Eric Morecambe Unseen. Группа авторов

tame by modern standards, without a family audience they were lost. They were booked to play six shows a day for one week – and if things worked out, five weeks to follow. After dying six times a day for the first three days, VD told them he was letting them go, in favour of another double act called Hank & Scott. Most young comics would have slunk off with their tails between their legs, but Eric and Ernie had the humility and foresight to ask Van Damm a favour. Would he please put an advert in The Stage, announcing they were leaving the Windmill due to prior commitments, and of their own accord? VD agreed, and Eric and Ernie went away and wrote to twenty agents, inviting them to see the show.

      At this early stage in their career, Ernie was still a bigger draw than Eric (they couldn’t even spell his name right) as their uneven billing on this poster shows. Bandleader Billy Cotton was the father of Bill Cotton Junior, the TV executive who later gave Eric & Ernie their own BBC show.

      Proper billing by now (and proper spelling too). Frank Pope was Eric & Ernie’s first proper agent, and the promoter who really cemented their reputation in the halls. Pope became a close friend, and was even godfather to Eric’s son, Gary. Yet unlike a lot of other Variety acts, Eric and Ernie quickly recognised the vast potential of television, and when they saw that live Variety was dying, they decided, with regret, that they had no choice but to leave Pope for another agent who could get them TV work, the legendary Billy Marsh.

      Eric took this photo of his friend and colleague, Harry Secombe.

      No one came to see them the next day, and no one turned up the day after, but on their last day at the Windmill, one of the agents they’d written to finally arrived. They had to buy him a ticket (VD wouldn’t give them a comp) but it was a good investment. This agent got them a spot in another nude show called Fig Leaves & Apple Sauce at the Clapham Grand in South London, and though they stiffed in the first half with their established set, they went back on in the second half with some hastily written new material and brought the house down. Offers flooded in and before the year was out they found their first regular agent, Frank Pope, who booked the all important Moss Empire circuit, with two dozen big venues around the country and the London Palladium at its peak. After more than a decade in the business, Morecambe & Wise were a proper variety act at last.

      In the end, it had been a close run thing, and the show that put them on the right track had very nearly finished them. Years later, Eric and Ernie were still sufficiently mindful of this narrow escape to refuse Van Damm’s request to put their names on his self aggrandising roll of honour. Yet at least they could console themselves that they hadn’t been fired to make way for a couple of no hopers. The double act that Van Damm preferred, Hank & Scott, consisted of a pianist called Derek Scott and a comedian called Tony Hancock. Maybe VD wasn’t quite so bad at spotting comic talent after all.