After a break for national service, the act was reconstituted in 1947 and went through a number of changes before developing the format that made them stars. They started out by imitating comic routines from the films of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, with fake American accents and Eric in the role of the straight man. It was not until they reversed their roles that their ability to create characters out of the traditional roles of comedian and straight man began to bring them recognition.

A few radio engagements preceded their first attempt to break into the emerging television field. Their first television series, called Running Wild, was broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 1954 but was a short-lived failure. The Morecambe and Wise Show first appeared on ATV in 1961 and transferred to BBC 2 in 1968. Scripts were written by Sid Green and Dick Hills, who often appeared in small parts in the sketches. The series was briefly interrupted when Eric suffered a heart attack in 1969 but returned to renewed acclaim, with Eddie Braben as the new scriptwriter.

Their success led to several invitations to appear at Royal Command Performances, and they also made a number of guest appearances in the United States on The Ed Sullivan Show. Their three feature films, The Intelligence Men (1965), That Riviera Touch (1966), and The Magnificent Two (1967), were often funny but failed to achieve either the inspiration or the popular success of the television series.

The originality of their show stemmed ironically from its refusal to deny its theatrical origins. The two stars appeared on stage, introduced their guests (who often appeared with them in short comic sketches), ended the show with a song-and-dance number, and then returned for a curtain call. The jokes were usually old or dependent on excruciating puns and double entendres. Their impact came from the contrast between the apparent weakness of the material and the valiant efforts of the comedians to make it funny. The show provided the pleasures of familiarity amid the rapid social and cultural changes of the 1960s and 1970s; however, the familiar was always somehow skewed because of the performers’ evident desire to succeed in the contemporary world.

The comic personae of Morecambe and Wise also reflected this tension between the familiar and the modern. Their appearance was mined for recurring jokes about Eric’s horn-rimmed spectacles and Ernie’s alleged wig and “short fat hairy legs.” Gestures and catchphrases were also repeated, as when Eric expressed aggression by placing the flat of his hand under Ernie’s chin and challenging him to “get out of that.” Yet their relationship offered an unfamiliar twist on the conventional double act. Predictably, Ernie was the one with aspirations, in his case a desire to become a serious writer, while Eric was slow on the uptake, constantly exasperating his partner through his failure to understand or his refusal to take things seriously. However, Eric was also quite cunning and clearly had the ultimate authority, slyly deflating all pretensions.

Although there had been many double acts in the British music-hall tradition, they have been a rarity in British television, with only Peter Cook and Dudley Moore achieving a success at all comparable to Morecambe and Wise in a show, Not Only but Also..., clearly indebted to their predecessors. The blend of stand-up comedy and sketches in The Morecambe and Wise Show was probably influenced by the American Burns and Allen Show, which relied more heavily on situation comedy and may have in turn influenced the zanier and more fragmented comedy of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.

Eric died in 1984 and Ernie in 1999, but the pair continue to be fondly remembered. A tribute show, The Play What I Wrote, written by and starring Sean Foley and Hamish McColl and directed by Kenneth Branagh, opened in London’s West End in September 2001. It opened at the Lyceum Theatre in New York in March 2003.