Edinburgh Festival 2013: Eric and Little Ern, Gilded Balloon, review Ernie Wise is dozing in a hospital bed, a seriously unwell man. It's 1999, around the hour of his death. A white-coated doctor strolls in to check on him, surveys a clipboard, squints, reaches for his glasses, puts them on, presses them in a few times. Oh hang on, it's not a doctor, it's none other than his old pal Eric Morecambe - at least the spirit of him - but somehow larger than life and ready, willing and able to clown about, before enticing Little Ern off his sickbed and into a re-enactment of some of their finest showbiz moments. If you're going to reincarnate Morecambe and Wise, you'd better look like them, sound like them and convince as them or you're going to dishonour arguably the best-loved, most fondly-remembered double act of the post-war period. Against the odds, co-performers and co-devisers Jonty Stephens (Eric) and Ian Ashpitel (Ern) have got the duo's mannerisms down pat to such a winning extent that you go from wary reserve to misty-eyed reluctance to let them leave the stage skipping off to the sound of "Bring Me Sunshine." Some of the biographical snippets are woven in with little finesse, as the pair reminisce about early days. But when the gags - many of them courtesy of the estate of the late, great Eddie Braben, M&W's best scriptwriter - come thick and fast, the show creates such a constant glow of pleasure, its rudimentary nature is beside the point. You could watch this for hours. "It took me three goes to get it right," Eric, the eternal schoolboy, quips about the heart-attacks that finished him off. As this show reminds you, at their poignant best, this lovably odd couple managed to laugh in the face of the abyss.