Television: The Morecambe And Wise Show

The Beatles’ celebrated appearance on The Morecambe And Wise Show was filmed at ATV’s Elstree Studio Centre in Borehamwood on this day, although it wasn’t broadcast to the nation until April 1964.

In the morning they rehearsed their act prior to filming in the afternoon. The Beatles performed three songs to a small studio audience: ‘This Boy’, ‘All My Loving’ and ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’.

They were then joined by Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise for some banter and a light-hearted version of golden oldie ‘Moonlight Bay’.

The episode of The Morecambe And Wise Show was shown on the ITV network on Saturday 18 April 1964 at 8.25pm. It was repeated on 24 July the following year on The Best Of Morecambe And Wise.

The audio recording of Moonlight Bay was released on Anthology 1 in 1995.

Page last updated: 2 December 2011

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8 thoughts on “Television: The Morecambe And Wise Show”

  1. Morecambe calls Ringo “Bongo”. Paul fakes a diplomatic laughter, but George and John doesn’t seem happy at all. Later John intimidates Morecambe, who looks pretty scared, in that moment Paul looks worried. Look at his face! Thinking “John’s gonna do it again”. And he even says “no” to John. Uh I love this video.

    1. The four of them said it was their best ever TV show . John only jokes with the fact that Eric Morecambe was old enough to have known his father . He was not scared at all it’s a sketch . But you’re right this is a great video !

  2. Just a wonderful clip. Made me smile on a gloomy morning.

    Don’t think morecambe is intimidated by john though,they both clearly are getting off on the daftness of it all and gives as good as he gets. You are right about paul – only when the audience start laughing at johns comment does he relax. An early indicator into john’s ability to get away with just about anything coupled with paul’s ‘showbiz’ inclinations.

  3. it is my feeling that lennon deviated from the script to unerve morcambe and thats why morcambe seemed surprised but in true comic fashion destroyed him by quipping “youve only got a little dad, have you ?”

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