You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone by Gary Morecambe Page A

to get to him.’ I pictured my father’s reaction to the situation being, ‘They
    were an angry mob who’d just seen my act!’ Patricia continued, ‘I walked up to him and he grabbed my arm and said to the others, “You haven’t met my wife, Patricia. The best catch of the season!” Later I started musing about what the future might hold. Eric looked at me and said in the voice of a weatherman, “Wet at night, warm and close, then later a little son!”
    ‘What my husband and Eric did back then was to hire a boat so they could do a day’s fishing and get away from the crowds. Apparently Eric was hilarious all the time. My husband tried to get the boat out and it drifted sideways and Eric teased, “Are you sure you know how to work this thing!”’
    Patricia also told me about Eric and Frank as kids. ‘They were both into wildlife, including frogs, newts and insects: anything to do with the outdoors. There was an Auntie Harriet on my husband’s side who the boys visited occasionally. She always wore a big hat with a large brim around it. Eric would say, “I like the brooch on your hat, Aunt Harriet.” And the ‘brooch’ would start running around the brim. It would be a small frog, or something. She’d shriek and catch it and Eric and Frank would run outside and down the street in hysterics.’
    Like Eric’s old school friend Betty Ford, Patricia would go to the Mickey Mouse Club. The dancing that would follow the Saturday morning film show Ifind a strange concept to get my head around when nowadays we have access to so many forms of entertainment. Patricia remembered Betty being a superb dancer, and Betty herself told me that when Eric returned to Morecambe in the early seventies and bumped into her, he was surprised to find she hadn’t left the area. ‘He thought I’d have gone on to have an amazing dancing career around the world,’ she says, ‘but it was teaching that interested me.’
    ‘When he was a boy, Eric used to go to the dance school in Queen Street with Betty,’ Patricia said. ‘The Co-op was down there, and the late, great actress Thora Hird, then a young girl, but a couple of years older than Eric, would be in the window in a kiosk “selling fags”, as she put it. Eric would come down the street on the way to the dance school, and Thora would shout out to him and ask him how the dance lessons were going. They never really had the chance to become friends, possibly because of the age difference, but they were both more than aware of the other and destined for the same profession.’
‘Eric was the star of the production—always. His tap dancing was brilliant.’
    Patricia remembered the dance school itself as being one floor in a building of floor upon floor. ‘In this dance school, Eric came on brilliantly because of Betty’s ability. That was a huge influence on him. Then Betty told me one day, “Guess what? Eric’s going to London, and he wants me to go with him!” I smiled and said, “You’d better be careful, then.” I mean, not many people went off to London like that back then. And Betty didn’t go with him, and Eric set off on what would become his career.
    ‘Betty and I reflected on those times years later. “Wasn’t that Eric Morecambe a laugh as a boy,” we’d say. And he was, because he would be so funny even when he was dancing with Betty at the Mickey Mouse Club.’
    Eventually, as part of a redevelopment plan, the Co-op and the Royalty Theatre came down, and they built an Arndale Centre in its place. Eric was askedto open it, which he did. ‘You should have seen the crowds,’ said Patricia. ‘Eric had to cut the ribbon with a giant pair of scissors, which was a funny sight straight off. Then he said,“This looks like a big house!”Then he pointed to the shining new escalators and said, “They’ve even got an escalator going to your bedroom!”’
    Nora Longfield is another former school and dance class friend of my father’s who still lives in