Eric Morecambe: 'Dad was just a big kid himself, really' Only rarely did Eric offer an assessment. After the famous André Previn edition of 1971, in which Eric attempts to play Grieg's Piano Concerto ("I'm playing all the right notes... but not necessarily in the right order"), he told the children, "It'll never get better than that." Previn, now 84, calls it the greatest moment of his career, and says he is still greeted by London cabbies asking: "Where to, Mr Preview?" Eric and Ernie Wise had first met as youthful unknowns in the early 1940s, working their passage through provincial variety theatres, moving into radio and arriving at BBC television in 1968, where they ended up being fortuitously teamed with scriptwriter Eddie Braben, whose material brought out the essence of their subversive but warm-hearted humour. The following year, Bill Cotton, the BBC's Head of Light Entertainment, asked them to do a Christmas special. It secured rave reviews and the season's top ratings on BBC and ITV, and remained a core part of the annual festivities. Nothing has come close to replacing it, nor, in the age of multi-channel entertainment, ever will. Like the Queen's message, the show took on a near-ritualistic quality that made it part of the fabric of Christmas. "Even now," says Gail, "people say to us, 'Christmas isn't Christmas without Morecambe and Wise." It's a lovely thought, but sad in a way because it's gone for ever. Only slowly are those who were happy simply to enjoy the shows starting to comprehend the scale of the achievement. "Morecambe & Wise," says Sir Kenneth Branagh, who directed a play about the pair in 2001, "hijacked the country's Christmas, but it was a beautiful bit of hijacking." Yet more than mere memories linger on. A tribute stage show, Eric and Little Ern, is currently playing in London's West End; the one-man show Morecambe returns to the stage next year; the BBC screened a lavish two-part documentary last month, as well as several programmes over Christmas; and new books and studies continue to be published. What explains the continuing appeal? "I think what made them special was the sincerity," says Gary. It wasn't just speaking lines, it was how they were. If you had told Dad that he could never perform again, or that he'd never get paid again for doing it, he would still have carried on. He'd have done it in the kitchen at home, or in his bedroom or somewhere. It was all he knew. He wasn't one of those performers who switched on and off, and was a different person away from an audience. Gail agrees: "I spent a lot of my teen years rolling my eyes because I desperately wanted to have a serious conversation with him, and I slowly realised that I wasn't going to get one. And even if it did sometimes happen, he always had to leave you with a smile on your face. He'd go out of the room, and then the glasses would appear round the door. People ask if he was a strict father, and he wasn't really, because, as Gary says, he was too much of a kid himself to be a disciplinarian, but there were certain things he was very demanding about, and one of those was the requirement for us not to look unhappy. Eric may have been no one's idea of the tyrant, but he was a stern traditionalist. His children were expected to show exemplary manners, to be properly dressed, and to value the privileges their father's success had brought them. Even at home, on days off, he would almost always wear a collar and tie, and no one was allowed to swear or show off in the Morecambe household. How, then, would Eric have felt about the crudity and exhibitionism that infests so much of modern comedy? "I think he would have had real trouble with it," sighs Gary. I mean, with the way TV has gone, generally. Not just the swearing, but the reality shows, the makeover shows, the whole package. He would have been gobsmacked, frankly, to see what's happened. "He saw comedy as a craft," adds Gail. I remember once watching something with him and the comic swore, and Dad kind of winced, and said: 'That's lazy comedy. His view was that if you had to swear, you hadn't crafted the sketch. You hadn't done your job. Central to everything Eric achieved was Joan, now 87, whom he married in 1952 and worshipped ever after. It was Joan, a former performer, who allowed Eric to fully embrace the funny-man role his nature had intended for him, running everything in the home, and doubling as his PA and secretary. "He put Mum on a pedestal," says Gail, "and that was really her emotional payback, because he'd say to her: 'Look, you do realise that I couldn't have done any of this without you."" On May 27 1984, Eric was performing at the Roses Theatre in Tewkesbury. After taking six curtain calls, he stepped backstage and collapsed with a heart attack - his third in 12 years - and, in the early hours of the following morning, died in hospital aged 58. It was the end of a unique era in British entertainment, although Gail and Gary suspect it would have ended soon afterwards even if their father had lived. "I'm certain he would have packed it in at 60," says Gary. There were so many other things he wanted to do with his life. He loved fishing, and there were always books he wanted to read. He didn't have much of an education, so when he was a young man he used to read on the train journeys between shows, and he was, actually, incredibly knowledgeable. Also, the business wasn't everything to him. He never took it too seriously. He'd say: 'It's just high-class rubbish, really."" 'Morecambe & Wise in Pieces: The Curtains" is on BBC Two tonight at 8pm; 'The Treasures of Morecambe & Wise: Bring Me Sunshine" by Gary Morecambe (Carlton Books) is available to order from Telegraph Books at £25.99 + £1.35 p&p.