Time & Perspective Quote by Eric Morecambe

The joke lands like a modest bit of biography and then, on the second beat, reveals itself as a sly little demolition of showbiz mythology. Morecambe talks as if he is calmly recounting the origin story of a comedy partnership, but he keeps undercutting the very idea that these things are planned, noble, or even tidy. “We had not had time to establish ourselves as a double act” is deliberately prosaic; it punctures the romantic narrative of two destined talents finding each other. In its place: scheduling problems, life happening, people disappearing into work.

Then comes the sharp pivot: “before Ernie joined the Merchant Navy.” That’s a punchline disguised as a career move, the kind of absurd practicality that British postwar comedy loves. It’s also class-coded context: for a working-class performer, entertainment isn’t an inevitability, it’s an escape route competing with respectable, hard-edged employment.

The killer detail is “the brother of the late Dave Morris.” He’s not just name-dropping; he’s committing to a deadpan misdirection. You expect the brother’s name, a human being. Instead you get a relationship to someone else, someone dead, someone presumably more significant. It’s a miniature sketch about how the business reduces people to connections and footnotes, how identity gets borrowed, inherited, and misfiled.

Morecambe’s intent is to make the origin story funny by making it small. The subtext is affectionate but unsentimental: partnerships are accidents, careers are contingent, and the funniest truth is how little control anyone had over the whole thing.