Death
Five months after the Christmas special, Morecambe took part in a show hosted by close friend and comedian Stan Stennett at the Roses Theatre in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire on a Sunday evening. His wife, Joan, who was in the audience, recalled that Morecambe was "on top form". He recounted, and joked to the audience about, the tales of his childhood, his career, the influence of his mother, Sadie, his time as a Bevin Boy, about Diana Dors, who had recently died, and Tommy Cooper, who had died of a heart attack live on stage six weeks earlier while appearing on television. Morecambe said he would hate to die like that. He discussed his first heart attack, and his open heart surgery five years earlier.
After the show had ended and Morecambe had left the stage, the musicians returned and picked up their instruments. He rushed back onto the stage to join them and energetically played various instruments. He then left the stage only to return moments later. All in all, he made six curtain calls. Finally, he said "That's your lot!", waved to the audience, and left the stage. He walked into the wings and joked "Thank goodness that's over." A few moments later, Morecambe collapsed with a third heart attack. He was rushed to Cheltenham General Hospital, where he died five and a half hours later.
Read more about this topic: Eric Morecambe
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to the master—so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil—so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best-regulated administration of slavery.”
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)
“What we think of as our sensitivity is only the higher evolution of terror in a poor dumb beast. We suffer for nothing. Our own death wish is our only real tragedy.”
—Mario Puzo (b. 1920)
“We achieve “active” mastery over illness and death by delegating all responsibility for their management to physicians, and by exiling the sick and the dying to hospitals. But hospitals serve the convenience of staff not patients: we cannot be properly ill in a hospital, nor die in one decently; we can do so only among those who love and value us. The result is the institutionalized dehumanization of the ill, characteristic of our age.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)