Several years before World War II, Ernie Wiseman, a precocious and confident child performer, is signed up by influential impresario Jack Hylton.

In Morecambe, pushy stage mother Sadie Bartholomew drags her slightly reluctant son Eric, an eccentric dancer, from one audition to the next until he too is employed by Hylton.

At first glance the boys do not initially get on but Sadie sees a way to use their cross-talk to form a bantering double act, originally known as Bartholomew and Wise.

After war service, they become successful on stage and on radio; but their attempt to crack the new medium of television is a disaster because they have been forced to accept a script which will make their Northernness acceptable to Southern viewers.

They decide to reform, and to completely rewrite their own act that would become one of the most successful performing duos ever in British comedy.