Continued....

Were you nervous at that first meeting?
No not really. I had been with Doddy for 15 years and worked with the big stars, so it didn’t really effect me.

Were you looking for something, something that you could maybe use during the meeting?
Well I’m a writer so I’m always looking for things all the time, and watching and listening. What I see and what I hear is what I write about. Once something comes into my imagination, one thing triggers off another.

It must have been a big difference writing for them rather than Ken Dodd.
It wasn’t really. You would have thought so on the face of it but it was something natural, something that was fated to happen.

Did you see it as a gamble moving to Morecambe & Wise?
No. I never thought of it that way. I was there with these two men in Bill Cotton’s office and I saw what was missing; it was warmth.

There was a big difference in the way you wrote for them compared to Hills & Green.
They did ask me about that and I agreed. What was missing was the genuine and honest affection that they had for one another, but we never saw this on television. I wanted to bring that out.

Were you worried at all that you were going to change what was then a successful format?
Yes. The outcome of that meeting was for me to go away and write something that I thought was right for Eric and Ernie. I did say to them at the time that it wouldn’t be like anything they’ve done before. It would be the way I see them.

I went home and I had to be back there in seven days time with something. That was probably the most frantic weeks writing I have ever done in my life.
I went back the following week with what must have been twenty foolscap pages. It was the complete show the way that I saw it.
There was an opening, a couple of quickies, and a sketch that took place in the flat.
They read it, and they laughed, and they got to the end and said they couldn’t do it.

Why?
Well they said they hadn’t done anything like it before, they had never worked like that before or used words like that before.

Bill cotton said he thought they were wrong, but I kept quiet – you don’t argue with the comedians. Bill said let’s give it a try on BBC2; there’s only about 37 people watching BBC2 so it wouldn’t do any harm.
They did it on BBC2 and we all know what happened after that.

NEXT MONTH:
Next month we continue the series with Eddie talking about that first show, comedy pauses and Ern's contribution to the act.