Eric Morecambe

Miranda Hart: I'm proud to be a middle-class comidienne

Comic Miranda Hart kept her ambition to be the "next Eric Morecambe" a secret from her parents for 20 years, she revealed yesterday.

If you have never seen Monty Python's parrot sketch, or are unfamiliar with Eric Morecambe's demolition of "Andrew Preview" ("I am playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order"), then this is for you. Ronnie Corbett's Comedy Britain is a handy primer for anyone who needs to work on their history of British comedy. For everyone else, it's an easy-going, if sometimes uncomfortably loose, hour of very familiar comedians talking about comedy. As Corbett is beloved of the new wave of Brit-coms - he had cameos in Extras, where he snorted cocaine from a toilet seat, and Little Britain, where he was confronted by the grotesque Bubbles DeVere - his pals are modish. So he has an odd little interlude with Miranda Hart, whom he accompanies to the Fairfield Halls in Croydon, spiritual home of Hart's beloved Morecambe and Wise. Then Corbett has lunch with Stephen Merchant, a picnic on a punt with David Mitchell and afternoon tea with John Cleese. And with Matt Lucas he tries to be Vicky Pollard, and is terrible.

He's a great stand-up and I love his sitcom, Not Going Out. So my expectations were already ridiculously high for Lee Mack's new talk show, Lee Mack's All Star Cast which made its debut on BBC 1, Friday night. I wasn't disappointed.

Despite the fact that it was all fairly shambolic and chaotic - like it had been shot and edited on a shoestring budget for Channel 5 - the strength of Lee Mack's character and his sharp Northern wit kept it entertaining and fast paced from beginning to end.

During the show guests Frank Skinner and Fern Britton were invited to guess who various audience members were supposed to look like and choose their most embarrassing stories - all very Graham Norton, though somehow much more engaging. Lee Mack was also great in his ability to take the piss out of his guests without them taking umbrage.

But without doubt the best bit of the show was the sketch which saw Mack in his bed sit trying to get Tess Daly to ditch her hubbie 'Peter Kay' and sleep with him while being serenaded by James Blunt taking off his monster hit, You're Beautiful.

It was all reminiscent of Eric Morecambe at his best (indeed there was an Eric Morecambe poster on the door of the bed sit). And Tess Daly's acting skills were a revelation. She could have found it all rather embarrassing but really went along with it.

Looking forward to the next one, though I hope they manage to sort out the editing!

Lee Mack has a new stand-up DVD out but this older show from 2006 is much better - a breathlessly funny bundle of razor-sharp one-liners and tall stories that harks back to the cheery old days of Eric Morecambe yet still feels bang up to date. Filmed at London's Bloomsbury Theatre.

Eric & Ernie: A minute with Jim Moir

Jim Moir, aka Vic Reeves, plays George Bartholomew, father of Eric Morecambe, in Eric & Ernie.

You can warm your hands on the waves of affection that waft from writer Peter Bowker's funny, sweet-natured look at the early years of our most beloved comic partnership, Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise.

We follow the duo just before they hit the really big time, from their first meeting when they were both child stars on the same bill, through the days touring grotty clubs and music halls, right up to their first, disastrous television appearance: "Northern comedy just doesn't play on television," says a snitty BBC exec, before forcing the lads into a series of lame, generic TV sketches.

The evolution of the surreally brilliant act that was to make them adored is nicely done, thanks to Bowker's light touch and to a smashing cast, particularly comedian Daniel Rigby as the genial, uncomplaining but sharp-witted Morecambe, who manages both to look and sound like Eric without resorting to caricature. Bryan Dick is grafter Ernie, whose forbearance is frequently tested by his partner.

It's more than a quarter of a century since Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise's double act was stopped in its tracks by Morecambe's untimely death - which, in the world of showbiz, is certainly enough time to be forgotten, usurped or found to be desperately unfashionable by a new generation of viewers and performers. But the pair retain enough comic sparkle to put most of their successors in the shade.

Eric and Ernie is a biopic that follows the pair from their beginnings on Jack Hylton's youth theatre circuit up until the brink of TV success in the 1950s. Written by Peter Bowker, and starring Bryan Dick as Ernie Wise, Daniel Rigby as Eric Morecambe and Victoria Wood as Morecambe's ambitious, plain-talking mother Sadie, it's a wonderful piece of drama: warm-hearted, clever, beautifully acted and funny enough to make your cheeks ache.

Eric and Ernie: Victoria Wood's Morecambe & Wise biopic

Eric Morecambe kept one review in his wallet for decades to remind him of where the duo had come from. It suggested the definition of TV as "the box in which they buried Morecambe and Wise". The clipping was still in his wallet when he died.

Gary Morecambe: Ant and Dec 'are new Eric and Ern'

Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly have been hailed a modern-day Morecambe and Wise - by Eric Morecambe's son.

Victoria Wood: Why Eric & Ernie STILL bring me sunshine

Victoria Wood first thought ten years ago of ­telling the story of Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise before they were famous.