Ernie Wise has died at the age of 73, bringing down the final curtain on Britain's most popular comedy act, Morecambe and Wise.

He suffered a heart attack on Sunday morning at the Nuffield Hospital, Wexham, near Slough, following a series of heart problems over the years. Holding back tears, Doreen Wise said of her husband: "We have had ups and downs for quite a while, but he is finally gone."

Last year, Ernie fell ill at his holiday home in Boca Raton, in Florida, days after celebrating his birthday on 27 November.

He suffered two heart attacks within a week and spent almost three weeks in intensive care before undergoing a triple heart bypass operation in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Two weeks ago, he was flown home from the States by air ambulance.

Doreen, 68, who lived with Ernie in a luxury home on the banks of the River Thames in Maidenhead, Berkshire, said: "I phoned the hospital this morning at 6.15 to check how he was and they said he was OK. But 15 minutes later they rang me back and said there had been a change and he didn't look good.

"I went to the hospital, but he had already died from heart failure and complications following the operation and he had had a chest infection."

Ernie's 43-year partnership with Eric Morecambe ended with the latter's death - also from heart failure - in 1984. When Eric died, Ernie described it as the saddest day of his life.

And only a few days ago Sid Green, co-writer of classic sketches for Morecambe and Wise, died at the age of 71. Green and the late Dick Hills were among the most prolific television comedy writing duos of the late 1950s and 1960s, but were best known for their work with Morecambe and Wise.

Tributes have been pouring in from friends, fellow entertainers and politicians expressing their deep sadness.

MP and former actress Glenda Jackson, who appeared with the duo in their TV show, called Ernie "loveable, funny and intensely hard-working".

Bill Cotton, former BBC managing director of television, said: "When Morecambe and Wise were at the height of their fame and success there was no doubt in my mind that this was a 50/50 partnership.

"They were both as good as each other and had an equal part to play in one of the best and funniest double acts that has ever graced the entertainment business in this country."

In the 1970s half the British population watched the Morecambe and Wise Show, in which Ernie played the straight man to Eric. It was the peak of a popularity built over 40 years, starting in theatre and on radio.

Ernie Wise was born Ernest Wiseman in 1925. He grew up in Leeds, the son of a railway worker, and soon showed an early gift for entertaining. At six he was clog-dancing with his father in local clubs and at 10 he was being hailed as Britain's answer to Mickey Rooney.

By the time he teamed up with Eric Morecambe aged just 15, he was already a song and dance veteran.

Their double act was first seen at the Empire Theatre in Liverpool in 1941 and developed for many years on the radio.

Their first television series was made for the BBC in 1955 as the pair began to establish themselves as the country's most popular comedians. Over the next 29 years they starred in a series of celebrity-packed television specials, both for the BBC and ITV.

It was with the BBC that they made their final programmes before Eric's fatal heart failure in 1984.

Many of their best-loved acts saw an apparently well prepared sequence fall apart at the seams.

Though Eric got most of the laughs, many were generated by Ernie's pompous persona, his "short, fat hairy legs" and his famous thatch of hair, which Eric would tug insisting "you can't see the join".

Ernie always insisted he was more than just the straightman. Off-stage, the pair avoided "living in each other's pockets". But professionally they had a tremendous affinity.

They made several films together, appeared in Royal Command Performances, and won a string of showbiz distinctions.

They collaborated in an autobiography, Eric and Ernie, published in 1973, and three years later, while at the peak of their powers, they were both awarded an OBE.

Ernie's career declined after Eric's death. He went solo for a time and appeared in pantomime, but there were few attractive offers. Poor health persuaded him to retire after more than 60 years in entertainment.

Retirement was mostly spent in the sunshine of Florida, where he could look back on a partnership that became the most popular in British television history.