Homage to Morecambe and Wise on the Chichester stage

And there will be plenty of mentions of them when The Play What I Wrote – by Hamish McColl and Sean Foley plus Eddie Braben – plays Chichester Festival Theatre from February 8-12.

Hamish and Sean wrote it and starred in it originally, but now the reins have been passed to Thom Tuck and Dennis Herdman, with Mitesh Soni completing the three-hander. Following the tradition, Thom and Dennis will be acting under their own names.

And the gist is that Thom has written a play, an epic set in the French Revolution called A Tight Squeeze for the Scarlet Pimple. Dennis, on the other hand, wants to continue with their double act. He believes that if they perform a tribute to Morecambe and Wise, Thom’s confidence will be restored and the double act will go on….

As Dennis explains: “I just want him to come back to the double act. I just want it all to be like the olden days.

“But he has written this play but it gradually becomes very evident that the play is not going to happen because I keep putting a spanner in the works! He thinks he has got Sir Ian McKellen involved but he hasn’t, and this attempt to put a play on just keeps falling apart. But in the second half there are surprises... and there is a mystery guest involved.”

Recent mystery guests have included Tom Hiddleston, Keith Allen, Denise Welch, Annette Badland and Sue Holderness.

“We know who the mystery guest is going to be because we slightly tailor the script to them. Usually each guest does a few shows and we’re rehearsing a new one in today. Largely the play is the same but with each mystery guest there are some jokes that are just for them. We do know who they are going to be but often not very far in advance, sometimes just the day before.

“The piece is really an homage to Morecambe and Wise. The Thom character is not Ernie but he has written a play in the way that Eric did so there is a nod there towards Ernie Wise, and my character is rather sillier and keeps putting the spanner in the works and so there is a nod there towards Eric Morecambe, and that’s the dynamic. We don’t do impressions of them but they are there and they are mentioned many times. In fact my character is wanting to do a show about Morecambe and Wise and I have sold tickets for the show about them and I want Thom to do the show and to get our double act back.”

They rehearsed the show in Birmingham and opened at the end of November running through to early January and it was great to get back on stage after all the lockdowns.

“I did manage to do a couple of things. I do gardening work in between acting and I did a lot of that because it was outdoors and that was very useful but I did manage also to do a production of Macbeth online. I was Macbeth and it feels like a bit of a seismic role. It’s a great role to play but it was all on Zoom and all the cast were in various parts around the country. We did one or two performances a night for three or four weeks.

“I live in south-east London and I had a friend that had a studio in Deptford and I borrowed that. I was in this tiny little room setting up my laptop there. It was a bit of a head melt doing it, just acting in front of your laptop but also setting up props...and putting blood on your face. You might be doing a soliloquy while at the same time trying to change your trousers! But it shows it is possible and it was a lovely cast. And it was remarkable that we managed to do it. In fact I met my current partner during that job. She played lady Macbeth!”

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