Copyright

      Fourth Estate

      A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.haprercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain in 1998 by Fourth Estate Limited

      This edition published in 1999

      Copyright © Graham McCann 1998

      The right of Graham McCann to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

      Source ISBN: 9781857029116

      Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2015 ISBN: 9780008187552

      Version: 2016-05-05

Dedication

       To John Ammonds

       Great comedy, great wit, makes the ceiling fly off, and suddenly liberates us again as we were when we were much younger and saw no reason not to believe that we could fly, or become someone else, or bound on a trampoline and not come down.

      PENELOPE GILLIAT

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PROLOGUE

PART ONE: MUSIC-HALL

I Northern Songs and Dances

II Morecambe before Wise

III Wise before Morecambe

IV Double Act, Single Vision

PART TWO: TELEVISION

V A Box in the Corner

       VI Running Wild

       VII A Brand New Bright Tomorrow?

       VIII Two of a Kind

       PART THREE: MOVIES

       IX American Visions

       X The Intelligence Men

       XI That Riviera Touch

       XII The Magnificent Two

       PART FOUR: A NATIONAL INSTITUTION

       XIII The Show of the Week

       XIV Mass Entertainment

       XV Get Out of That

       XVI Loose Ends

       EPILOGUE

       Keep Reading

       Acknowledgements

       List of Performances: Radio, Television, Movies and Records

       Notes

       Bibliography

       Index

       About the Author

       About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

      Television has shaped us – you can blame it for ‘abbreviated attention span’ and a failure to believe in realities; or you