I started at ATV just after Morecambe & Wise left to go to the BBC, then I went to the BBC and then later to Thames – which Eric and Ernie switched to after their days at the BBC. So we sort of followed each other around!

When I first met Eric, it was at the BBC. I told him that I was doing an impression of him nowadays and Eric asked: ‘Are you doing me now?’

I used to watch people like Eric on TV as much as possible, but, if I couldn’t ‘get them’ straight away, then I wouldn’t include them in my act.

I used to always impersonate Eric while wearing a top hat because Eric had less hair than me and I didn’t want to wear a wig!

Incidentally, I memorably recall impersonating Eric as part of a three-week run at the Talk of the Town during the early 1970s. 

In 1968, I appeared in the Royal Variety Performance. I was not down to do this show, but Eric had a heart attack, and I happened to be at the London Palladium. Eric and Ernie were doing two spots in the show, and as stand-ins Frankie Howerd took one and I did the other. My greatest thrill was that I was in the No.1 dressing-room, because it’s part of theatre ethics that if you replace a performer you naturally go into his room. I wasn’t the senior star in the show, but I was in the star’s dressing-room, sharing it with Engelbert Humperdinck and Des O’Connor and Frankie Howerd – no hardship there. It was a room I had visited before.

Although I don’t perform my act professionally now, I still impersonate people like Eric at dinner parties. And I kept that black top hat I used to wear when I impersonated him. And, although I don’t wear it, I keep it as a souvenir. I also still have the fez that I wore when impersonating Tommy Cooper.

Eric’s wife never seemed to laugh at Eric’s jokes. My wife didn’t laugh at my act either. Wives of comedians never seem to laugh at their husbands!