Sitting down with Jonty Stephens and Ian Ashpitel to talk about their show Eric and Ern which comes to the Lowry next week is a slightly un-nerving experience.
Having spent the last 13 years studying, analysing and perfecting one of the greatest comedy double acts of all time, you expect them to be good. But in the flesh it’s uncanny. If you didn’t know better you’d swear that Morecambe and Wise were next to you on the sofa.
It’s an experience which has delighted thousands of theatregoers since the pair first took a fledgling show to the Edinburgh Festival and attracted rave reviews.
“When we first set out doing this we said ‘we’re putting our heads above the parapet, we’d better be good,” said Ian, the Ernie to Jonty’s Eric. “It is a great responsibility and one we never have taken lightly.”
Morecambe and Wise were - and as the show Eric and Ern demonstrates still are - a national institution. Their blend of slapstick, quickfire wordplay and occasional silliness was unique. Their TV shows, particularly their Christmas specials are the thing of legend, attracting between 15 and 20 million viewers on Christmas Day.
For Jonty and Ian what began as a quick sketch to entertain fellow performers following a charity golf day has taken over their lives.
“I did a passable Eric,” said Jonty, “but I needed an Ernie to help do a sketch at the end of a Stage golfing society charity day. When I saw Ian at the bar in shorts with his short, fat, hairy legs I knew he was the man.
“That sketch proved to be the beginning of this amazing journey which we’re still on.”
Encouraged to develop the idea, Jonty and Ian worked for a year on the play Eric and Little Ern which they took to Edinburgh. Set in the last days of Ernie’s life the comedian is looking back on his achievements when he’s visited by his doctor who turns out to be Eric Morecambe.
“It was quite a poignant show,” said Ian, “but when we performed it at Edinburgh everything sort of exploded. We had five-star reviews and people were clamouring to see it.”
In bringing two such beloved performers back to the stage to such a great reception, Jonty and Ian knew they were on to something.
“The thing to remember is we’re not comedians, we’re actors,” said Ian. “We’re actors portraying comedians and for us this is an acting job. To play Eric and Ernie and for people to believe in you, that’s one thing. But then to get them laughing is another thing all together. That laughter is a drug as well, it’s a remarkable feeling.”
Jonty and Ian met at drama school and have been best friends ever since.
“We’d work independently as actors for 30 years before we started with Eric and Ernie,” said Jonty.
Hundreds of hours of research have gone into honing the show which the pair are currently touring, featuring many of Morecambe and Wise’s best loved routines.
“Like anyone who had seen their TV shows we sort of knew them as performers,” said Ian. “But we wanted to know what they were like as people too. We talked to people who worked with them, we listened to fans' tales of meeting them. We also watched a live recording of a show they did at the Hackney Empire which showed them working an audience.”
“They were perfect for each other,” said Jonty. “You couldn’t have had one without the other. We all know how good Eric was, he was a comedy genius, but he needed Ernie.”
“It’s not until you play Ernie that you realise how good he was,” said Ian. “The way he set things up, he was the perfect foil.”
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the success of Eric and Ern is that it continues to attract new audiences - bear in mind Morecambe and Wise were arguably at their peak 50 years ago.
“When we first started to do this some people would say that a Morecambe and Wise audiences was dying out,” said Jonty. “But that’s the great thing. We are introducing younger people to this classic, timeless comedy.
“Don’t forget, we were kids when we watched it and we laughed. We gets kids coming now who have never seen this kind of double act and they absolutely love it.”
The show does bring with it a sense of nostalgia for many audience members
Jonty said: “We’re taking them on an emotional journey; they remember sitting around the television with their mum and dad, their grandparents watching the same thing and laughing at the same thing. You’d go into school and we’d talk about it as kids and parents would go into work and talk about the same thing. It was that shared experience.”
Jonty and Ian have had the blessing of the families of both Eric and Ernie although the show almost never got off the ground.
“Eric’s son Gary came to see the show in Edinburgh, and I’m pretty sure he was going to shut us down,” said Jonty. “For whatever reason we hadn’t been able to talk to the families before we put on the show.
“But he saw it and at the end two girls stopped us to say they had never heard of Morecambe of Wise before but they thought it was the best thing they’d seen at the festival.
“Gary was behind them and said ‘I bet you paid them to say that’. He then said that watching the show took him back to being a 12-year-old boy in a tweed jacket watching his dad and Uncle Ern on stage. We knew then we’d be OK to carry on.
“Like Eric and Ern, it wouldn’t work doing it with anyone else, ” said Ian. “We’re just delighted that there is still such an appetite for Morecambe and Wise.”
Eric and Ern is at the Lowry, Salford, from Tuesday, March 24 to Saturday, March 28. Details from www.thelowry.com
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