‘We had to get in somewhere and make this niche for ourselves.’100 In fact, in spite of their later claims to the contrary, they would have much preferred to have established this niche in London, on Variety Bandbox, rather than in Manchester, on Variety Fanfare.
Variety Bandbox, a weekly show that ran from the early forties through to the early fifties, was for many years the high-spot of the BBC’s Variety output and, as Morecambe and Wise well understood, the ideal programme for up-and-coming performers. It billed itself as the show that presented ‘the people of Variety to a variety of people’, and it had an excellent reputation for discovering and promoting new talent (such as Derek Roy, Frankie Howerd, Beryl Reid, Dick Emery, Max Bygraves, Tony Hancock, Reg Dixon and Bill Kerr). The failure of Morecambe and Wise to impress the show’s producer, Joy Russell-Smith, is a topic that is passed over in somewhat perfunctory fashion in their autobiography,101 and Eric Morecambe once claimed – erroneously – that they never did manage to appear on the show,102 but in fact – as the many letters preserved in the BBC’s archives reveal – they bombarded Russell-Smith and her colleagues for just over four years with their requests for a chance to take part.
The first letter (signed, like all subsequent ones, ‘Morecambe and Wise’ – as if the two of them were one person) was sent on 2 April 1948, and several more followed in quick succession until Joy Russell-Smith wrote back on 3 June inviting them for a private audition at Studio 2 of the BBC’s lofty Aeolian Hall in Bond Street on the afternoon of 10 June. No record of how they fared has been preserved in the archives, but, according to Eric Morecambe,103 Russell-Smith told them that they sounded ‘too much like Jewel and Warriss’ and advised them to try again ‘in five years’ once they had developed a more distinctive style. Far from resigning themselves to being pigeonholed as ‘Northern comics’, however, they persisted in writing both to Russell-Smith and to anyone else whom they felt might offer them an opportunity to take part in such a prestigious show. On 28 November 1950, writing from the Palace Theatre, Plymouth, they contacted Bryan Sears, another Bandbox producer:
Dear Sir,
We shall be at Finsbury Park Empire next month followed by Empire Shepherd’s Bush. We shall then be at the Hippodrome Golders Green for Pantomime which means we shall be in London for the next 12 weeks.
We know you are a very busy man and may not be able to get along to see us. So do you think you could arrange to give us an audition with a view to booking us on Variety Bandbox?
We know you are always looking for comedians, so how about giving us a chance to show our ability?
Thanking you,
Sincerely,
Morecambe and Wise104
Frank Pope, once he became their agent, added his weight to this long-running campaign, writing on 16 July 1951 to the then Deputy Head of Variety Pat Hillyard and urging him and his producers to at least go to see his clients perform. Someone did act on this request, because the following note, scribbled in pencil, was sent by a producer to Patrick Newman, the bookings manager, shortly after:
I saw this act last night and came to the conclusion that the act is, of necessity, too visual, and certainly with too much slap-stick for Sound.
Television might well be interested in them, but there is nothing I could say is outstanding. Some of their patter struck me as being rather aged.105
It seems likely that Morecambe and Wise – and Frank Pope – remained ignorant of this negative verdict, because their campaign continued unchecked, and culminated in the decision of May 1952 by John Foreman, one of the last producers of Variety Bandbox, to include them in one of the programmes. It proved to be something of a pyrrhic victory – the show closed down for good in September that year – but it served as a testimony to the extraordinary tenacity exhibited by Morecambe and Wise in their pursuit of what seemed to them a worthwhile goal.106
Throughout this period their broadcasts from Manchester were winning them some influential admirers, and Ronnie Taylor, in particular, was coming rapidly to the conclusion that they might well be worth the gamble of a show of their own. It was the very thing that they had been hoping for: a chance to grow, to develop a lasting relationship with a large radio audience, to amass a substantial body of work and negotiate a pay-rise – 20 guineas per show – into the bargain. The first series of You’re Only Young Once (YoYo as it became known) started on 9 November 1953107 with Ronnie Taylor as producer, Frank Roscoe as writer and a cast that included Pearl Carr and Deryck Guyler. The shows consisted of short sketches, a musical interlude and a guest star, and were based – very loosely – around the framework of a detective agency run by Morecambe and Wise. When the second series began the following year, Taylor – now Head of Light Entertainment at BBC North – handed over the production duties to one of his most talented young protégés, John Ammonds. Ammonds had joined the BBC in 1941, acquiring invaluable experience during the following thirteen years working in the BBC’s Variety department at London, Bristol and Bangor before moving to Manchester and working closely with Taylor on a number of radio projects. Programmes were made at a very rapid pace in those days, and producers were often called upon to rewrite material – and sometimes, indeed, to conjure up material which had simply failed to arrive – shortly before a recording. Ammonds, in particular, had shown a real talent for this, and, as a consequence, he proved to be an enormously reassuring presence as Morecambe and Wise worked hard to improve on the basic format of the show.
‘Frank Roscoe was a pretty good writer,’108 Ammonds recalled, ‘but he was always working on about three scripts at once – he was doing a script for Ken Platt and other stand-up comics, and one for us. There’d always be parts of the script we’d have to work on once we got it. I’d change this and that, add the odd line here and there, and, of course, the boys – Eric and Ernie – would turn up with all these big old joke books they carried everywhere with them and attempt to fill up the script with gags from those.’109 Ammonds struck up a friendship with them that would last for the rest of their careers:
We got on well from the start. They weren’t just good performers, they were nice people, too. Easy to work with – very keen, quick learners and very, very hard workers, even way back then.
Of course, they were much more ‘Northern’ in those days. Eric was playing this gormless type of character, and his accent was fairly strong, whereas Ernie sounded pretty much then as he did years later on the TV shows.110
YoYo’s style of comedy was, even in 1954, slightly dated – owing more than a little to the kind of fast, pun-packed cross-talk (itself influenced by American radio shows) popularised in Britain by the writing team of Bob Monkhouse and Denis Goodwin – but it retained an engaging spirit:
| ERIC | Men: when you go to a dance, are you a wall-flower? When you get up to leave at the end, is the seat you’ve been sitting on warmer than you are? Instead of dancing like Astaire, do you dance like you’ve just tripped over one? |
| ERNIE | Well, then, what you need is the Swanee Dancing Course. It comes to you by post in six easy lessons, and here are some of the useful hints: ‘How to improve your chasse’ – |
| ERIC | Eat less. |
| ERNIE | ‘How to make women fall for you on the ballroom floor’ – |
| ERIC | Trip ’em up. |
| ERNIE | ‘What to do when a lady says “Excuse me”’ – |
| ERIC | Offer her a mint. |
| ERNIE | Yes, men, the Swanee Dancing Course is what you need. So why not enrol today? Just send us five pounds in notes to Morecambe and Wise. And those of you who have already sent us the money, don’t forget our slogan – |
| ERIC | Up the Swanee! |
The relative success of this series, and the financial remuneration (by now 30 guineas per show) that went with it, was a great source of comfort to Morecambe and Wise at a time when they were not only still working hard on the Moss circuit but had also both recently married – Wise, at long last, to Doreen Blythe, and Morecambe, as soon as he possibly could, to a young soubrette called Joan Bartlett.111