thrifty but short-sighted 1960s habit of scrubbing shows to reuse videotape has spurned a modern hobby of television archaeology. Doctor Who fans have benefitted from these telly detectorists, while several episodes of The Morecambe and Wise Show have also resurfaced in recent years, including now this black-and-white offering from September 1968.
It should delight fans of the beloved comedy duo, Ernie Wise being the straight man and butt of many of Eric Morecambe’s jokes and jibes – including the idea that Ernie had “short, fat, hairy legs” and wore a wig (“You can’t see the join”). Among their popular catchphrases was to ask the audience, “What do you think of the show so far?”, to which the ritual reply was “Rubbish!”. And of course there was their trademark song, “Bring me sunshine”, which they inevitably did with a peerless patter honed on the variety show circuit.
The newly unearthed 25-minute episode was discovered in the estate of a deceased television professional, and while the show is very much of its time – the springtime of the so-called permissive society – there’s nothing here to get Eric and Ernie retrospectively cancelled. The only people baring skin in a sketch about a nudist camp, for example, are Morecambe and Wise themselves. In fact, the most shocking sight to modern audiences who have grown used to the spray-tanned, gym-sculpted bods of Love Islanders might be Eric’s formless, dough-pale torso.
Also of its time is Eric smoking cigarettes on-screen – a habit he was to give up just two months after filming this, following a near-fatal heart attack. This newly discovered episode is being shown on what would have been his 100th birthday, a third heart attack in 1984 carrying him away at the tender age of 58.
The episode is from the first series that the duo made for the BBC after moving from ITV. It was also the last series written by Dick Hills and Sid Green, before the great Eddie Braben took over and transformed their act into the ratings colossus whose 1970s Christmas specials would become legendary.
It was Braben who introduced the song-and-dance numbers, Ernie’s literary pretensions and having the duo share a bed (something Eric famously baulked at until it was pointed out that Laurel and Hardy had a similar nocturnal arrangement).
In this pre-Braben episode, Eric and Ernie are playing to the studio audience, whereas later, Eric would make his trademark grin and wiggle his glasses at the camera. The duo’s music hall roots are also evident in an extended introductory sketch where Eric gives Ernie detailed (and inevitably misleading) directions for driving to his home in Harpenden. It may be nearly eight minutes long, but their comedic patter doesn’t drag for a second.
And crucially, the episode is funny despite missing the colour and glitz of those more polished 70s series. Rather more underpowered (but interesting from a cultural history point of view) are the musical guests. Whereas the likes of Elton John, Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones and (of course) André Previn would appear in the later series, here we had The Paper Dolls – a long-forgotten British female trio in miniskirts and Twiggy-style baby-doll false eyelashes. Trio Athenée were meanwhile a cheery, equally long-forgotten guitar-playing Greek threesome who sang in French, like a Fast Show pastiche of Eurovision.
The final sketch returned to the era’s delight in exposing flesh for the first time since the Victorians clamped down on bare skin. This featured Jenny-Lee Wright, a future regular on The Benny Hill Show, as a ‘balloon dancer’ (a naked entertainer who would retain their modesty with a cunning placement of balloons), who is also supposed to be Eric’s niece. But if that sounds icky on paper, the sketch is pretty innocent and with none of the leering male gaze of Benny Hill’s series.
The BBC obviously had little confidence in this early iteration of The Morecambe and Wise Show, plonking it on BBC Two, and only moving it to the more popular channel in 1971. Six years later, their Christmas specials would attract 21 million viewers. But those specials have been so endlessly repeated (not least on BBC Four), it’s a treat to have some fresh material.
The new episode of The Morecambe and Wise Show will be broadcast on BBC Four and available on iPlayer at 8pm on Thursday 14 May