My interview with (the man playing) Eric Morecambe

Bring me sunshine

Bob Golding tells Richard T. Watson about playing a wife, a mother and an elephant in his one-man show, Morecambe

“When I say I’m doing a one-man play about Eric Morecambe the reaction is always the same; everyone smiles. It’s so warming. The love for the guy was huge,” explains Bob Golding, star of a play what Tim Whitnall wrote (to paraphrase Ernie Wise), ‘Morecambe’.

“The Edinburgh Festival is the hub of première work, and it’s become a lot about comedy”, he adds. “So where better to première a play about one of Britain’s best comedians?”

Eric Morecambe, says Golding, was and is a “hugely-respected member of the comic fraternity” and this show celebrating his life has already had previews where “the responses were so positive and so encouraging” that the show will now enjoy a month’s run at the Assembly Rooms.
“My respect and love for Eric and Ernie was massive before I came into the project,” he continues. “It’s the most amazing project. It’s not like a job; it’s been enjoyment”.

He’s aware of – but unfazed by – the pressures of playing such a well-loved figure. “ I don’t allow myself to think about the pressures of it, because I think you’ve just got to get on with it to your best ability”, he concludes. “Which is what I’m doing with this piece. I approach it like any other role”.

However, he adds: “People have compared me to Eric all my life. It’s not that I’ve thought ‘Oh, I must play Eric Morecambe’, it’s not something I’ve been working my life towards, it’s just something that’s been there, and now I’m making the most of it”.

What really comes across in our interview is how much of a loving tribute to Morecambe this show is. Golding tells me that he considers Morecambe a “comic genius”, adding, “I’m certainly not that, and I don’t know if I can replicate that onstage, but hopefully I can tell a story about the man who was”.

The show’s director Guy Masterson first noticed Golding’s likeness to Morecambe twelve years ago. Golding remembers, “He said, ‘You’re so similar to Eric, but you’re too young at the moment. Maybe in ten years’ time we’ll address it’”.

‘Morecambe’ has clearly been a long time in the making. Golding says that “the toughest part was what not to put in. People would see it and say, ’Oh, you didn’t do that’ and, ‘You didn’t do that enough’; there’s a wealth of knowledge of Eric’s life”.

Audiences will probably expect a brand of family-friendly comedy familiar from the ‘Morecambe & Wise’ TV shows, and that’s what they’ll get. So, it’s suitable for children? “Definitely. It’s a one-man show and it’s an hour and twenty-five minutes, so it’s whether or not they can sit still, really. But Eric of all people was guilty of that as well; that’s why his mother called him Jitter-arse. He had so much energy. That’s an important point to make: Eric was never ‘off.’ He was the eternal comedian, the eternal jester”.

The family-pleasing side of the role should come easily to Golding, who is the voice of Max and Milo in CBeebies’ ‘The Tweenies’, and PC Plod in Five’s ‘Noddy In Toyland’. “For a long time my daughters just assumed every father did some kind of TV voice. Their friends say, ‘Can you do Milo’s voice?’ and I do it, and then become a sort of priest, or celebrity. I’ve been very very lucky in that respect”.

But at the heart of Morecambe is love and respect, a celebration of the man voted Britain’s favourite 20th Century comedian. “I hope that by doing this piece we can tell a simple story about a simple man who touched millions of people”.

ThreeWeeks Weekly No. 3, 2009