The One With Glasses And The One With Short, Fat, Hairy Legs

Trying to find things to improve my mood has meant that I have spent much of today looking at favourite DVDs or things that I have recorded over the last week or so.  One of the things that I recorded was the programme on BBC1 last night hosted by Paul Merton.  In this programme Merton looked at what made Morecambe and Wise such comedic geniuses, and it included input from present-day comedians, as well as those who appeared with Eric and Ernie in their highly regarded Christmas shows, and Eddie Braben, the man who wrote the scripts for their finest shows.

I was feeling very sorry for myself this morning when I woke.  I didn't have much energy or enthusiasm, and getting out of bed was going to require a great deal of willpower.  I made some breakfast and sat down to watch the aforementioned programme.  While much of the one hour of the programme's duration was wasted in idle chatter, the excerpts of Eric and Ernie that were shown were some of their finest.  And best of all as far as I was concerned, they showed some of the session with Andre Previn, which I consider to have been their finest perfomance ever, starting with the wordplay on the name Privett/Preview/Previn and then on to Grieg's Piano Concerto being played as only Eric Morecambe could.

For a short period of time this morning, I was laughing out loud. The sheer joy of watching these two men perform together as only they could meant that for a period this morning, depression seemed far away.  I'm still not feeling on top of the world, but just sitting here thinking about Eric and Ernie has helped to keep me going today.

We are so lucky that many of their finest performances are still in the archives and that these archives can be raided every now and again to allow us another laugh or two.