Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing

by John Fisher

  It is not difficult to imagine Gwen, jealous of her husband, resenting Ferrie when there was so much she thought she could be doing for him herself. As Vicky said, ‘Consequently she would wind Tommy up something rotten about Miff. Father would get angry and mother would goad him to get on the line to Miff. More often than not Miff would slam the phone down. Then five minutes later I’d be delegated to call Miff back so that the slanging match could continue. Father would get all hot and bothered, while mother sat impassive at the table with a stony face as things got worse.’ It became a vicious circle as Tommy kept insisting to Miff not to phone Gwen when he was not there, protesting, ‘It is bad for her health and upsets her nerves badly.’ While all this may not sound the perfect recipe for happy Sundays at home, Vicky concedes today that Miff did get a lot of things right for her father and kept his business affairs in order in a way that would have defeated many a lesser agent.

  In retrospect one of Miff’s shortcomings was his inability to spot the occasional window of opportunity that could have enhanced the Cooper career at any given time, the 1960 Las Vegas offer being one instance. Openings that were slammed shut in other media will be detailed in later chapters, but it has always intrigued me that he refused resolutely for Tommy to have any involvement in radio. In 1955 Cooper was courted relentlessly by the producers of Educating Archie, the hit BBC radio show starring ventriloquist Peter Brough and Archie Andrews that for ten spectacular years catapulted an incomparable parade of new British comedy talent to stardom. The list embraced Tony Hancock, Max Bygraves, Hattie Jacques, Beryl Reid, Benny Hill, Harry Secombe, Dick Emery, and many more. The combination of the cheeky schoolboy dummy and the ingratiating comedy magician ever anxious to educate his young friend to the sort of tricks and japes that characterized his own schooldays seems irresistible. The vocal contrast between Archie’s high falsetto and Tommy’s gruff tones must have constituted a radio producer’s dream: Cooper had the most distinctive new voice in comedy. Even Brough’s own powers of persuasion were brought on board by the BBC, but without success.

  Ferrie’s reasoning appears to have been that his client was a visual performer, a ruling with which Tommy does not appear to have disagreed. However, it contradicts Miff’s desire to develop his client as more than a novelty act. His magical background had not stopped another performer, David Nixon becoming a superb straight man to Arthur Askey on radio in the Fifties. Peter Waring, a debonair, laid-back patter magician, who specialized in throwaway lines like, ‘A bachelor is a man who’s got no children . . . to speak of,’ had stolen a march on them both until his suicide took him off the air in 1949. The greatest British wireless comedian of the Fifties was Tony Hancock. Watching thoughts flicker across his morose countenance on television tended to obscure the fact that his presence on the radio compelled you to imagine his expressions when you were listening. Max Wall was another visual clown who built for himself a substantial radio following. The final dampener to the argument would have been Peter Brough himself. The idea of a ventriloquist on radio was a non-starter, until one considers the medium for what it is, namely a theatre for the imagination, something understood as vividly by the likes of Dylan Thomas and Francis Durbridge as by Brough’s original scriptwriters, Eric Sykes and Sid Colin. Another approach in the same year for Tommy to appear as a regular team member on the panel game, My Wildest Dream, a precursor of Does the Team Think?, was more reasonably turned down. Whatever his ad-libbing powers, they were unlikely to hold their own among practised wits like Ted Ray, Tommy Trinder, and Jimmy Edwards.

  A fragment found in Tommy’s papers from around the late Forties suggests that he had not always been averse to the idea of appearing on the medium. Headed ‘Radio Script by Tommy Cooper’, it begins:

  How do you do, ladies and gentlemen? As you know my name is Tommy Cooper. The reason I mention the name is that it may be necessary later to identify the body. For some reason I can’t forget my school days. What memories! I may not have been the smartest boy in the class, but I wasn’t far away from the smartest – about three seats away. Mathematics was easy for me. One and one is two, two and two is four, four and four is eight, eight and eight is sixteen, sixteen and sixteen – and then there’s history – I should be on the stage!

  It then segues into ‘I have just returned from a tour of Germany’ mode. Around the time of the Peter Brough enquiry, both Val Andrews and Freddie Sadler turned their hands to writing pilot scripts for a radio series for him. Sadler’s began:

  This is the BBC Light Programme. The time is seven o’clock and here is an important announcement. Due to circumstances beyond its control, coupled with the fact that all the other contract artists are appearing elsewhere, the BBC has no option but to inform you that the next half hour will have to be . . . The Tommy Cooper Show. And here is thecause of all the trouble, Tommy Cooper!’

  The script held little promise. The idea of satirizing familiar theatrical and cinematic genres had been taken to new heights by Frank Muir and Denis Norden in Take It From Here. There seemed little point in building an entire thirty minutes around an extended sketch with Tommy as Frankenstein, although on the assumption that you knew what Cooper looked like, which most of the country did by the mid-Fifties, there could have been no funnier casting. Had Miff seen the script, he would have felt vindicated in his decision. On the other hand, had the Educating Archie opportunity been grasped, Tommy would have achieved a public relations boost to die for – with repeats the show attracted an audience of eighteen million – and resident star guest status with none of the responsibility of having to carry the show. The elegant and unassuming Peter Brough always managed that with no trouble at all.

  If the golden age of BBC radio comedy could not claim Cooper’s success as part of its glorious achievement, there was another British institution with which he would become inseparably and triumphantly linked. His appeal to royalty, quite as much as to the working men’s club circuit, underlined his classlessness. Whenever he was billed to appear on the Royal Variety Performance, he would unquestionably steal the show. Today the annual event is a shallow celebrity-obsessed shadow of its former self. In an era when there was a variety profession and genuine respect both for real talent and the royal family, it was a true accolade to appear, as he did in 1953, 1964, 1967, 1971, and 1977. The challenge of playing a crowd that has one eye on the royal box most of the time is legendary. Few have the ability to cut through the ice to the satisfaction of the whole house. In 1963 John Lennon succeeded with the line, ‘Those in the cheaper seats clap your hands. The rest of you just rattle your jewellery.’ The following year Tommy came close: ‘I’ve brought the wife. I said, “How much is a ticket?” They said, “A hundred pounds.” I said, “How much is a programme?” They said, “Six pounds.” I said, “Give us a programme. She can sit on that.”’

  Possibly more important to Cooper were the more intimate occasions he entertained the royals, both in their own environment at Windsor Castle, and at a succession of Variety Club luncheons when the presence of the Duke of Edinburgh signalled the occasion for an impromptu double act between the pair. The first dates back to 1955. Television producer, Richard Afton was involved in organizing the event and called Miff excitedly on 20 January: ‘Very Confidential!! The lunch date for Tommy on 8 February is fixed. The Duke of Edinburgh will be there sitting alongside Tommy. When he heard that T. C. was being invited he accepted with alacrity as “Tommy Cooper is the Queen’s favourite comedian.”’ Pathé Pictorial was at the Savoy Hotel to film the event for posterity. When he failed to make a beaker in a tube disappear on a tray, he asked the Duke to stand with the request, ‘You hold it!’ The Duke obliged, at which point the beaker vanished right under his nose. ‘You’ve done it! You’ve done it!’ shouted Tommy above the applause. He whipped off his fez to reveal a smaller one underneath, presenting it to the Duke to take home for Prince Charles: ‘That’s for a certain very small gentleman.’ He repeated the formula in even more spectacular fashion at
a similar event in July 1964, this time asking the distinguished guest to hold a bowl of water on a tray. Tommy threw a cloth over the bowl, which disappeared without trace, until in a brilliant piece of unrehearsed stage management the onus of exposure was placed on the Duke as he showed the bowl attached to the side of the tray the audience was not supposed to see. The publicity value of the event was enormous.

  A personal hat trick was achieved when Tommy was the principal speaker at the sixtieth birthday party given for the Duke by the Variety Club in 1981. He rose to the occasion wearing a bizarre set of mouse ears, which he justified as an elephant deterrent: ‘People don’t know this but elephants are frightened of mice. If an elephant saw a mouse, it would run away. It would go. And it works, cos if you look around the room you won’t see an elephant anywhere.’ He then turned to Gwen by his side and muttered, ‘A bit subtle that, wasn’t it?’ As the laughter built, he attempted to adjust his bowtie. It fell apart in his hands. ‘What did I do?’ For the entire world he looked as if he was besieged by demons from another planet, the nervous laugh his one last link with reality. He then coerced Gwen into a card trick: ‘First take four cards, madam, and then give me one back. Now can you say out loud what is the difference between the first hand you had and the second hand you have now?’ ‘The Queen is missing,’ came the reply. ‘Well, you can’t have everybody!’ said Tommy.

  When it came to delivering an after-dinner speech or similar there was no one to top him. Members of the Grand Order of Water Rats were treated to a typical display of his rugged wit when he delivered an unforgettable address at a lodge meeting in March 1981. Having referred to the true etymology of the title of the organisation whereby ‘Rats’ is ‘star’ spelled backwards, he went on to make the observation that ‘air raid’ spelled backwards was ‘diarrhoea’ and that his agent, Miff Ferrie was ‘just as big a bastard spelled backwards as he is forwards.’ Perhaps his irreverent streak was most in evidence in 1983 at a Variety Club function held in this country to honour Dean Martin. It is unlikely that Martin, an infrequent visitor to these shores, had ever set eyes on this man before. Nevertheless he would have felt the goodwill the man generated and, being the showman he was, Dino laughed along with the flow as Tommy got into his stride: ‘I lie awake and think of the old Martin and Lewis films. And when you think of those two, it’s amazing how things turn out. Dean Martin has become an international star known all over the world. I often wonder what happened to the Eyetie who used to do all the singing!’ At this stage Tommy’s physical condition was weak, but he still had the ability to punch home his humour to an audience. His ability to prick the pomposity of formal functions and lodge meetings contributed in no small measure to his popularity within the profession, aligning him with that earlier master of the revels and royal favourite, Bud Flanagan.

  The most memorable line Cooper ever spoke in royal company remains the most controversial. There is no one who hasn’t heard at some time what he said to the Queen in the line-up after a Royal Variety Performance. As legend has it, he asked Her Majesty if he could ask her a personal question. The Queen replied, ‘As personal as I’ll allow.’ Tommy said, ‘Do you like football?’ She said, ‘Not particularly.’ He said, ‘Well, could I have your tickets for the Cup Final?’ The controversy surrounds whether the line was original with him. Max Bygraves attributes it to Bud Flanagan and Max certainly shared many royal stages with the leader of the Crazy Gang. Cooper never did. And yet others, not least court photographer on such occasions, Doug McKenzie, swear they were there when it happened. Jimmy Tarbuck, who was standing next to him, can even pinpoint the year, 1964, the occasion he shared the stage with Tommy, Brenda Lee, and Cilla Black. There is no reason to question the recall of any of these stalwarts, but the line is so much within the spirit of Flanagan, there can be little doubt that it was his origination. We shall never know what gave Tommy the gall to repeat it, although McKenzie has an interesting sidelight on the circumstances. Tommy was disappointed that the Queen hardly took any notice of him in the line-up. As she walked away, he gave his attention-grabbing cough to regain her attention – ‘I say, your majesty,’ – and then asked the question. It was typical of Cooper to do it on the downbeat, investing it with a surreal originality of its own, but it was not truly his. According to Max it was first delivered to the Queen Mother, which most probably sets the year at 1950, when the young Bygraves shared the bill with Flanagan and Allen, Jack Benny, and Max Miller. Bud had been one of the speakers at the July 1964 Variety Club lunch. It was now November. Perhaps the old stager had educated the new pretender to the original exchange on that occasion, maybe in reminiscence with the Duke himself. Let us only hope it did not change the Queen’s opinion of him. Word has it that Bernard Delfont, one pace behind the Queen, glowered at the time. Tommy’s interjection was tantamount to addressing the monarch direct, which you never did. However, there is no record that Miff received a complaint from the Palace the following morning.

  EIGHT

  Cooper Vision: Part One

  When Tommy was given his first series, television comedy was still at a tentative stage. Arthur Askey’s success was not wrongly perceived as little more than televised concert party. Richard Hearne, with his Mr Pastry characterization, was primarily a children’s performer accorded bonus adult appeal by nature of the grown-up fascination with the medium that purveyed him. By 1952 it was generally perceived that the only show to have achieved any sort of breakthrough in presentation terms was Terry-Thomas’s How Do You View? with its intimate approach and sketch comedy that scored visually. The star’s bizarre appearance with his gap-toothed smile, elaborate waistcoats and exaggerated cigarette holder, once wittily purveyed as a television aerial, were made for the medium. The challenge that faced Cooper as he contemplated his first television series, It’s Magic, was daunting, but the fact that magic was a visual performance form had to be in his favour.

  A habitué of live performance, Tommy would have to adapt to the more exacting approach of a medium, where, as he admitted in later life, amid a welter of technical distractions the performer has to create his own atmosphere with the studio audience situated on the other side of an enforced barrier of cameras, cables and the people operating them. That mood then had to filter into the homes of millions more. The number of people who have volunteered to me that Cooper is the only comic they have watched from their favourite armchair with tears streaming down their cheeks indicates that he was more than passably successful. However, when he looked back on his first series experience, he did so with a modesty that borders on the defensive. He always recognized it for the big break it was, but in interviews never referred to it as his own show, always as McDonald Hobley’s: ‘He had a show called It’s Magic. I went in as a guest artist, but they kept me for the series.’ Hobley, one of the defining faces of pioneer television in this country, was the debonair continuity announcer who acted as master of ceremonies throughout the programme and proved a perfect foil to Cooper. But the Radio Times billing (as well as Cooper’s contract) left one in no doubt: ‘Tommy Cooper in It’s Magic’. Only then in humbler print do we encounter ‘A miscellany of mischief, music, and mystery, introduced by McDonald Hobley.’ The listings magazine also carried a credit, ‘Material for Tommy Cooper supervised by Miff Ferrie.’ There is no indication of who wrote what and one assumes that Tommy and Miff collated it from the usual ragbag of sources.

  Miscellany is the spice of variety, but in this instance it almost certainly undermined the public’s expectation of the programme. It was not a magic show per se, as its title suggests, but clung to the word ‘magic’ in its figurative sense as the key that locked all the ingredients into place. Tommy’s burlesque interludes were interwoven with items that epitomized the ‘magic’ of music, of dance, of song, and so on. The slender assumption that each segment had a magic of its own was a dangerous one. An early format alludes to featuring the magic of art (backed by music ‘while we look at it’), of ‘the countryside in spring�
�� (film backed by music), of the magic of detection (short whodunnit), of beautiful words (the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet), even the magic of a piece of machinery. Very little has anything to do with the fez-capped giant on fast track to becoming a national figure, although – for all the wrong reasons – the threatened mishmash would have been totally in accord with the image of havoc and mayhem that he cultivated.

  The format triggered an erratic response from Cecil Mc-Givern, the Controller, Television Programmes. A week ahead of the first transmission he wrote to producer Graeme Muir, expressing his fears of a clash of bad taste and, with inflated self-importance more worthy of military regiment than television studio, issued his command: ‘I rely on you to be utterly vigilant – and utterly ruthless – right up to the moment of transmission in cutting out anything and anybody you find to be in the least offensive. Putting, for example, Tommy Cooper in the same context as Romeo and Juliet is immediately a risk and you must accept considerable responsibility.’‘Offensive’ is not exactly the first word that comes to mind in considering Cooper’s humour and, as for Shakespeare, what a wonderful Bottom he would have made in the Dream. For all the flaws in the rationale of the show, McGivern reveals the paranoia that exists to this day in television commissioning editors with few if any credentials for the role. Nevertheless, it is surprising to encounter the insecurity at a time when the industry remained relatively cosy – because still experimental – and an Enid Blyton culture ruled.