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Mr. Lonely
A long-overdue reissue of this debut novel from a comedy legend. Mr Lonely follows the exploits of a lowly two-bit comedian, Sid Lewis, through his strange and eventful life. Sid plays dingy smoke-filled clubs, earning next to nothing and chasing after the dancing girls. He meets the woman of his dreams and ties the knot – but still has an eye for the ladies. One night, in front of a particularly rough crowd, he tries out a new character… and Mr Lonely is born. The act is seen by someone from the BBC who offers Sid the chance to perform on television. He becomes an overnight success, quickly taking to a new life of champagne and stardom – and continues to chase anything in a skirt. But great comedy is often laced with tragedy and Sid's life is no exception as his excesses and philandering threaten to catch up with him. Mr Lonely was Eric's first novel, written while he was recovering from his second heart attack and contemplating a career away from the stage. It has all the hallmarks of his legendary comic talent and is being brought back into print for the first time in nearly thirty years.
189 pages, Hardcover
First published March 26, 1981
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
February 7, 2013
An interesting book by my favourite comedian of all time. I couldn't help picturing Eric throughout reading this novel.
February 24, 2019
I was one of Eric Morecambe's greatest fans and never missed a show that he was on so I had high hopes of this novel. Sadly, I was very disappointed. Of course it is a product of its time but that doesn't make the homophobia, misogyny, sexism and racism any easier to read. Sid Lewis is a club/pub comedian who finds fame through a character (Mr Lonely) and we watch his rise to fame and how he copes with it. Unfortunately, Sid Lewis is an unpleasant person whose character doesn't change so it is impossible to feel any empathy for him. The style of the work is very bitty and felt unfinished to me and there is an air of gloom pervading the book. I imagined that a novel written by Eric Morecambe would be funny but the humour left me cold as it came across as a string of unrelated one-liners - and these were often offensive to 21st century ears. The truth is that I wish I'd not read this as it has made me see Eric Morecambe in a different light from before, a light I'd have preferred not to have been shone on him.
August 17, 2013
I really liked this book and I'm a bit surprised with the reviews. Maybe my advantage is I read it as a book and didn't expect anything just because the author was Eric Morecambe.(less)
fic-guided
August 4, 2020Literary history records some unusual novelists – Winston Churchill, Josef Goebbels, Saddam Hussein. Britain’s greatest stage comedian (as many would rank him) belongs in that strange literary compartment with the ‘Who would have thought . . .?’ label. He’s nicer than Goebbels and, though untutored in the craft, a better novelist than any of the above. Tolstoy once complained that no one, asked if they could play the violin, would think to seriously reply: ‘I don’t know, I’ve never tried.’ Yet everyone assumes that they could write a novel if they only had the leisure to do it. Eric Morecambe had the leisure to try his hand at fiction during convalescence from one of the many heart attacks which afflicted him from the age of forty-five onwards, and which would kill him three years after Mr Lonely, following what is recorded to have been a cracking performance at the Roses Theatre in Tewkesbury. ‘Bring Me Sunshine’ should have been playing.
To judge by Mr Lonely, had Eric ever picked up a violin he would have been able to play it straight off at least as well as Jack Benny. Which is to say that Morecambe is no Tolstoy, but nevertheless was capable of writing an extremely readable novel. It opens with a description of the lower-class Northern background in which most of Britain’s great comedians originated, before the toff Beyond the Fringe crew arrived to up the social tone and convert ‘Variety’ into ‘Satire’:
Sid Lewis came into this world exactly the same way as any other child. He weighed eight and a half pounds and had a shock of black hair. The trouble was, as he used to say, ‘It wasn’t on my head, it was all under my left arm.’ His childhood was normal, lumps, bumps and mumps. His schooling was average – sums, bums, and chums. He left school when he was fourteen and went to work behind the counter of a tobacconist’s shop earning fifteen shillings a week and all he could inhale.
Morecambe inhaled sixty a day. It didn’t help with the heart attacks.
Sid Lewis moves on, in young manhood, to tread the music-hall boards. From early on he is happily married but never able to resist a bit on the side. Anything on the side that comes his way, in fact. But, as show business people say, ‘it doesn’t matter on tour’. One night, in front of a particularly difficult audience, he creates a new character – Mr Lonely. A man nobody loves. A BBC scout sees the perfomance, and is impressed, and Sid finds himself on his way up from the Pier End at Yarmouth to Las Vegas and best-ever thirty-five-million ratings for his BBC Christmas Show (a record in fact held by Morecambe and Wise in the mid-1970s). Sid dies at the height of his career, when a taxi bumps into him and drives two of the points of showbiz’s supreme ‘Star’ award through his heart. As Sid’s signature tune puts it: ‘Hey Mr Lone-ly, Why can’t you see, Suc-cess is no guar-an-tee.’
There’s plenty of scope in Mr Lonely for Eric’s psycho-biographers. Morecambe was not, like Sid Lewis, a solo artist, but half of a celebrated double act. Yet, as Conrad observes in Heart of Darkness, we live as we dream, alone. The thought may have occurred to the comedian-novelist that at death’s door he wasn’t, for once, dancing off into the blue with his little hairy-legged friend.
That there are other links between Eric and Sid is strongly suggested by various tricks in the novel. The author makes personal, rather John Fowles-like, interventions at various points in the narrative. For the rest, Mr Lonely has, as one would expect, some good one-liners, some hilarious sex-on-the-side scenes (there’s a particularly funny episode in a massage parlour), and some corny mother-in-law and agent jokes: ‘My agent’s very unhappy. I’m getting 90 per cent of his salary.’ There was, one might say, a novelist inside Morecambe, struggling to get out.
To judge by Mr Lonely, had Eric ever picked up a violin he would have been able to play it straight off at least as well as Jack Benny. Which is to say that Morecambe is no Tolstoy, but nevertheless was capable of writing an extremely readable novel. It opens with a description of the lower-class Northern background in which most of Britain’s great comedians originated, before the toff Beyond the Fringe crew arrived to up the social tone and convert ‘Variety’ into ‘Satire’:
Sid Lewis came into this world exactly the same way as any other child. He weighed eight and a half pounds and had a shock of black hair. The trouble was, as he used to say, ‘It wasn’t on my head, it was all under my left arm.’ His childhood was normal, lumps, bumps and mumps. His schooling was average – sums, bums, and chums. He left school when he was fourteen and went to work behind the counter of a tobacconist’s shop earning fifteen shillings a week and all he could inhale.
Morecambe inhaled sixty a day. It didn’t help with the heart attacks.
Sid Lewis moves on, in young manhood, to tread the music-hall boards. From early on he is happily married but never able to resist a bit on the side. Anything on the side that comes his way, in fact. But, as show business people say, ‘it doesn’t matter on tour’. One night, in front of a particularly difficult audience, he creates a new character – Mr Lonely. A man nobody loves. A BBC scout sees the perfomance, and is impressed, and Sid finds himself on his way up from the Pier End at Yarmouth to Las Vegas and best-ever thirty-five-million ratings for his BBC Christmas Show (a record in fact held by Morecambe and Wise in the mid-1970s). Sid dies at the height of his career, when a taxi bumps into him and drives two of the points of showbiz’s supreme ‘Star’ award through his heart. As Sid’s signature tune puts it: ‘Hey Mr Lone-ly, Why can’t you see, Suc-cess is no guar-an-tee.’
There’s plenty of scope in Mr Lonely for Eric’s psycho-biographers. Morecambe was not, like Sid Lewis, a solo artist, but half of a celebrated double act. Yet, as Conrad observes in Heart of Darkness, we live as we dream, alone. The thought may have occurred to the comedian-novelist that at death’s door he wasn’t, for once, dancing off into the blue with his little hairy-legged friend.
That there are other links between Eric and Sid is strongly suggested by various tricks in the novel. The author makes personal, rather John Fowles-like, interventions at various points in the narrative. For the rest, Mr Lonely has, as one would expect, some good one-liners, some hilarious sex-on-the-side scenes (there’s a particularly funny episode in a massage parlour), and some corny mother-in-law and agent jokes: ‘My agent’s very unhappy. I’m getting 90 per cent of his salary.’ There was, one might say, a novelist inside Morecambe, struggling to get out.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 24, 2019
A strange little book without much plot to speak of full of racism and sexism to a degree that borders on ludicrous (I like to think Morecambe was being satirical, but I will also admit to being blinded by affection). Nevertheless I enjoyed it - the characters are interesting and the melancholy, remote atmosphere permeating the bawdy anecdotes is compelling.
February 26, 2020
Certainly of its time, but something oddly post-modern about it at times. Also leaves a lot of things dangling, so a bit bizarre all told.
March 26, 2021
Not for me I'm afraid. Found myself skipping after about 50%. I really hate not finishing a book but theres too many good ones to waste my time on this one
January 8, 2014
A very odd and un-novelistic book, this is essentially a series of gag-laden anecdotes about the career and adulterous exploits of a comedian who we're told is funny and much loved, but who comes across as a bland cipher of extremely dubious morals and political views. It certainly doesn't amount to anything resembling a story, and the ending is as arbitrary and unsatisfying as anything else on offer here. Even the jokes have a pretty low hit rate.
I don't know enough about Morecambe's private life to know whether Sid Lewis is an autobiographical study -- Morecambe himself appears as a minor character and the book's narrator, but that's hardly conclusive. What's clear is that Morecambe is constantly struggling to fit what he wants to say (whatever that is) with the conventions of a novel, and particularly with the stylistic demands of written prose as opposed to spoken monologue. The most interesting bit of texture is a lengthy flashback to Sid's courtship and the morning of his wedding, followed by an interestingly framed sequence where Eric and the presiding vicar reminisce decades later about the ceremony itself. For that chapter it almost looks as if the book is interested in narrative rather than transcribed standup, but the moment passes.
The book is profoundly sexist, treating women as commodities for Sid's appreciation, and flirts with racism without ever quite committing to it (Sid himself is undoubtedly racist by modern standards, but the narrator has a more nuanced view -- one of the few nuanced things in the book, in fact). It is at least in broad sympathy with gay men, but even so there are a couple of uncomfortable moments where homophobia forms the basis of gags.
The only real point of interest for me is that much of the book is set in the world of British TV of the mid-to-late 70s, an era I can just about remember, and provides a certain nostalgia kick on that basis (though it entirely avoids mentioning Jimmy Savile, which is something of a relief). It must have been 30 years since I last heard a joke about Magnus Pyke waving his hands around. The peculiar view that married couples are naturally, understandably and more or less incessantly looking for extramarital sex is certainly something I recognise from the sitcoms of the time, despite bearing no relationship to adult life as I've come to know it since.
If you're a huge Morecambe and Wise fan, you may find this entertaining, although it's hardly typical of Eric's TV work. If not, I can't honestly recommend it.
I don't know enough about Morecambe's private life to know whether Sid Lewis is an autobiographical study -- Morecambe himself appears as a minor character and the book's narrator, but that's hardly conclusive. What's clear is that Morecambe is constantly struggling to fit what he wants to say (whatever that is) with the conventions of a novel, and particularly with the stylistic demands of written prose as opposed to spoken monologue. The most interesting bit of texture is a lengthy flashback to Sid's courtship and the morning of his wedding, followed by an interestingly framed sequence where Eric and the presiding vicar reminisce decades later about the ceremony itself. For that chapter it almost looks as if the book is interested in narrative rather than transcribed standup, but the moment passes.
The book is profoundly sexist, treating women as commodities for Sid's appreciation, and flirts with racism without ever quite committing to it (Sid himself is undoubtedly racist by modern standards, but the narrator has a more nuanced view -- one of the few nuanced things in the book, in fact). It is at least in broad sympathy with gay men, but even so there are a couple of uncomfortable moments where homophobia forms the basis of gags.
The only real point of interest for me is that much of the book is set in the world of British TV of the mid-to-late 70s, an era I can just about remember, and provides a certain nostalgia kick on that basis (though it entirely avoids mentioning Jimmy Savile, which is something of a relief). It must have been 30 years since I last heard a joke about Magnus Pyke waving his hands around. The peculiar view that married couples are naturally, understandably and more or less incessantly looking for extramarital sex is certainly something I recognise from the sitcoms of the time, despite bearing no relationship to adult life as I've come to know it since.
If you're a huge Morecambe and Wise fan, you may find this entertaining, although it's hardly typical of Eric's TV work. If not, I can't honestly recommend it.
August 3, 2011
I wasn't sure what I was going to make of this book - for ages I put it off, picking up chick lit instead because I thought it might ruin my view of the wonderful Eric Morecambe. It didn't. Instead of just seeing him as a comedian, I can now also see him as an author. It isn't a detrimental view, just another, slightly surprising facet to his character.
So what of the book? Well first and foremost, you must remember that it is set in the 1970s. Characters act and react as they would have done then - they're xenophobic, misogynistic, they smoke, drink, - but they're irrepressible and they're fascinating.
Sid, the hero - or possibly anti hero - is stuck in a loveless marriage with Carrie. He dreams of escape, but the only means of escape he can find is in the spotlight on stage or in meaningless flings with fellow would-be stars. Carrie wishes Sid was in a nice office job, but was initially attracted to his showbiz lifestyle. Something’s got to give. Or has it? Can they carry on in this beige 1970s depressive lifestyle, upsetting themselves and each other? Suddenly Sid is offered the chance of his life – is his career worth more than his marriage?
The characters in the book are well written, although they did feel somewhat stereotypical – buxom babes, awful actors, sexy starlets, camp comedians, shy strippers - but for all I know, that's what the 1970s were like... It's certainly what they were like for Sid Lewis.
So what of the book? Well first and foremost, you must remember that it is set in the 1970s. Characters act and react as they would have done then - they're xenophobic, misogynistic, they smoke, drink, - but they're irrepressible and they're fascinating.
Sid, the hero - or possibly anti hero - is stuck in a loveless marriage with Carrie. He dreams of escape, but the only means of escape he can find is in the spotlight on stage or in meaningless flings with fellow would-be stars. Carrie wishes Sid was in a nice office job, but was initially attracted to his showbiz lifestyle. Something’s got to give. Or has it? Can they carry on in this beige 1970s depressive lifestyle, upsetting themselves and each other? Suddenly Sid is offered the chance of his life – is his career worth more than his marriage?
The characters in the book are well written, although they did feel somewhat stereotypical – buxom babes, awful actors, sexy starlets, camp comedians, shy strippers - but for all I know, that's what the 1970s were like... It's certainly what they were like for Sid Lewis.
April 3, 2015
I really wanted to like this book because I love Eric Morecambe. When I read the first few pages I got confused (I knew very little about the book) because I wasn't sure if Sid AKA Mr Lonely was a real person so I googled it and read some info about this odd novel. Needless to say I saw a few bad reviews but I was determined to give it a chance.
Like other people I felt like I could hear Eric Morecambe's voice telling these stories, but unfortunately while he made me laugh, this book didn't. Its not funny, very dated, badly written and not very engaging. I feel guilty even saying it. It really is rubbish :(
Like other people I felt like I could hear Eric Morecambe's voice telling these stories, but unfortunately while he made me laugh, this book didn't. Its not funny, very dated, badly written and not very engaging. I feel guilty even saying it. It really is rubbish :(
October 17, 2024
I felt really sad reading this book. I think it's because I could hear Eric's voice throughout the narrative. It made me see him as a sadly unfulfilled but incredibly talented man trying to battle with his own demons. I got about 25% in and simply couldn't finish it. I don't know if the book was meant to portray the innermost workings of his mind - but that's how it read to me.
It certainly wasn't a well written book and I so wish I hadn't downloaded it. I prefer to remember him for his genius - unfortunately genius is only one side of the coin, and too often the reverse side is something much darker and painful.
It certainly wasn't a well written book and I so wish I hadn't downloaded it. I prefer to remember him for his genius - unfortunately genius is only one side of the coin, and too often the reverse side is something much darker and painful.
July 22, 2013
Bawdier and more acerbic than you would expect from Eric Morcambe, this is a depressing, nasty little book which you desperately hope wasn't based on personal experience. Apart from which, it actually isn't all that funny either; lines like 'he did not actually roll towards the front door and he did not exactly stagger, it was both, more of a rollagger' might have tripped off Eric's tongue for a throwaway laugh, but written down it is turgid and laboured - and it relentlessly runs through the book, often instead of any actual narrative. Worth avoiding.
June 5, 2013
Not exactly great literature - the story of a low-rent comedian's life is told in an easy, conversational style. And Morecambe's tale is certainly dated in its treatment of matters of race and sexuality, without being in any way malicious. Furthermore, some of the humour is surprisingly clumsy, coming as it does from a comic genius. Nevertheless, this is a fascinating (and sadly topical) insight into seedy 1970s showbiz. Well worth investigating.
June 19, 2013
When I consider who wrote this, I have to say that I was really disappointed with this book. I can not remember even smiling as I read this, never mind laughing out loud. I will definitely not be picking this book up to read again. The only positive point is that I managed to finish and didn't quit part way through although I was sorely tempted.
June 18, 2013
Ok but very basic writing . Very racist and extremely Sexist which I was surprised from Eric ., but it was written in the 70's !!!
The story was very predictable .
The story was very predictable .
June 30, 2013
No real flow to the story and lacking any of the humour you would expect from the great Eric Morcambe
July 16, 2013
i thought it would be funny, it wasn't. Poor story with no real purpose. As a tool for telling quick one liner jokes it didn't work
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews