Of the current crop of British comedians, I have to say that Michael McIntyre is probably the funniest. His observational skills and clever use of both language and movement have hoisted him rapidly to the upper echelons. Yet, it is his complete lack of obscenity that makes him the ideal performer of an audience of people that sorely misses the ‘song and dance’ routines of what were the UK’s finest TV comedians, Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise.

A recent trip to the north-west of the country and Morecambe Bay, allowed me to see the bronze statue of ‘the one with the specs’, which, I have to tell you, embodies his charmingly amusing character in every angle of that amazingly lively creation. No comic worth his salt would dare to tread the boards without a tag-line or two and Eric’s echoing “Wahey!”, or “What do you think of it so far?”, followed by a double-handed slap around the kisser of his other life partner, Ernie, feature regularly within the latest BBC DVD release of their sixth series, which dates back to 1971.

You have to remember that this was the duo that commanded viewing audiences in multi-million numbers that we just do not hear of any more. I have often wondered, would they be capable of doing the same thing today? In some ways, probably not, as the comedy scene has changed so much, yet the relative simplicity of their humour, which was so rigorously rehearsed in a way that today’s younger ad-libbing exponents would scarcely comprehend, was the result of many years spent in the music halls and working mens’ clubs around the country, honing their combined art.

Naturally, the ‘song and dance’ man, Wise, was invariably at the butt end of Morecambe’s judiciously scripted (by Eddie Braben) jibes related to his ‘short, fat, hairy legs’ and the ‘wig’ that almost everyone believed he wore. Their stage set was part sit-com, part sketch, part music event, with little inserts in front of the proscenium arch, using the appropriately monogrammed ‘M’ and ‘W’ curtains as a backdrop for the pacey script delivery.

Of course, in a world not obsessed by ‘celebrity’, the superstars lined-up for a shot of additional fame and often ‘pain’ at the hands of the ever-popular duo and Series 6 features the famous actors John Mills and Glenda Jackson, while singers Tom Jones, Cilla Black, Shirley Bassey and Vera Lynn joined a throng that included both Michael Parkinson (in my humble view, perhaps one of the worst interviewers in the history of the chat show) and world famous conductor Andre Previn (or ‘Preview’, or ‘Privet’ depending on how Morecambe’s wit was directed). This DVD is no less than four-and-a-half hours in length, which I urge that you view in one-show-at-a-time bites, for fear that your sides might split and that you might incur stomach cramps from laughing too much. Classic comedy at its very best.