The Late Great Eric Sykes

Writer, performer, director, actor -

Eric Sykes was a unique talent in the world of British comedy.

He was one of the very few people I have ever worked with

who I would honestly say had a touch of genius.

LAUGHTER

What did you do that for?

It was looking at me.

LAUGHTER

People who could make US laugh were our, kind of, role models.

Eric was one of those.

We all used to say

if we didn't laugh 18 hours, maybe we'd had a bad day.

-Can I get going now?

-Oh, bread.

LAUGHTER

Anyone could tune in and believe in this person

and say, "Where is this person going to take me?"

Oh, I dropped it.

He was a terrific, naturalistic actor.

I think Eric Sykes was the perfect common man.

If you don't mind, we'll...

LAUGHTER

It wasn't necessarily all belly laughs,

you'd just go, "Oh, you're mad, you're brilliant, I love you."

Hello, viewers.

LAUGHTER

NEWSREADER: 'The actor and comedian Eric Sykes has died

'after a short illness at the age of 89.

'For half a century, his career spanned stage, film and television.'

For 50 years,

Eric Sykes worked at his office in Orme Court, West London.

It was here that he created and wrote iconic comedy shows

and worked alongside some of the greatest names

in the world of entertainment.

Sykes was in here, on the left,

and Ray Galton and Alan Simpson were in here.

And this is Eric's office.

This is Tommy's fez.

They were very friendly, Tommy and Eric.

We've had our ups and downs.

Well, you have to on a ship, sir.

LAUGHTER

Eric's favourite of all time, Laurel and Hardy.

This is his desk. Eric wrote for Frankie Howerd.

'You've got no idea. You have no idea.

'Well you can't have, I haven't told you yet.'

And that's a lovely picture of Hattie and Eric.

-Hello, Hat.

-Cooee!

CUCKOO CLOCK

Hello, clock. LAUGHTER

He'd love a cigar, but he kept the boxes, so he could go and open them

and have a smell every now and again because he couldn't smoke any more.

When he was ill,

probably about three or four days before he died,

he said, "You know what I'd really like more than anything

"is just to come back to Orme Court just one more time."

This is the photograph of his mother

and his desk was positioned right in a line with her.

He loved the fact that she was there with him all the time.

Born in Oldham in 1923,

the beginning of Sykes's life was marked by tragedy.

His mother died giving birth to him,

an event that would come to shape the rest of his life.

ERIC: Nobody ever really talked about my mother.

She was a bit of a taboo subject at home.

Was there a sense in which you were blamed or felt guilty?

In a way, yes. In a way.

And there were times when I felt almost like a lodger in my own house.

He was absolutely certain that she both guided him

and guarded him,

and he always said she was looking after him.

In 1941, Sykes left Oldham to join the forces.

It was here that he would meet Leading Aircraftman Denis Norden

and take his first step into the world of entertainment.

We were both training to be wireless operators

and, in fact, for the rest of our days

whenever we met, we would address each other in Morse code.

It was decided that what the troops needed at that point -

it was about six weeks after D-Day - was some entertainment.

When the war finished, Bill Fraser, you know THE Bill Fraser,

Bill Fraser and Snudge, marvellous man, formed a concert party

which was written by Ron Rich, who is now a vicar, and Denis Norden.

And I don't know what happened to Denis but...

I remember the first person to audition

was an RAF regiment sergeant who chewed razor blades as his offering.

Then second, up comes Eric, who, actually,

as his audition piece did a drunk act.

Not very well, it wasn't his native kind of comedy.

Despite this shaky start, Sykes had passed the audition

and joined the revue.

Eric didn't look like a comedian.

He had a diffident way of expressing himself,

he didn't come on with the big personality thing

like most of the comedians of the variety school did in those days,

and it was evident then that Eric was pure gold.

At the end of the war, Sykes was demobbed and returned to Oldham.

It was here that he would receive a phone call

that would change his life.

'He may titter, titter he may.'

LAUGHTER

Well, the pinnacle just after the war was Variety Bandbox

and Frankie Howerd became the pulse of Variety Bandbox.

Well, at that time, Frankie Howerd was the biggest thing

on radio and asked if Eric would write for him.

FRANKIE: In Variety Bandbox,

one of the most amusing things I think I did,

and I can say that because I didn't write it, was a piece where

I was a messenger boy having to take two elephants to Crewe

and, you know, it was all so stupid

but Eric Sykes wrote this, and he was a brilliant writer,

and he wrote these extraordinary stories for me.

'I went along to the depot and I saw the porter and I said, "Look,

"I'll sign for these goods," and he said,

'"Good, they're labelled and ready, get them out of here quick."

'So I signed for them and went along.

'They were labelled and ready all right. Two elephants.

'Two ele-phants.'

SCREECHES: I was amazed!

LAUGHTER

It took what is now called "stand up"

in an entirely different direction as well.

A long narrative instead of a series of one-liners.

'I said, "How do I get these to Crewe?" He said, "I don't care where you get them to,

"but get them out of here." He said, "The place has been in uproar,

"in uproar the place has been."

I think writing for another comedian must be very, very difficult

and to write for an eccentric character like Frankie Howerd,

it must have been quite tricky.

What a master of language

and what a master of comic concepts Eric Sykes was.

He always said it was Frankie Howerd who gave him his biggest break.

By the 1950s, Sykes was one of the highest-paid scriptwriters

in the country,

pulling in audiences of 15 million on hit shows like Educating Archie.

Impressed by a programme he'd heard on the radio,

Sykes now teamed up with fellow writer Spike Milligan

and together they had an idea for a company to nurture new talent.

Joined by writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson,

Associated London Scripts was born,

with their first office above a greengrocer's in Shepherd's Bush.

The four of them had got this idea about a place

where new writers could come, and they all have their own careers,

obviously, so they were writing away and I did everything else.

Other people came.

Johnny Speight came and, of course,

he went on to write the famous Till Death Us Do Part.

Terry Nation came, he created the Daleks.

I would go to Eric's office and as I'd open the door to go in,

Spike Milligan would come out.

'Hallo!'

LAUGHTER

As I'd turn round to see Spike going down the stairs,

Tony Hancock would be coming up.

'You can testify as to my complete innocence in this.

'Tell him how I would hoodwinked by the fast-talking Sydney James.'

Frankie Howerd's work came out of there, and Galton and Simpson.

Is there anybody there?

Can you hear me?

Everybody was up there. If we were going out for the evening,

Me and Tommy Cooper would always meet at Orme Court

and it was a great place, great fun.

We became known as the Fun Factory.

Well, I first came here as a personal assistant to Spike Milligan.

-How are you?

-All right, how are you?

-We carry on as normal, do we?

-Nice to see you.

-We're just good friends, obviously,

we just happen to share the same bed, that's all.

I came into this building and there was literally Eric Sykes.

My first impression was this whiff of cigar smoke

coming in and then it was Eric.

And I remember him, oh, about two or three days later,

saying, "Well, who are you?"

And I said, "I've come as Spike's PA." He said, "Oh,

"good luck to you then, darling."

They were always doing really ridiculous things together.

I mean Spike and Eric

wouldn't talk to each other.

They would phone each other and they'd be in the same room.

Silly games, but relieved their tension when they were writing,

anything to stave off the day when you went to the typewriter.

But out of this fun and this mayhem, really, came this wonderful work.

# Over the hills and... #

LAUGHTER

LAUGHTER

LAUGHTER

Well, Eric and Spike were friends because they were both geniuses, in their own way.

One, two, hup.

LAUGHTER

They always had good ideas. They used to argue.

One said one thing, he'd say the opposite, and they got on very well.

I mean, they almost got sort of like husband and wife really, you know.

They got on. If they had a row and they'd never remember it the next day when they came in.

LAUGHTER

Dad absolutely understood Spike.

I'm not sure Spike absolutely understood Dad

because he didn't need to.

I think Spike was the one that Dad really nurtured.

If you said anything against Spike, Eric would be in there like a flash.

You know, "Well, he's done this and he's done that."

They had an office at the end of a corridor and Spike would get

out of his room to walk across the corridor to come into Dad's office.

"I've written this joke, what do you think?"

Dad would go, "Give me a minute. I'll come and I'll tell you about it.

"Go back to your office." Spike would go back to his office and Dad would read the joke,

and go, "OK," come out of his office, walk down the corridor, go into Spike's office,

"It's all right," and walk back.

I mean, they would do comedy inadvertently

and they would enjoy it and they loved each other's humour.

What is a jail break?

Answer - a BRAKE used for stopping jails.

Their admiration for each other's comedy would come into its own

with the writing of the Goon Show.

'This is the story of a desperate man in prison.

'Yes, it is I.

'I was the Governor.'

LAUGHTER

Spike, sadly, had these fits of depression which seemed to me

over the years to get stronger, and he would sometimes

be in the office for two days, you know, not come out.

When Spike wasn't feeling very well, he asked Dad to help create

some of the Goons and, seamlessly, he took over

the writing of some of them.

'The BBC would like to caution parents -

'this programme is unsuitable for the very young, the very old,

'the middle- aged, those just going off, those on the turn.'

To come here and actually write like Spike and in the spirit of Spike,

I think that must be really, really difficult.

'Why is that tiger wearing brown boots?

'Because his black ones are at the mender's.'

LAUGHTER

-'What I mean is, why does a tiger wear boots?

-Well, it's lucky.

-'Why?

-Well, what other tiger has got two pairs of boots to wear?'

Eric must have understood Spike

and Spike must have appreciated Eric, and I think

that's a most interesting relationship.

Eric had a row with Spike in the Goon Show.

They argued for about an hour about one word.

And it got quite heated and Spike threw a paperweight at Eric.

And after that, Eric said, "I'm not going to work with him ever again."

But they had a lifelong friendship which, you know,

very, very rare in this business.

It was the end of an era for Associated London Scripts

when, in 1967, they were approached for a takeover.

This would split the company in two.

Spike said, "I don't want to go,"

and then Eric came in and he said, "Isn't Spike going?"

I said, "He doesn't want to go, I don't know."

He said, "Well, if he doesn't want to go, I'll stay with him.

I mean, it was as simple as that.

So, in a way, it kind of, one might say,

broke up the family that we'd originally had.

Eric took it personally

and thought that they perhaps... they were deserting him.

They weren't deserting him, he chose not to go.

But the break up of Associated London Scripts didn't mean

that Sykes let up in his writing.

This is Eric Sykes' quote.

"When you're a writer, you are a writer 24 hours a day.

"You wake up in the morning and the first thing you think was,

"'That sketch didn't work very well last night, I'll have to re-write it.'"

I've got a feeling this whole operation is coming apart.

What do you mean, sir?

What do I mean?

LAUGHTER

I'll get it fixed. I'll get it fixed.

OK. Bosun, bosun! Take the wheel.

All right, then.

LAUGHTER

The pressure on him to write a script,

as any single scriptwriter would know, is quite tough

year in, year out, to produce such a high standard.

You joined up for hostilities only, or are you regular?

Regular, sir.

After breakfast every morning.

It's tiring, it's a lot of pressure, and I just admire him so much

for his work ethic and what he put in and how many series he did.

Which part of the work do you prefer? Writing or performing?

Performing.

-Performing.

-Yes.

-Writing, oh, that's a drag, that,

when you sit there in front of a blank sheet of paper.

It's great when you've done it.

It's like, you know, like you've just given birth.

But when you're writing it's terrible,

it's the longest thing in the world, you know?

Mmm.

Mind if I come aboard?

Would you like to come in, Mr Brown?

Well, I was coming alongside and the wind veered, so I started to tack.

Ah, he tacked.

Tacked. He's left me with nothing.

LAUGHTER

Wasn't that the right line?

Oh, well, try again.

What was the right line?

Tacked in.

LAUGHTER

You can tell the joy of being in front of an audience,

and how much it's him and he wants it,

but when things go wrong I can just see, and I know it myself,

that slight body language of,

"We haven't given the audience the perfect..."

Such was his honour to that, to the audience and to his craft.

LAUGHTER

You know your line, "You'll be in soon"?

I thought, "Not at the rate they're going, I won't."

HE LAUGHS

Was it tacked in?

If you like.

Shall we do it all again?

He knew exactly what he wanted.

He was a complete perfectionist, and if it didn't work,

he would spent five, six, seven hours making it work.

More than once when I was actually in his office,

I would see him writing at the desk, and he'd stop and he'd look up,

and it wasn't a big deal, but he once in a while said something like,

you know, he'd be writing something and he'd say,

"My mother would have liked this."

He always, always, always said she was looking after him.

He used to get a shudder, and I actually once or twice saw it.

-ERIC:

-You know the feeling you get

when you say, "Somebody has walked over my grave?

I used to get that feeling,

and then not long after that, I would write something good.

Do you still get it?

Oh, yes.

Oh, yes, and when I'm in a bit of trouble sometimes,

or a bit down, you know, I've only got to think of my mother,

and it's a sort of a... I get the same feeling.

On 29th January 1960,

Sykes burst onto our screens with a brand new series.

It became one of the BBC's biggest hits,

and would make him a household name.

Good afternoon, everybody.

On behalf of driver Sykes and his crew,

we welcome you aboard Routemaster 136.

There will be no smoking on the lower decks.

We will be travelling at about nine miles per hour,

and our ETA is 10 past 11, our time.

We trust you will all have a pleasant journey.

The weather in Cuffs Hill is fine.

Bonjour, mesdames et messieurs.

Bienvenue maitre d'...

RINGS BELL

Give me a chance to ding.

If you talk about Eric Sykes,

you immediately go, Sykes or Sykes in a hat, or...

I mean...which was a legendary set.

LAUGHTER

I put it to Eric that the BBC could certainly do with him

in a series in which he was the prominent one.

By George, quick!

What is it?

Well, of all the low-down, cunning tricks.

What's the matter?

He's got a telescope at the window.

Johnny Speight came up with a script

that paired Eric and Hattie Jacques as a married couple.

Eric suggested to Johnny that he and Hattie be brother and sister.

More than that, twins.

And more than that, identical twins.

-Look at that, you and me as children.

-Yes.

Look at those pigtails.

Yes.

And look at mine.

Eric wasn't your run-of-the-mill comedian,

because he had that slightly melancholy air about him,

which one didn't in those days associate with the very outgoing,

extrovert, exuberant comedians of those days.

He really was swimming against that tide.

LAUGHTER

CUCKOO CLOCK SPLUTTERS

It was rather a bewildered character that he played,

and, "Oh, what's going on here?"

And that appealed to me, cos I thought it was just gentler.

I'm not getting any younger.

Neither am I, we're twins, remember?

LAUGHTER

Well, I think it's time we thought about getting married.

LAUGHTER

It's illegal, isn't it?

The series was two misfits trying to cope with the world,

and that's sort of what we all feel, isn't it?

Um...

But he did it in such a brilliant way

that it wasn't sort of too... you know,

too pitying or too sad or too self-effacing,

he generally just made us laugh.

If I'd known, I would have stayed in the Navy.

You were never in the Navy.

Don't keep changing the subject.

That's what is so clever, though, about those...

the world that he created, is that you just sort of went with it,

you just believed it.

It was based on enough truth, however heightened the comedy was.

Well, I thought they were real.

That's what I think about Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques,

they felt very real.

He's doing comedy about people in situations,

and someone very much like him.

You know that one, three down, five letters,

brother and sister born at the same time?

That was "twins."

LAUGHTER

I put that in.

No, you put "twits."

LAUGHTER

The whole idea of Sykes was that here was just

what appeared to be an ordinary man.

It wasn't a sort of big showbiz extravaganza,

it wasn't anybody with an enormous, sort of, ego and personality

seeking to dominate anybody else.

-Here, old boy!

-DOG BARKS

SMASH!

DOG BARKS

LAUGHTER

The audience understood him.

They knew who he was, what he was, what was the character.

They felt he had a certain amount of pathos

about some of his performance.

They're rounding up all the men in the street.

I don't know why they want you.

Comedy can be very broad or wide, or, you know,

just going for a laugh, or, "Here comes the laugh,"

whereas Eric Sykes had a quality that was very rooted in reality.

If she was anything of a looker, she wouldn't have to advertise.

Oh, he's got a telephone.

748 2269.

PHONE RINGS

LAUGHTER

748 2269.

I've always found it very appealing

that you can have a writer or writers

who will take one little idea and then build around it.

What are you looking for, dear?

The key. I put it down here.

But the rubbish..!

With that rubbish.

I put it in the boiler!

In the boiler?! That's our freedom in that boiler.

You're trying to set up a load of things

where two people are handcuffed together,

what problems they can get into.

I think what made it real as well is they underplayed it an awful lot.

That one.

Put it there.

There we are. OK?

Yeah, get a knife and fork...

The writing was so good, but you don't overplay it, you don't panic,

it's a question of living with this, and it's just sort of, um...

-Yes, he...

-And "OK," and all that, but so underplayed.

Right, come on now.

There we are. Good?

LAUGHTER

Oh, yes, that's a good idea.

Now look, I'll cut it, that's right, there we are.

Ahh...

You just get two people who are comedic people,

and if they are good and they like each other,

the chemistry between people like that, you can't beat,

it is perfection.

That's the one. Ha-ha-ha-ha...

Actually, I'm not really hungry.

Sykes first met Hattie Jacques when he'd seen her perform in 1948,

and went on to write for her in Educating Archie.

Their relationship would form the heart

of the long-running Sykes series.

Eric knew Hattie, and he was desperately fond of her.

A Spanish number, Hay Un Jardin Con La Fuente Pequena.

It's always been vetted.

PLAYS SPANISH TUNE

HATTIE CLAPS

I hadn't finished yet.

Eric and Hattie were great friends off screen.

They got on really, really well,

and so I think working together was rather obvious.

Before he went, he made a very nice gesture.

How much?

LAUGHTER

'We were like a family.

'Hat was really like my sister, or my identical twin, as we had it.'

When we finished the series, I would go away and do other things,

and Hat would do some of the Carry On films,

so when we met again, it was like coming home, it was...

oh, it was lovely.

-Man goes to cupboard.

-Yes.

Gets large piece of equipment.

How do you spell that?

M-A-N.

Between Eric and Hattie, there was also great loyalty.

They used to defend each other.

They didn't... Hattie certainly didn't kowtow to Eric.

Oh, no, she would tell Eric if... not in any nasty way,

she would tell Eric if she thought something in the script

wasn't right or wasn't working.

Hey!

LAUGHTER

Eric said, when he was writing,

before she even turned the page, she knew what he had written.

TAPPING

SHE CHUCKLES

He's playing golf with a hard boiled egg.

They were so used to each other, and they knew how each other worked,

and they just sort of would take a scene to another level.

That double act had to be extraordinary

to sustain over many series.

I think it's an octopus.

I just loved them, and totally believed them as brother and sister.

HE HUMS A TUNE

And now...

..they left Scapa Flow at dawn.

LAUGHTER

He would go for extreme real, like the toe stuck in the bath.

It's where you should go

if you're trying to play for the drama within a scene.

You just keep expanding it until it can go to this place.

RINGS BELL

What is it now?

Can you get Mr Brown?

Oh, not again.

Yes, my toe.

Well, I don't like to ask him.

Are you sure your toe's stuck in the tap?

Well, of course I'm sure it's stuck in the tap. I'm sitting here facing it.

And it's right there.

Come on, Hattie, go on, the water's getting cold.

Well, pour some more hot in.

It's stuck up the hot water tap.

Eric just was doing things that you would see your father do,

or somebody get wrong at the garage,

get a finger stuck or something like that.

It was the delight in the everyday traps,

pitfalls to which someone can fall.

Ow!

The pain!

I shall never be able to dance again.

We just wanted him to win.

We wanted his world to get better,

but yet we totally empathised with his foolishness.

So it's that combination, I think.

Try and flush it out.

Yes, that's quite a good idea.

Righto.

Oh! Sykes,

-you knew that was going to happen, didn't you?

-No...

-Yet you let...

RINGS BELL

You would trust him. You wanted to see where he was going to go.

You'd hear the music, and I can just hear it now, actually,

in my head while I'm talking, it was the drum going boom, boom, boom.

"SYKES" THEME MUSIC

We would go and see him at the BBC studios and record his programme.

All right, all right, where is he, then?

Don't come dashing in here like Starsky and Hutch.

I actually would enjoy seeing... A - seeing Dad work with Hattie,

but also seeing the audience laugh,

because he would make us laugh at home as children,

and that was natural for us, that was what he did,

but to come and see him make other people laugh

was quite extraordinary.

Mind if I drop my anchor?

-I don't mind if you drop your...

-Eric!

LAUGHTER

I was very much aware of studio audiences.

If you are doing something you worked on for a week,

and throughout the half hour you're doing it,

or 45 minutes it takes to record,

you hear that audience continuously laughing,

it's a huge tonic.

ERIC SIGHS

LAUGHTER

Eric, could you spare a moment?

Hattie was a great giggler, and often, Dad could just catch his eye,

and just give a glint to her, and she would just go.

He said she thought Wood Lane Athletic would win,

and I said I thought it would be...

LAUGHTER

I just bit her earring off.

LAUGHTER

That was a technical hitch, wasn't it?

-It was indeed, a technical hitch.

-Yeah.

Wasn't us.

LAUGHTER

Do you always carry doughnuts in your pocket?

I do when I've got them.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

I'm terribly sorry.

LAUGHTER

It could have happened to a good show.

It's always fun, and they made each other laugh.

Is there an actor in the audience?

LAUGHTER

But Sykes didn't score a hit with every show.

In 1969, he appeared alongside Spike Milligan in Curry and Chips,

written by Johnny Speight.

The series would prove controversial,

and was cancelled after just six episodes.

Now then, I want to tell you that I am very glad

to be able to work in this beautiful factory.

Tell me what kind of job can I do to help your poor Queen

and Prince Philip back to prosperity?

LAUGHTER

Whoa, you couldn't put it on now!

I couldn't believe how racist it was. That was unbelievable.

When I was doing it, it didn't even occur to me that it was racist.

Either I start him, or the firm gets fined, or I do.

And if you do start him, you might have a strike on your hands.

Quite right, Norman.

LAUGHTER

It was just...

wasn't it...on the wrong side of what was acceptable?

But his own series was still flying high

as Sykes continued to develop his unique brand of comedy.

Anything he did, it were very visual.

Even when he spoke and his comedy acting.

-Always very visual.

-It was.

-He had a visual face.

Primer, cocker, setter, detonator.

Primer, cocker, setter, detonator.

Primer, cocker, setter, detonator.

Primer, cocker, setter, detonator.

I often wondered whether his ideas came from his writing to begin with.

-Yes.

-You know, so he's actually written the plot,

written the storyline, and then thinks,

"Right, now how do we improve on this?"

And of course then the wisdom and the great brain,

comedy brain, he had for visual comedy, he would then adapt the two.

Visual comedy is the most international of all languages.

Everybody can understand it.

PIANO PLAYS

He was a mime comedian as well as a verbal comedian.

He was angular and strange and weird.

There was nobody like him.

If you've got somebody with a face like him, it's very difficult to just go into the background.

He could never do that, it's an impossibility.

I remember seeing his face for the first time and just thinking, "You're funny."

You just think, "What else could you have done for a living?"

LAUGHTER

He had this repertoire of gestures and sudden stillness...

PIANO STOPS ABRUPTLY

..creating a kind of pool of quiet around him.

LAUGHTER

HE COUGHS

PIANO PLAYS

LAUGHTER

Despite wowing audiences,

behind the scenes, Sykes had been battling hearing loss for many years.

I think Dad has always used his body.

I think because of his deafness, you know, for many, many years,

he worked, actually, without hearing much of what was going on.

How do you judge audience reaction, though, Eric?

-Difficult.

-Is it?

-Are they in?

LAUGHTER

No, I can just get it.

That's why I've got to work harder than other comics,

-because if they don't laugh hard, I'm lost, you know.

-Yeah.

I think to portray his words in a better way,

he would always be visual.

He would always move a shoulder or take a double step or head turn,

just to actually put a dot on the comedy.

THUD!

I call him the Beethoven of comedy,

because he was writing comedy and not hearing reaction,

and that was from quite an early age.

SPANISH GUITAR MUSIC

His natural style was really based on mime.

You know, I mean the words sort of underpinned what he was miming,

and I think that's why he was a great favourite of musicians.

LAUGHTER

It was more slapstick than he usually did.

It was like he really, as it were, went for it, you know,

and it sort of developed into a total sort of slapstick.

Comedy, in the real sense of the word, is a little bit like music.

Someone said about music, "It expresses the inexpressible."

Comedy is the same,

to do with timing and pace, and just the moment.

You know, he could raise an eyebrow, do that just at the right moment,

which is what we try and do in music.

LAUGHTER

So I think underneath all, sort of, geniuses of his kind,

is a lot more complexity.

Just the awareness and sensitivity to other people.

He knows why...

I mean, the gentleness that comes across in his comedy,

you know, whether it is verbal or mimed, is an expression of that.

He was a very gentle man.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

He was never jealous of anybody that was funny.

He would admire them, and he would say,

"He's funny, she's good, they're funny."

You know I've not been well, Eric. I...

I was coughing and sneezing and spluttering the other day,

and I went to the doctor's.

Flu?

No, I went on the bus.

The other greatness about him was,

he didn't need to be bang, bang, bang, the star up front.

When I got there, I said, "What's good for wind?" He gave me a kite.

LAUGHTER

On top of that...

After years of married bliss, the wife left me.

She ran off with the fella next door, and..

ooh, I do miss him.

He was a very modest man.

I mean, he never went out and said,

"I am the greatest thing since sliced bread," ever.

-CLAPS RHYTHMICALLY

-Eric Sykes!

-CLAPS

-Eric Sykes!

-CLAPS

-Eric Sykes! Cha-cha-cha!

Is there something going on between you two?

Eric was a man whose persona was vulnerable.

LAUGHTER

Eric was a gentleman.

He had a tremendous amount of integrity.

My dad was famous when I was young, but he wasn't just my dad,

he was Eric Sykes to the nation.

When we were younger, Dad would have an old cinefilm camera,

and he made films of us.

They were obviously comedy films,

they couldn't just be us at a picnic.

I will never forget,

there was one where I was dressed in my sister's ballerina costume.

He made me come out with my wand, and I did some sort of gesture,

and miraculously appears the other children, in a specific order.

And he loved doing that, and we loved watching it, actually,

because we'd go, "Wow, how did you do that?"

Eric had this idea one day about a film he wanted to make,

a silent film called The Plank...

..which he wrote, and he wanted to direct.

It was really unusual to do a silent film.

He loved belly laughs, with no dialogue.

He loved Laurel and Hardy. Stan and Ollie

were very, very Eric, weren't they?

HE SCREAMS

ERIC: I loved them because when they walked down the street,

'the sun was shining, they had a swagger about their gait,

'but you knew that they were doomed to failure.'

I think Eric really wanted to see

whether he could muster this particular part of comedy.

'A very simple idea, seeing two workman

'and a plank of wood'

and the adventures of getting it from A to B.

This time Sykes wasn't just in front of the camera.

Adding another string to his bow, he decided to take on a new role.

59, take one.

I don't think people realised what a good director he was.

They knew he was a good actor.

-Ryan. Can you get the three people just there?

-Yes.

'He knew exactly what he wanted from the shot

'and from you and he went on until he got it.'

-He looks right. I want to go with him like that.

-OK.

I'm going to see behind there's a load of traffic

-and I want to pull back now to see the plank blocking it.

-Mmm.

I know that surprised a lot of people

because you think of him as being a sort of jokey man

who doesn't care deeply, but he was exactly the opposite.

They're travelling, you see a bit of that thing travelling,

you know, and sort of, phwoar, look at that.

And then we come to that shot and we want to see what he's looking at.

He wasn't one of those shouty directors, he got on very well.

People liked Eric.

'Directing The Plank

'he got hold of everybody by the shoulders'

and told them what he wanted them to do and what he wanted them to look...

It was probably a much harder directing piece

than a film with a script.

He had a very organised mind.

He had a great comedic structure in his head

of how he wanted a thread of something to go through.

Can we have the plank in, Ryan, please?

May we have the plank, please?

'He didn't write anything down.

'It was all in his mind, it was visual.'

Spike said to me, you know, he edited on camera.

Do you want them travelling, or merely blocking?

No, all blocked. Static. And when they move over to here,

they'll all be leaning out the windows,

-oi, oi, the horns will be going beep, beep, beep.

-Fine. OK.

Everybody said, he's a bit different from a director,

because he used to invent with a camera,

he used to paint with a camera.

-Ryan.

-Yes?

That's fine. I want it to go a bit quicker

-and a bit...not too far in between.

-Right.

-And a bit quicker.

-More frequent.

It's intriguing that he just decided

I'm going to make this thing about a plank

and the places a plank of wood could take you.

It's a tricky thing to do.

DISTANT WHISTLING

ORGAN MUSIC PLAYS

Putting him together with Tommy Cooper was rather wonderful

because they are, you know, bewilderment doubled.

'It was them just carrying a plank.'

Why is that funny? It was their walk and their big feet.

-LAUGHS

-Hilarious.

Eric Sykes and Tommy Cooper, what a combination.

They were both maniacs,

they really were. They just bumped off each other.

They had respect for each other's talent

and Tommy was quite prepared to put himself in the hands of Eric.

Oh, look.

It's OK. I'm all right.

I'm all right. Don't worry.

THEY TALK OVER EACH OTHER

Tommy Cooper was fun and naughty

and you never knew what he was going to do next.

So he was the opposite to Eric.

-What are you doing? I'm all right.

-Relax. You're all right now.

There's nothing wrong with me. I'm all right.

Here, drink that, then.

Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.

'They would talk at various points, "You come here", "I'll go there",'

so it wasn't really a silent film, but it didn't spoil the jokes.

One, two and yippee.

For some reason, that little movie,

everybody's seen it. You remember it.

CHEERING

FANFARE

'I think it was quite an argument in his mind'

whether he ought to give up performing and go directing

because he loved it, but I think he had always been a performer.

His true first love was the theatre,

because he loved that audience reaction.

But his biggest theatre hit,

acting alongside Jimmy Edwards, had an unpromising start.

Big Bad Mouse, when it first started,

it wasn't very well received by the critics

and in fact, I think it was on its last legs, it was due to come off.

'Every night they died a death.'

Jimmy Edwards came into Eric's dressing room and said,

"Well, it's the last night, I'm going to have a laugh."

Eric said, "Well, if you are, I am," and that was the birth of the show.

APPLAUSE

They more or less threw the script away and ad-libbed through it.

And the audiences in Big Bad Mouse

just loved it because, I don't think in those days

that people had ever improvised on stage.

So you see, Mr Watkins?

-Yes, I...

-You take the facts and the figures...

'They used to have, sort of little contests'

and Jimmy would go off to the pub, get a pint,

so Eric would have to, sort of, hold court.

LAUGHTER

Never mind, let's have some fun.

Abide with me.

LAUGHTER

And it was all included, you know, for the audience.

I mean, they were in heaven, because, you know,

Eric would say, "Well, where have you been?"

He said, "Well, I've just been for a pint."

So it was all very sort of honest.

You'd think in the West End

they'd give you the real thing, wouldn't you, eh?

The real thing. It's only coloured water.

At least they did give me a real cigar.

I wish they'd give me a real actor.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

He loved going through the fourth wall, grabbing an audience.

Come in!

BANGING ON DOOR

How many of you spotted the deliberate mistake?

Eric was a dangerous performer. He took chances.

LAUGHTER

'He would do things with a door, or with a window, or with a prop'

and people would laugh because of it.

Ha!

APPLAUSE

And to work with Eric you were never quite sure

how he was going to behave in that particular situation in a play.

It was mad, wonderful, glorious mayhem.

It was an enormous success, Big Bad Mouse,

it went all the way round the world. Australia, America, Canada.

'They loved it.'

And it was the audience. You see, Eric loved the audience.

Skyes's love for the theatre never faded

and he would remain a huge draw for audiences throughout his life.

'I was very fortunate to do a season at the Vaudeville'

on the Strand in Ray Cooney's Caught In The Net, a farce.

I seem to remember Eric didn't appear in anything in the first act

and we were sitting and saying, "Well, yes, it's very nice,

"but when is his nibs coming on?"

As soon as he entered onto the stage, uproar.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

But his acting career took a dramatic turn

when Sykes was approached

by renowned theatre director, Sir Peter Hall.

'Peter Hall was doing a Moliere comedy'

and he explained to me that Moliere was a great vaudevillian

and I said, "Oh, one of my heroes I work with often is Eric Sykes,

"is there anything in it for him?"

But when Sykes first heard about the idea,

he felt it could be a step too far.

Peter rang and asked Eric would he like to go to lunch.

Eric was getting further and further down in his chair,

thinking, "Oh, I don't want to do this," you know.

And he loved Peter Hall so he didn't want to say no to him,

so he was in this terrible position.

And before he could say anything,

Peter Hall put his hand up, right in front of Eric's face,

and he said, "Don't tell me you can't do it,

"because I know you can."

Monsieur seems in pretty dire distress.

I just can't cope with these mad moods of his.

Monsieur? That must be what it is that's got his goat.

He's jealous.

By now Sykes was in his mid-70s,

partially sighted and deaf, but he hadn't let this stand in his way.

He'd got this wonderful invention called hearing glasses.

Without any lenses, but they had hearing aids in the back

so he could hear via the bone behind the ear.

The fun was that he could hear people behind him as well.

He said, "Listen to what they're saying over there."

They were fantastic for him,

because it was a new lease of life, really.

He came on and I thought, "Oh, please, God,

"let him not knock into the furniture."

-Why, though?

-Why?

Because he is.

This was a huge thing

and I don't really think I saw him,

I think I was just too worried for the first ten minutes

about, "Is he going to be all right?" or, "What...?" and of course he was.

When Eric Sykes walked on,

you felt they were going to stand and applaud.

And you could hear, you could see them all,

"Oh, here he is, wait, wait until you see him, wait."

It was... He filled the theatre with love.

I thought he could do anything.

I thought he could play Hamlet if he wanted to.

I was astounded,

A, he could be on the West End, say these words,

see where he was going,

hear what was going on at his age, and he still brought the house down.

He loved the challenge.

It became a zonking great hit.

Yet another surprise lay in store for Sykes,

as in the audience one night was Hollywood royalty.

Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise went to see it

and phoned the office the next day and said,

"How do we get in touch with this man,

"this wonderful, wonderful man?"

And that's how his film appearance in The Others came about.

That's right, it's a gardener.

Eric himself was a very easy-going person, really enthusiastic.

The day he had to act he was almost like a child,

really enjoying the process, never complaining,

this was a guy who enjoyed acting.

All right, we're very honest and very hard working.

And the fact that he was British

and so well-known in Britain was something we believed

could be important for the movie.

Why should somebody want to take all the curtains?

For Eric to move from where Eric was

into a dramatic role that seemed like a very good fit,

he could take a right at the traffic lights and he was there.

His character was supposed to be absent-minded,

but he, of course, knows what's going on

and so we played with that idea.

Oh, don't worry, the fog won't let her get very far.

Oh, yes, the fog.

He went over to Spain to film the part.

A, he was overawed by the size of the Winnebago he had

because in his day, he never had that sort of help.

Eric, you should be this side.

Always, that's it. And Finuala in the middle.

'He spoke a bit of Spanish,

'so the crew enjoyed him coming on and saying, "Hello," and "How are you?"

'One of the things that I didn't know at that time

'was that he was almost deaf and blind.

'One day he showed me the glasses with no glass.

'We had this scene in which he had to'

walk through the forest in the middle of the night

and on top of that we were putting in some fog.

'Of course, when he acted, he had to take off his glasses,

'so at that moment he couldn't hear,

'so I thought, "How are we going to do this shot?"'

The truth is I don't know how he did it,

but when you see the shot, you'd never believe

that this is a man who is almost not seeing,

not hearing anything.

Sadly, a few months after the film came out,

Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise separated

and it was in the news and I said to Dad,

I said, "Did you hear on the news today

"that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman have separated?"

And I said, "Is it anything to do with you?"

And he said, "I can't help being attractive to women."

And for his next move,

Sykes would become part of a worldwide phenomenon.

'It was just a telephone call,'

so I went in and said, "Would you like to do a Harry Potter?"

He said, "Have I got time?" There was a little banter,

and I said, "Eric, this is for real."

Somebody said, "What about Eric?"

and I thought, "Well, that would be wonderful,"

I would get to work with this man who is legendary.

It was right at the beginning,

so you wanted people to kind of sit up and take notice.

He rehearsed a lot.

You could see that what he'd said to himself,

he kind of mapped it out.

The whole thing was very specifically, precisely constructed.

It wasn't a personality performance,

although he had a very strong personality, but it was delicate.

Bloody kids.

I think in the end probably what I was watching

was a lifetime's work.

It was just lovely having Eric Sykes around

and I think that's what he did to the audience,

he was nice to have around.

We could do it without the boy.

No! The boy is everything. It cannot be done without him.

I'm very glad to have worked with Eric Sykes.

I'm really glad to have done it.

Stand aside or I'll tell

so I can give our guest a proper greeting.

Abracadabra!

I think the most Dad enjoyed about Harry Potter

was the fact his grandchildren were so thrilled

that they saw a film that he was in

because they'd read these books

and they were just so proud of their grandad

and we were so proud as a family.

And one person had remained a constant presence

through all those years.

ERIC: 'When I went back through my life,

'I put through all the miracles

'and all the things that had happened to me that I had accepted,

'I realised that it wasn't just me doing it,

'it was my mother guiding me.'

'I worked it out for him...'

..that she didn't die in childbirth.

In fact, she died three weeks after Eric was born,

And I told him

and I thought it was just so touching.

He said, "So she did hold me."

'Every artist has got their own magic'

and his was magic that lasted for 60 years

no matter what he did, direct, act.

The only thing he didn't try was singing.

Thank God. He'd probably have been good at that as well.

It's my wrist.

Well, why have you taken your trousers off?

He loved everybody and everybody loved him.

Oh, Eric!

Eric's light was a lone genius in our time.

'He had this timeless quality'

and I think it can, you know, people can watch it again and again,

it will be around forever.

Here's a bit of fun for you.

THEY LAUGH

Come on.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd