Morecambe and Wise (Text Only). Graham McCann

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СКАЧАТЬ principal stage outfit in those days consisted of a black bowler hat with the brim cut off, a cut-down dinner jacket with a white carnation pinned to the left lapel, a white wing-collar shirt, a black bow tie, thin black-and-grey-striped trousers and little red clogs. His other occasional, more flamboyant, costumes included what might best be described as a kind of plaid Charlie Chaplin – complete with false moustache – and, made out of what looked suspiciously like the very same material, a most eye-catching little number that flared out wildly at the shoulders and thighs to form an elaborate butterfly shape. The songs that father and son sang together included ‘It Happened on the Beach at Bah Bali’ and ‘Walking in a Winter Wonderland’, while Ernie’s solo repertoire included ‘I’m Knee Deep in Daisies’ and ‘Let’s Have a Tiddly at the Milk Bar’:

       Let’s have a tiddly at the Milk Bar.

       Let’s make a night of it tonight.

       Let’s have a tiddly at the Milk Bar.

       Let’s paint the town a lovely white.

       You buy a half pint, I’ll buy a half pint.

       We’ll try to drink a pint somehow.

       Let’s have a tiddly at the Milk Bar.

       And drink to the dear old cow.¹⁶

      The act was usually broken up into two single spots and a double: Harry would come on first and perform an abbreviated version of his old routine, then Ernie would appear and perform his own solo routine (lasting five or six minutes) and then, for the second half of the show, father would join son for a double-act.

      One reason for the distinctive appeal of Carson and Kid (or, as they were sometimes billed, ‘Bert Carson and his Little Wonder’ or, in honour of the local distillery, ‘The Two Tetleys’) was the incongruity of a boy of seven or eight taking part in cross-talk of an ‘adult’ nature. One joke, for example, had Ernie announce, ‘There were two fellahs passing by a pub, and one said to the other as he saw a trickle of water coming from under the door, “What’s that? White Horse?” “No,” said the man bending down to taste it. “Fox terrier.’”¹⁷ A second reason for their popularity may have been their readiness to mix light comedy with the occasional detour into maudlin music-hall territory. One successful routine, ‘Little Pal’, had Harry blacked-up to resemble Al Jolson and Ernie sitting on his knee; Harry would sing:

       Little pal, if daddy goes away.

       If some day you should be

       On a new daddy’s knee

       Don’t forget about me, little pal.

      Ernie, looking up plaintively at his father, replied:

       If some day I should be

       On a new daddy’s knee

       Don’t forget about me, little pal.¹⁸

      To audiences with relatively fresh memories of the loss and disruption that accompanied, and followed, the 1914—18 war, such an unashamedly manipulative exercise in sentimentality went down very well indeed.

      Carson and Kid usually had at least three engagements every week – once on a Saturday evening, once at Sunday lunchtime and once on Sunday evening – which amounted to fees totalling £3 10s., doubling the family income at a stroke. If, as Ernie later claimed,¹⁹ his parents expected him to grow up to join his father on the railways – first as a fireman, later as a driver – the success of his sudden entry into showbusiness, even if it was only at the humble level of the local working men’s club circuit, appears to have prompted them to start having second thoughts. The extra income, of course, was extremely welcome, but there was more to it than that: Ernie was clearly enjoying the experience, and, as Harry could testify, he was getting to be very good at it. ‘I loved it,’ he would remember. ‘I had found my purpose in life.’²⁰ There was none of the ambivalence exhibited by Eric Bartholomew in Ernie Wiseman’s attitude to showbusiness: ‘There is this incredible need to perform in front of people and I’ve had it since I was six years of age. This isn’t a job – it’s a way of life.’²¹

      What the young Ernie Wiseman did have in common – unwittingly – with the young Eric Bartholomew, however, was an increasingly undistinguished school record. His nascent performing career was beginning to take its toll. The exciting but energy-sapping routine of Sunday evening shows followed by an often frenzied rush to catch the last bus home and then, a few hours later, the demoralising straggle to shake off the sleep and set off for school (two miles away in Thorpe) on Monday morning proved a punishing schedule. Ernie, predictably, started falling asleep during lessons. This resulted in a stern letter being sent to the Wisemans by the Leeds education authority, pointing out that exploiting juveniles was against the law and would have to stop immediately. Although the Wisemans were genuinely concerned about their son’s schoolwork, they knew that they could not do without the money he was helping to bring in, and they also appreciated the fact that he was by now in no mood to abandon the act. A not entirely satisfactory short-term solution was found: ‘We played a game of cat and mouse: if the authorities spotted us in Leeds we moved our activities to Wakefield and if, after a while, they rambled us in Wakefield we slipped quietly back to Leeds and Bradford. I’m sure in the end they turned a blind eye.’²²

      The reputation of Bert Carson and His Little Wonder – as they had come to style themselves – continued to spread across the West Riding region, and the bookings began to multiply. In 1936, at the age of eleven, Ernie had the chance of securing what he would later describe as his ‘first real launch into mainstream performing’.²³ The local paper, the Bradford Telegraph and Argus, organised an annual week-long charity event at the Alhambra Theatre that went under what now seems the improbable name of the ‘Nignog Revue’. During the year, children who had joined the club could take part in a variety of Nignog activities, such as talent competitions and the local ‘pies and peas’. Ernie soon became a ‘devoted’ – that word again – member, and he found in the Revue’s organiser, a certain Mr Timperley, a man ‘absolutely devoted’ to producing first-rate children’s entertainment.²⁴ During the next two years Ernie played an important part in all of the Revues, and his self-confidence – which had never, in truth, seemed egregiously undernourished – grew immeasurably as a consequence of appearing on the stage of a great music-hall in front of two thousand people.

      Not everyone, however, was impressed by his success. His school, by this time, was East Ardsley Secondary School, a large, dark, Victorian building which Ernie had come to hate the sight of. He was never, he admitted, a model pupil – describing himself as ‘just plain dumb’.²⁵ He also found that his considerable reputation as a local performer only served to provoke some of his more mean-spirited teachers – and, indeed, some of his fellow pupils – to further acts of cruelty as he was routinely punished and humiliated for allowing his schoolwork to suffer. ‘Come up here, tap-dancer,’ one particularly malicious teacher would shout regularly at Ernie, his darkly sarcastic tone making the word ‘tap-dancer’ sound like quite the worst thing that a young Yorkshire boy could possibly be associated with, and then, on some pretext or other, the teacher would either smack him in front of the class or send him off to be caned. ‘Whatever he hoped to achieve by such public ridicule I do not know,’ Ernie would write, ‘but its effect was to turn me against the school and all it stood for and to alienate me from my classmates.’²⁶

      Such treatment, understandably, only served to strengthen his resolve to pursue a career of some kind in showbusiness. On the stage, dressed up in a costume, Ernie Wiseman felt different, more important, more sure СКАЧАТЬ