by Gary Morecambe
What can you say about Eric Morecambe that hasn't already been said? The answer, it seems, is very little - even from the mouth of his own son.It's been nearly two decades since the comedy legend died, and one since Gary Morecambe wrote his first biography of Britain's best-known double act. Since then, Graham McCann has also produced the definitive volume about the duo, meticulously charting their hard path from music hall to unrivalled TV favourites.
But not only does Morecambe Jnr face a crowded market, he also has to deal with the fact that his father was, to put it bluntly, a bit boring. His is no tears-of-a-clown tale like the troubled life of Tony Hancock, Peter Sellers or Kenneth Williams. His off-stage manner wasn't all that different from his on-stage one, he had a stable home life and his only vices were his pipe and the occasional overindulgence with whisky.
The best Gary can come up with in Life's Not Hollywood, It's Cricklewood is that his dad could be a bit distant and sometimes got a bit grumpy with his children when the pressures of work overwhelmed his natural good nature. A trait you might just as well find in a quantity surveyor or a chartered accountant - especially in the austere Fifties and Sixties - as the most-loved figure in showbusiness.
And by skipping over Morecambe and Wise's much more exciting professional life in favour of home-spun anecdotes, the feeling of what made them so special as comedians never leaps from the page.
But then this isn't so much a biography of Eric Morecambe, as the story of Gary Morecambe - as if anyone was interested. Huge swathes of the book concern themselves with Gary's awkward first steps forging a career as a writer, his own marriage and his cursory involvement with the new stage tribute The Play What I Wrote. The harsh but honest truth is: we don't care.
When he starts talking about his dalliances in the hotel trade, name-drops that he once met Bruce Forsyth in a lift (and he said something only mildly amusing) or mentions the money he made in the London property boom, you yearn for Eric's irreverent spirit to leap in and puncture the turgid self-centred narrative. That's the Eric we knew.
Self-centred is certainly not a term you could use to describe Eric himself. He sporadically kept a "previously unseen" diary, which the sleeve notes proudly boast of. In truth, the published extracts amount to maybe half a dozen paragraphs, and those concern themselves more with the progress of his beloved Luton Town or the size of the second house at Yarmouth than they are with any navel-gazing that may provide an insight into his soul.
Gary also adopts the supremely annoying style of referring to his father as EM. Not Eric, or Dad, but by anonymous initials that only serve to distance the reader from the subject.
Yet despite it's many flaws, the book - which does contain some intimate family pictures and a comprehensive episode guide to the Morecambe and Wise shows - does piece together an image of Eric Morecambe.
And it's an image of nothing other than good-natured, level-headed and all-round decent bloke. Admirable qualities for everyone, but hardlythe stuff of racy biography.
Steve Bennett
September 15, 2003
Published: 22 Sep 2006
