BBC re-writes TV history in its favour by faking the Morecambe and Wise story

I just sat through the BBC TV drama Eric, Ernie & Me which re-wrote showbiz history by pretending the BBC made Morecambe & Wise famous on TV and writing-out their giant success on ITV before they joined the BBC.

Or, rather, re-joined the BBC…

The BBC had completely buggered Morecambe & Wise’s potential TV career with their first disastrous TV show Running Wild in 1954. One famous newspaper review read: “Definition of the week: TV set—the box in which they buried Morecambe and Wise.”

That quote was used in Eric, Ernie & Me as if it immediately preceded their 1968 TV series with the BBC – rather than being from 14 years before and a review of another BBC show.

ATV/ITV made them mega TV successes and household names with Two of a Kind (1961-1968, written by Sid Green & Dick Hills) and that TV success was ‘bought’ by the BBC who offered them much more money and then made their shows 1968-1977 (written by Eddie Braben). The BBC bought them because they were already ratings successes and they built on that.

Personally, I always thought M&W were funnier when written for by Sid & Dick at ATV/ITV.

Pretending the BBC started their TV success from ground zero is disgraceful bullshit bollocks.

Here they are in Sid & Dick’s classic Boom-Oo-Yata-Ta-Ta sketch on ATV/ITV in 1962, six years before they moved to the BBC.

Morecambe and Wise and the unjustly forgotten Sid and Dick

I was watching the Morecambe and Wise documentary Eric & Ernie – Behind the Scenes on BBC2 last night and, like most references to their successful TV career, there was virtually no mention of their long-running ATV series – the concentration was almost totally on their subsequent BBC series.

Much as Eddie Braben was a good scriptwriter on those later BBC series, I always thought their ATV series Two of a Kind (1961-1968) was funnier – written by the remarkably talented Sid Green and Dick Hills. It established catchphrases and and formats which continued in the later BBC series.

The ‘Boom Oo Yatta-Ta-Ta’ sketch was so successful at the time – it was as iconic as the later Monty Python ‘parrot’ sketch – that it even got released as a single in 1963.

The first series of Two of a Kind is being released on DVD on 31st March 2011.

And not before time.