Mr Preview has a word with Eric Morecambe over Grieg
‘I’m playing all the right notes… but not necessarily in the right order.’ This punchline, uttered by an affronted Eric Morecambe on the BBC’S Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show in 1971, made instant comedy history, and is still wheeled out today by those lightheartedly attempting to conceal their musical ineptitude.
Morecambe’s straight man for the sketch was none other than the celebrated conductor André Previn, whose efforts to co-ordinate the start of Grieg’s Piano Concerto with wouldbe soloist Morecambe prove fruitless.
Frustrated at the apparent insolence of ‘Mr Preview’, Morecambe pins the hapless celebrity aggressively by the lapels before delivering his famously self-justifying one-liner.
The ‘Grieg Concerto sketch’ was not in fact an entirely new creation. It had first aired in a 1963 episode of the ITV series Two of a Kind, with Ernie Wise playing the long-suffering conductor to Morecambe’s maladroit pianist. With Previn supplanting Wise for the 1971 version, and sharp script doctoring by Eddie Braben, the sketch was bound for comic glory. ‘They recycled it brilliantly,’
as Michael Grade, Morecambe and Wise’s agent, put it, ‘but took it to a whole new dimension.’
Crucial to the sketch’s impact is Previn’s consummately understated performance as the butt of Morecambe’s jibes and ridiculous suggestions. ‘For another four pound we could have got Edward Heath,’ Morecambe quips at one point. ‘In the second movement, not too heavy on the banjos,’ he advises at another. Why, one might wonder, would the principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra be happy to subject himself to such a heavy dose of prime-time ridicule and belittling?
Previn’s own answer was disarmingly simple. ‘I admired Eric and Ernie tremendously,’ he said later, ‘and was surprised and thrilled when they asked me to be on their show.’ Tricky negotiations had, however, been necessary to book him. John Ammonds, the Christmas Show’s producer, wanted him for five days in the studio, to accommodate Morecambe and Wise’s penchant for detailed rehearsal. Jasper Parrott, Previn’s agent, eventually whittled him down to three.
This left the duo nervous, wondering if Previn had the comic chops for the collaboration. ‘They were not at all happy,’ Ammonds said later. ‘Eric and Ernie both knew that if Previn had lost his nerve, or fumbled his lines, the entire thing would have fallen flat on its face.’ But they had no need to worry, as Previn would deliver a masterclass in deadpan comic timing. As Ammonds himself put it: ‘Previn was superb.’
Twelve minutes of classic comedy resulted, with Previn subjected to barbs, condescensions and humiliations as ‘soloist’ Morecambe plays the ‘original’ version of ‘Grieg’s Piano Concerto by Grieg’ from ‘before we went decimal’. Whether asked to wear high heels, jump vertically on the podium or field one of Morecambe’s trademark cheek-slaps, Previn is imperturbable, including when responding with incredulity to Morecambe’s honky-tonk rendition of the Concerto’s first piano entry.
While the Grieg sketch was unquestionably a triumph for all involved in making it, it had particular repercussions for Previn’s career as a conductor. His Morecambe and Wise appearance, agent Parrott later said, was ‘a game changer in terms of André’s public recognition’, gaining him ‘the sort of exposure for good quality uncut classical music achieved in his Music Night series which brought big fees and much fame to the LSO.’
Previn later reported other, less predictable consequences of his Christmas Show cameo: ‘To this day, when I walk down a street in London someone will shout out, “Hey, Mr Preview”. Every single time.’ Terry Blain
‘If Previn had lost his nerve, the entire thing would have fallen flat on its face’