John Ammonds Interview part 4

Feature from 2013

Continued…

“That Christmas show, 1971, was amazing. Even I can’t believe how we managed to get all the guests on the same show. We had Glenda Jackson doing the Ginger Rodgers dance routine, Shirley Bassey in army boots and Andre Previn, all in the same show. And I didn’t even get a BAFTA!”

That amount of work must have cost the BBC quite a lot of money, but back in those misty days of Saturday night family entertainment, the BBC, and Bill Cotton, trusted people to make shows. They didn’t interfere with lines of management and endless tick boxes. They gave them room to work and its no coincidence that period is known as the golden years of entertainment.

“By the way,” laughs Jon, “that sketch featured the most expensive orchestra I have ever used. I had to make it look like it was accompanying the Grieg piano concerto which meant having a few more musicians than we normally had for a Christmas show. The funny thing is they only played about 8 bars because he kept stopping them.”

“They had never seen the sketch until it went out, so when it was recorded that was the very first time they had seen Eric and Andre together. If you look closely at the violins when Eric grabs him by the lapels, they just can’t believe it.”

We wondered if there were any guest stars that John didn’t get, and without pausing, he takes us on another journey.

“I nearly got Richard Burton once. That would have been a classic. I spoke to his manager on the phone and told him we had this idea. It was going to be Hamlet. Richard would come on with that lovely voice and begin with ‘to be or not to be, that is the question.’ Eric would come up from behind the rampart with a white sheet on his head and his glasses over the top. He would start to shush him and Richard would look back. Eric would say; `Look, sorry to interrupt you. You’re doing very well and I can see how you got where you are. It’s terrific stuff. But… don’t loose confidence. The trouble is, I’ve got to hear you when you say string and arrows. That’s my queue you see. But I can’t hear you very well behind that wall. Have you got any more voice, can you say it a bit louder…`”

“It almost writes itself that. It would have been great if we could have got is wife at the time to play Ofielia. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, that would have been something. Unfortunately I lost him because I think he went to America.”

Another familiar guest on the BBC shows was Janet Webb. The rather well-proportioned lady who would come on at the end. Of course John has a story about that too.

“Janet Webb was all Eric’s idea.” He reveals. “One particular show stood out with her, I think it was one of the Christmas shows. We had this running gag of previous guests doing a quick piece to camera. Each would say the line; `I worked with Morecambe & Wise, and look where I am now.’ The camera would pull back to reveal different tags.”

“Fennela Fielding was a guard in a railway station, Ian Carmicheal was a newspaper seller, Eric Porter was a dustbin man and so on. In fact I very nearly got Shirley Bassey again. I wanted her to be a cleaner with a bucket and scrubbing brush. Sadly she had a bad cold and couldn’t make it. Andre Previn did it, he was a bus conductor.”

John now takes us on another thread and expands on the Andre Previn scene.

“Eric and Ernie were never at those filming sessions, and we did Andre’s piece at a bus depot near Hamersmith. He turned up with his little bus conductors uniform and cap; it’s ridiculous isn’t it! The conductor of the LSO in a bus conductor’s uniform!”

“We’d hired this bus for the shot and he had done one take. He had to stand on the platform at the back of the bus, say the line, ring the bell and the bus drives off for the reveal. We got him back and I said for the next take when the bus drives off, can you pretend to conduct an orchestra with your right hand. He did this of course and it was brilliant. I bet the LSO were collapsing with laughter when they saw that.”

Back to Janet Webb, and the running gaga.

“The idea was we would do all of these things and at the end we’d have Janet who would be the tag. We hired a white open Rolls Royce and set up outside a large National Trust place. Broad sweeping steps, imposing front to the building etc.”

“Janet delivered the line in close up, like the other guests, and then we cut wide to reveal the Rolls, chauffeur and the house. She got out of the car, wrapped in furs, with two small dogs and walked off up the steps into the house. We then crashed in with the credits.”

“Because she died so young, a couple of years after we did that, I don’t think it has ever been repeated, which is a shame really, it was very funny. I think it was the best finish to any of the shows we did, and one of my ideas too.”

John was rewarded with an MBE in 1975, which triggers another light-hearted anecdote.

“Ernie, who probably didn’t get the newspaper that prints the full list, didn’t know. He didn’t believe me so he rang up the BBC himself and was told it was true. I presume it was for services to television, but they didn’t tell me.”

At the height of the Morecambe and Wise shows, John made the difficult decision to leave the show. It wasn’t for professional reasons, and John’s tone lowers a little as he explains.

“I had done six years and I think it was getting more difficult. My wife, who has MS was getting worse and the strain was beginning to tell on me. I think they all understood when I told them. It was a busy schedule doing 13 shows plus the Christmas special. That was the prime reason and frankly I thought I’d done as much I could do on the show.”

He still continued to work, but on shows with less of a hectic schedule and less pressure. He worked with Mike Yarwood and Dick Emery, and taking over his duties with Eric and Ernie was Earnest Maxim. Earnest worked with John on the shows, producing the lavish dance sequences, so he was the ideal choice.

“I never called it choreography,” he says, “because Eric and Ernie only had one step and they could do it fast or slow. Eric used to ask me to tell Earnest not to give them dance numbers because he thought they couldn’t dance.”

“I don’t regret leaving when I did because we’d done a hell of a lot of good stuff.”

Eric and Ernie eventually moved to Thames television in 1978 and their relationship with John had not yet run its course. After a few shows Eric had requested John to come back to produce and direct.

“I told him I’d love to come back, and remember there were only half hour shows at Thames. They were also spaced out better. The same day I went over to see him for a cup of tea and to discuss it. I told him I’d come back, but I hadn’t changed, and if I saw something that wasn’t funny then I’d tell them. That’s what he wanted, he said he needed someone to check him. Even the very best need checking sometimes, just to pull them back from time to time if something isn’t quite right.”

The Thames shows were different though, from a production point of view. The flow was broken up with adverts and the shorter format sometimes didn’t produce the best material.

“At Thames, I never really got used to the half hour slots or the commercials coming in half way through.” John admits. “At the BBC we could plan the whole show down to the second, for the whole 45 minutes. Also working at Thames we didn’t have access to the same calibre of guest stars. At the BBC we had all the BBC1 stars and of course all the BBC2 stars too.”

The Thames shows often re-worked old routines or just simply re-created them. Eddie Braben also didn’t move across to Thames initially, creating a huge writing black that had to be filled.

“Now I don’t know how we managed without Eddie. When you approach other writers, even good ones, they found it difficult to know what to write for Eric and Ernie. Even Eric used to get fed up of doing the same things. They’d be doing the same sketches they had done on the BBC years before, and were not doing anything significantly new to keep them at the top of the tree.”

Another problem was funding. John reveals that money available for guests stars was just available to degree it had been for the BBC.

“I told Eric there was no pint in ringing agents because for the money we were offering for a week, the stars could get much more doing a film or something. They wouldn’t rule themselves out of that by signing up for us in June, when something better could come along before Christmas.”

In 1983, John again made the decision to leave the show so he could concentrate on looking after his wife. He couldn’t keep away though, but he kept his work to short, half-hour shows. He admits he didn’t really know how he managed to keep going.

One of the most noted things he brought to Morecambe and Wise was the iconic dance at the end of the show. That came about after watching a Marx Brothers film.

“It was the Groucho dance, that’s what I called it. When I was working with Eric and Ern at the BBC, I think about 1971, and I went to rehearsal. I asked Eric if he’d seen Horse Feathers the previous night because he was a big fan of the Groucho Marx. He said he hadn’t, so I proceeded to tell him about a funny dance he’d done. I did this funny horn pipe thing around the rehearsal room and they both collapsed laughing. The following Sunday, after they sang Bring Me Sunshine, they put in this dance.”

At the time of our interview John had at last retired, but remembers with love, those days he, Eric and Ern ruled the entertainment world.

“I was very lucky to have worked with the boys for so long because I admire them intensely. They were consummate professionals and they worked so hard. Even on a bank holiday I would suggest we didn’t rehearse because we were well ahead, but they would have none of it. They said I could take the holiday, but they would still come in to rehearse. That would happen often, and they always came in to rehearse; I admired that.”

This interview was published as a tribute to John Ammonds who sadly passed away on February 13th 2013.


© morecambeandwise.com 2013