I’LL BE THERE, FOLLOWING YOU AROUND [428]

We open on Eric Morecambe & Ernie Wise asleep in bed like Laurel & Hardy as Father Christmas comes down the chimney with a sack to steal the silverware. After the opening titles feature Morecambe’s trademark slaps of Wise’s cheeks between appearances of the show’s guests, their personal popularity is measured in sizes of commemorative tankards. Later, they will appear as bell-ringing monks, using candlesticks to pull pints of beer, and as turkeys ready for the yuletide chop, before dancing with actress Glenda Jackson like they were Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers – the increasing size of Morecambe’s cane is done so deftly that the audience doesn’t notice the first time it’s done, but they do the others. They then spar with a very real-life authority, a conductor of a symphony orchestra who turns out to be as funny as they are.

I have always liked Morecambe & Wise – for my generation, they are the link between Laurel & Hardy and Reeves & Mortimer, all comedy double acts that were perfectly surreal, perfectly timed, and perfectly tuned. There is a line in the above episode, which was their Christmas special of 1971, where upon seeing the first tankard, Wise says “Great Scott”, to which Morecambe replies “He’s not in there is he? He’s everywhere else!” I don’t care that makes no sense, but the energy of the delivery made me laugh. 

I personally think this special may be the greatest hour of television ever made in the UK, but saying that is very subjective indeed, having also said it in May 2022. I used this Carlsbergian statement then to justify the extreme lengths made to save a 1968 episode of the show by using laser cutting and X-rays on a fused film reel. With the BBC run of “The Morecambe & Wise Show” from 1968 to 1977 being a milestone in both the comedy history of the UK, and of its cultural history, its Christmas specials often bringing literally half the population together, the effort to save one lost episode was rewarded.

With compilations of Morecambe & Wise sketches being prevalent on British television through the decades, along with memories of individual sketches, the power of the 1971 Christmas special lies in seeing how many of the duo’s classic sketches are from this one show, just as when you realise the episodes of “Fawlty Towers” about the fire alarm and the Germans are the same episode. This special has the “Grieg’s Piano Concerto by Grieg” with André Previn/Preview/Privet, Glenda Jackson's dance routine, and Shirley Bassey singing “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” as her stuck shoe is replaced by a hobnail boot. The final sketch, Wise’s “play what I wrote” was “Robin Hood” featuring Francis Matthews, known to audiences as the radio voice of Paul Temple, and the TV voice of Captain Scarlet.

The 1971 Christmas special also saw the coalescing of the various changes made to “The Morecambe & Wise Show”. The first BBC series was much like the previous 1960s for ITV, staged sketches written by Sid Green & Dick Hills, with Ernie Wise very much the straight man to Eric Morecambe’s unpredictable and zany persona, successful in a few appearances in the United States on “The Ed Sullivan Show” but did not travel further. Eddie Braben was brought in by the BBC to write subsequent series, changing Wise’s persona to be a self-important writer and Morecambe’s close friend, as sketches and routines brought classical Hollywood spectacle and production values. Dance routines were choreographed by Ernest Maxin, producer of later episodes, and music was arranged for orchestra and conducted by Peter Knight, who later did the same for The Carpenters’ version of the song “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft”.

“The Morecambe & Wise Show” would become the show to appear on if you were famous. BBC faces like Michael Parkinson, Frank Bough, Patrick Moore of “The Sky at Night” and newsreader Robert Dougall appear in the 1971 special were making other programmes elsewhere in BBC Television Centre, but Glenda Jackson’s appearance followed that of actors Peter Cushing and Edward Woodward. The 1973 Christmas special boasted Vanessa Redgrave and The New Seekers in the studio, and Yehudi Menuhin, Rudolf Nureyev and Laurence Olivier appearing in filmed insert jokes about why they couldn’t appear in person.

“The Morecambe & Wise Show” became the Rolls-Royce, or Lincoln Continental, of UK TV shows: parodies of “Opportunity Knocks” and “Mastermind” had their real hosts Hughie Green and Magnus Magnusson respectively appear, instead of Morecambe or Wise impersonating them, and their spin on routines from “South Pacific”, “Singin’ in the Rain” and other classical Hollywood musicals were eagerly awaited. 

But the epitome of these was Eddie Braben’s own favourite sketch from those he wrote for Eric & Ernie, from the 1971 Christmas special and featuring André Previn, then the principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, being much more naturally funny than expected: “Thank you for that tremendous introduction, that doesn’t come out of my fee, doesn’t it?” Having been “tricked” into thinking he would conduct Yehudi Menuhin instead of Eric Morecambe, it shouldn’t have been surprising that an accomplished musician and conductor would have had good timing, saying “I’ll get my baton, it’s in Chicago” - Morecambe then seemingly breaks character, saying “Pow! He’s in. I like him.” With a full orchestra and Steinway piano, the piece reworks an earlier 1963 sketch with Previn taking the place of Ernie Wise as the exasperated conductor of a smaller band, Wise now acting as Morecambe’s support and mediator against a very real authority, making the grabbing of Previn’s lapels, and Morecambe’s line “I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order, I’ll give you that”, followed by the slap on Previn’s cheek, all the funnier. Seeing Morecambe’s own applause at the end of the sketch, you can see he is genuinely happy that the sketch has gone so well.

I didn’t need an excuse to write about Morecambe & Wise, or one of their Christmas specials, but people will keep returning to it, or discovering it anew, so we will continue to talk about it.

BRING ME LAUGHTER ALL THE WHILE [257]

BBC Television Centre (2009)

If you get the chance to visit a building usually closed to the public, take it.

In 2009, I visited BBC Television Centre in Shepherd’s Bush, London, a literal television production factory: studios were set up to record episodes of “Harry Hill’s TV Burp,” “The Alan Titchmarsh Show,” “Friday Night with Jonathan Ross” (with guests including Christopher Walken and Green Day), and “Strictly Come Dancing,” for which the main doors to studio 1 were open to deliver the set. We were permitted to look down on one studio, known as TC8, filming a pilot for a quiz show featuring Rufus Hound and Sara Cox. These shows were in addition to the numerous news, sport and children’s programmes coming live from elsewhere in the complex.

During the ninety-minute tour, starting at the main entrance targeted by a Real IRA bomb in March 2001, we sat in the BBC News editorial meeting room, passed through the famous wood-panelled Stage Door entrance, the circular courtyard and gold statue of Helios, and we were locked in a dressing room to keep us from wandering about the building, which is standard procedure no matter how famous you are. I won a BBC Tours mug in a quiz identifying theme tunes, and I saw exactly two well-known people: before the tour started, I saw Simon Jack, now Economics Editor for BBC News, and I saw “Broadcasting House” presenter Paddy O’Connell after buying the DVD – both were dressed to leave on a motorcycle.

Trying to peer through the Studio 1 doors (2009)

Even though I could only see into one studio – they all had viewing galleries, but they also had people working hard to keep their shows under wraps, I am glad the one I saw was TC8, as it was the studio most associated with BBC comedy programmes. It may have been the last studio to open, in 1968, but it hosted episodes of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” “The Morecambe & Wise Show,” “The Two Ronnies,” “Absolutely Fabulous,” “Keeping Up Appearances,” “Not the Nine O’Clock News,” “The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin,” “Sykes,” “Victoria Wood As Seen on TV,” “Porridge,” “Are You Being Served,” “Open All Hours,” “One Foot in the Grave,” “French & Saunders,” “Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge,” “Up Pompeii,” “Hi-De-Hi!” and “Blankety Blank.” Of course, I knew this when I went in, that was why I was so excited. This was why I had no hesitation in buying a DVD of “Fawlty Towers” from their shop – episodes of that were made in TC8 as well.

This is all a very long time ago now: the BBC sold Television Centre to developers in 2013, and while three studios remain open, with the BBC’s commercial arm housed in the old News Centre, the rest has now been converted to expensive, but sympathetically designed, apartments – studio TC8 was demolished altogether.

You do not need a building like Television Centre to make programmes anymore: so long as you have a good camera, and you can keep outside noise away, you can make a show anywhere. But because it was the backdrop to so many shows in the last sixty years, Television Centre may be one of the most recognisable buildings in the world. I already knew so much about it that, when the tour guide mentioned the offices under the Helios statue, I already knew why they were built there: they originally housed all the then-highly expensive and precious video tape machines.

One connection remains to the old era of the BBC at Shepherd’s Bush: Alan and Mark Wogan, sons of Sir Terry - he of the chat shows, the Radio 2 breakfast show and “Blankety Blank” - have opened up a branch of their pizza restaurant chain Homeslice at Television Centre. I could go on naming programmes the BBC made there, but watching the Six O’Clock News, when it came from studio TC7, and knowing that “Multi-Coloured Swap Shop,” “Going Live,” “Live & Kicking,” “Play School” and even “Shooting Stars” used to be made there, gave me a smile.

Main Entrance / News Centre (2009)

AND WE’RE SENDING OUR LOVE DOWN THE WELL [33]

Allow yourself to feel incredibly old and terrified for a moment – TWENTY-SEVEN years ago today, the first episode of “The Simpsons” was broadcast on American television. This means there are people who born since the show began, that now have their own children.

In Britain, for those not willing to pay for Sky TV, the BBC began showing “The Simpsons” in November 1996, at just the right time for the teenage me. For years, I dutifully taped every episode I came across, laughing at its subversive humour, marvelling at its feature film-scale storylines, and identifying with its fully rounded characters.

For the record, my favourite episodes of the series came early in its run, like Lisa winning an essay contest and uncovering political corruption in “Mr Lisa Goes to Washington,” the awful musical “Streetcar!” in “A Streetcar Named Marge,” and the disaster movie plot of “Marge versus the Monorail.” There was once a time where no show could do the two things the “The Simpsons” could – anything, and everything.

I also learned about the references “The Simpsons” made to films, books, philiosophy, and American idioms, both in libraries and online, having just got dial-up internet at home. We eventually did get a satellite dish, and the taping, later joined by DVD buying, continued. The show confirmed I should, without exception, always look under the surface of whatever is put in front of me.

And yet, I found myself falling out with “The Simpsons”, feeling I got all I could from it. I had joined it in its ninth season, and left at its seventeenth – it is now on number twenty-eight. I still watch it occasionally, but usually just my favourite episodes. For all the references they gave to other works of creativity, “The Simpsons” also sent me in pursuit of those works – all the homages to “Citizen Kane” cannot be beaten by just watching “Citizen Kane.”

The sitcoms and dramas that are lucky enough to end on their own terms will usually do so once they have finished exploring the world they created. That may be after twelve episodes, in the case of “Fawlty Towers,” or ten years, if you are “Friends.” Recent “Simpsons” storylines, if you look them up, are still good to watch, and exactly the sorts of episodes you expect from the show. However, for me, this is because they are the sorts of plots I had thought they had already done – they are of “The Simpsons,” but they do not add to my idea of what “The Simpsons” is.

“The Simpsons” may only end when it stops making money for 20^th Century Fox, but I hope its makers see the end coming. The only sitcom that comes close in both its longevity and cast of characters, “Last of the Summer Wine,” could also have run forever, until the BBC decided it would not. Thankfully, Roy Clarke, who wrote all 295 episodes, from 1972 to 2010, was aware of the show being ended, allowing him to write the low-key ending that he wanted, but everyone else still complained about. If “The Simpsons” does end, its demise should match the cultural impact it has had on the world – they could try blowing it up.