A bald guy walks into a tattoo parlour and asks for two Rabbits on his forehead, the tattooist asks “why two Rabbits?” The guy says”because they look like hairs from a distance” The good thing about being bald is…..your friends can do 0’s & X’s on your forehead, and sometimes there’s room for two games😁
Yeah. In those days, Sid Green and Dick Hills wrote their scripts (with help from M & W - plus ad-libs thrown in during performance) but when they transferred to Auntie, Sid & Dick were busy elsewhere - so Eddie Braben was drafted in and CHANGED their DYNAMIC quite a bit. Opinions vary as to whether it was for better or worse - but the general feeling is that Eddie's style was more rounded, open and "cosy" - and doubtless contributed to the wider appeal the boys enjoyed in their "golden age".
Agreed. Also, while Sid and Dick's routines were more "spiky" - they occasionally tended towards BELITTLING Eric - being a tad cruel sometimes, with Eric being portrayed as a bit gormless. However, under Eddie's mellow stewardship, Eric became more dynamic - more alpha - and this benefitted the both of them. And us, the viewers. Of course, M & W originally based their style on Abbott & Costello - and Bud used to SLAP Lou. Unthinkable, with Morecombe and Wise.
I personally like Braben's humor. I've purchased all of the M&W DVDs that are out so far. Watched them backwards and forwards. I'm so amazed that essentially one person successfully wrote ("like what he could write") almost 10 years worth of shows!
Born in 1910, Jimmy was a music hall/variety comedian who was popular in radio days and the early days of TV. However, by the Sixties, his career was on the wane and he was by then old-fashioned compared to Eric and Ernie, who were around fifteen years younger. Thus the reference to Ernie's "ad-libbed" bald joke being one Wheeler had worked - meant Eric figured it was old hat!
I like both the atv and bbc series but the thames series that they did in the late 70's early 80's is not up to their usual stuff, erics timing had started to fade due to the heart attacks and you can tell that they both were not as passionate about it any more, especially eric
@dharmaseed - See my answer to an earlier comment (and thanks for clarifying the other commentator's question - they got the TIME wrong - but thanks to you, I now know what they meant).
@shoffspring - OKAY! I've GOT it now! After "demerara sugar" he says, "I'm not having any of that" - meaning not putting up with looking like his previous description of a wig-wearer!
@disparatedan Someone ELSE has now asked the same question - but it's at FOUR minutes 38. Eric says the words "wig, Ern" - then, like "...tea, Ern" he puts them together as "Wigan" - then adds "pier". It would have been a reference to the seaside venue they would have done, during the Summer Holidays. He adds something about it - but it was too sotto voce for ME to catch, either.
Wigan is not a seaside town and the original wooden pier where boats would have unloaded on the canal is long long gone but the general area is still called Wigan Pier. And it's also known from George Orwell's book The Road to Wigan Pier
Sid and Dick kept essentially to the 'comic/straight man' set up, whereas Eddie Braben made both the characters comical but in different ways, a very clever move in my opinion. Out of the two I always loved what Ernie Wise did, I love to watch him letting Ernie go, then bringing the routine back to format - I feel that Eric was the engine, but Ernie was the driver.
Interesting seeing this older sketch before BBC ones. The roles were reversed so much with Eric being the butt of the hair jokes. However, it seems that only Eric could do this particular part instead of Ernie. Seems more appropriate in my opinion. Eric looks cute with that long moustache :)
Well I'm very old and grew UP watching the ATV shows, so I SHOULD be prejudiced. However, Sid & Dick's writing could occasionally be quite CRUEL to Eric's "personna" - thus I found Braben's style easier to take. And I too am amazed at the quantity AND QUALITY of output from Auntie's one- or two-writer comedies. In America, they only write the plot. It takes twenty gag-writers to do the script. Of course, most of their series run 24 eps a year, as opposed to Aunties' 6,7 or 12 - but even so...
