Eric Morecambe

Victoria Wood to star in Morecambe and Wise film

Comedians Victoria Wood and Vic Reeves have signed up to star in a feature-length film about the comic duo Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise.

"Huh, huh, huh, huh," is the first thing you hear, the unmistakeable laugh of Tommy Cooper, comedian, magician, a man so funny that you just had to see him to start laughing. Eric Morecambe wouldn't go on the stage after him, says Barry Cryer, one of the many stars who line up here to remember a unique giant of light entertainment. He died in 1984 but memories of him are still vivid. His humour wasn't in the joke, says producer Royston Mayoh, but the delivery of it, and it lives on today through the internet. Sean Lock, comedian, presents.

I'm Rimsky-Korsakov. I've got a brother at home - he's got a cold on his chest. We call him Nasty-Chestikov. Boom-boom. My girlfriend used to be in a circus. She chewed hammers. Was she professional? No, hammer-chewer.

Shall I stop now? In the early 1950s a comedy new wave was breaking on the shores of the Light Programme. Spike Milligan and Michael Bentine were breaking all the rules in Crazy People, later The Goon Show, while the improvised In All Directions featured Peters Ustinov and Jones in a Beckettesque road movie, driving round in a perpetual search for Copthorne Avenue.

But some of the emerging talent cleaved to more traditional comic values, as evidenced in my intro. Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise's idols were Abbott and Costello and the Marx Brothers, and it showed in their rat-a-tat routines. Apart from playing the perfect straight man, Wise took it upon himself to be the duo's archivist, and he recorded a stack of material which lay in suitcases in his garage for decades. "I don't think he ever played them back," his widow, Doreen, told Jon Culshaw in Morecambe and Wise: The Garage Tapes. "He just knew he should keep them." A wise decision, given the BBC's historic penchant for wiping stuff.

The elements we know and love from the TV shows are all there: the bad playlets, the song and dance routines, the guest stars ripe for mickey-taking, though not the stellar names of later shows. Then, it was the likes of Jack Jackson, Brylcreemed trumpeter and Housewives' Choice disc-spinner, or Brian Rees, star of The Adventures of PC 49 ("surely you remember his catchphrase 'Oh, my Sunday helmet!' "). It feels like aeons ago, not just half a century.

When the pair first tried to break into TV, in 1954, it was a disaster. For the rest of his career Eric carried round the Express review: "Is that a television I see in the corner of my living room? No, it's the box the BBC buried Morecambe and Wise in last night."

Review: Morecambe and Wise The Garage Tapes

Much of the material that Jon Culshaw played in Morecambe and Wise: the Garage Tapes provided ample evidence for an opinion I have held for years - namely, that Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise were of their time because they just weren't very funny.

Victoria Wood set for Morecambe and Wise drama

Comedian and actress Victoria Wood is to star in a TV drama about the early years of Morecambe and Wise, playing Eric Morecambe's mother.

My reviewer's DVD of the first of Channel 4's enterprising Comedy Roast was incomplete. It lacked a title sequence and, at the end, a caption read "CRAWLER CREDITS". But there were no crawlers to credit. Perhaps for the first time on British television the showbiz mafia came not to praise but to bury one of its godfathers. Still, as with the best man's speech, the tone is hard to get right. On The Larry Sanders Show the fictional chat show host was rendered suicidal by his friends' merciless "tributes". You don't want that. But you do want some of the barbs to hurt.

Bruce Forsyth's age was a subject of jokes back in his 1970s heyday and, even though, at 82, they are rather more acute now, they are still more affectionate than cruel. Jimmy Carr, the show's MC, led the way with them - Brucie was the first in his community to walk upright and use tools etc - but it was Jonathan Ross who took on Forsyth's real vulnerability: his marital record. Doing a passable Brucie impression, Ross mimicked him saying "I've told my wife we are working late, so we have ten minutes for a quickie, Anthea." Anthea Redfern, The Generation Game's lovely hostess, was to become, younger viewers may not know, the second, but not last, Mrs F.

He was not thanked for his efforts, even though Wilnelia Forsyth, herself, pointedly mentioned her husband's three wives. It was a deadly reminder of how lonely it is when you fall from favour as Ross, following the Andrew Sachs debacle, clearly has. Sean Lock was surprised Ross had turned up in person "because normally if you want to insult an elderly national treasure, you do it on the phone". That was good but it was Forsyth himself who did most damage. Eric Morecambe would have ripped into Ross ("I am sure he would," said Ross glumly). Ross was "all washed up and not even 50"£. The Ross-hating press has been accused of hyping Forsyth's attack but I think Ross had got to him, and for that he should be congratulated. A well-concealed side of Forsyth was briefly exposed.

Liverpool flashmob in memory of Eric Morecambe

Eric Morecambe fans showed their love for the comedian - by forming a flashmob in his honour.

Growing up with a comic legend

Gary Morecambe has spent his life analysing his father, Eric Morecambe, whose death 25 years ago ended Britain's best-loved double act, Morecambe and Wise. Even now, Gary is no closer to knowing what made him tick.

How Eric Morecambe saved Ernie from an unwise break-up

They were one of the nation's most enduring comedy double-acts, their sketches tickling audiences for more than four decades and catapulting them from music halls to some of the highest audiences ever recorded on British television. But the emergence of a long-lost letter reveals that Morecambe and Wise almost broke up long before their TV debut.