by John Fisher
(Walk)
Juliet: It was me. I fell out of bed.
John Palfreyman recalls the anxiety everyone felt whether he’d manage to complete the walk from one side of the stage to the other. Even in fast forward it appears slow: one could almost be forgiven for supposing his feet had been anaesthetized.
The 1978 New London series saw the great comedian at the nadir of his form. For the most part good ideas backfired through lack of rehearsals and the physical condition of the performer upon whom they were dependent. John shudders at the memory of the humbling ritual whereby black coffee had to be poured down his throat three quarters of an hour before the dress rehearsal and again as recording approached. Classic bits of business were omitted from tried and tested routines; other lines were repeated for no apparent reason. For some time his slight incoherence had been funny, but now words were being left out of sentences with embarrassing effect. In one moment of desperation he interprets a laugh as a prompt to turn his back to the audience and check his flies. At times he even appears to lose his temper with the audience, berating a woman in the front row: ‘Hey, watch me! How dare you look away over there!’ Distracted by his nails, he then turns angrily to the back of the tabs: ‘Stop talking. Somebody out here’s dying.’ There was a time when he could have made such comments funny, but that moment had passed. It is impossible to say how conscious he was of the shambles in which he found himself. According to Palfreyman, Cooper became increasingly introverted as the series progressed. His own enjoyment in his performance had deserted him. At the end of one show he is heard muttering ‘Rubbish! Rubbish!’ under the closing credits. There is an obvious tone of acrimony to his voice that no one on the production team picked up. If they perceived it as a variation of the Morecambe and Wise catchphrase they were chillingly mistaken. It is amazing that the shows were transmitted in the form they were. Perhaps there were no editing options left.
After the first recording Philip Jones called Ferrie with disappointment rather than censure in his voice to report that ‘the magic is not what it was.’ However he was prepared to keep his judgement open until he had seen more of the shows. His personal opinion did change, but no one could ever claim this was Cooper’s finest hour. Nevertheless, the series was scarcely half over before Philip was agitating Miff to sit down to discuss the future. Possibly on the back of whispered interest from the BBC, Thames was prepared to follow through with one further series. The six episodes of Cooper’s Half Hour were aired in the early weeks of the autumn of 1980. By now almost every permutation on obvious titles had been worked for him. It would be the final series he would record for television, whether for Thames or any other company. Everyone must have appreciated that Cooper was winding down both creatively and physically, but his health appeared to pick up and there was a noticeable improvement in form. It was especially touching that his son, actor Thomas Henty should be featured as a regular cast member, proving to be an astute partner to his father in what amounted to a weekly retrospective of many of his classic theatre routines. ‘Hello, Joe’, the ‘Buffalo’ sequence, ‘A Few Impressions’, the ‘Zoo’ routine and a cod hypnotic sketch that had also served Tommy early in his career were given a last airing and emerged surprisingly as fresh and funny.
The shows, produced this time by Keith Beckett, were designed with musical guests and dancers to give Tommy even less to do. There was little in the way of demanding new material, although from time to time he grasped the nettle of a new technical challenge as in a routine in which he attempted without much success to control the movements of a large ball floating through the air courtesy of the device known as chroma-key or colour separation overlay. On the spoken comedy front, there was even a hint of self-mockery that did something to redeem the worst excesses of the last debacle: ‘The producer on the last show – I said to him, “What was it like?” And he said, “It wasn’t very good.” He said, “It wasn’t you.” And I said, “What d’you mean it wasn’t me?” He said, “You didn’t have any sparkle.” He said, “You were down.” He said, “You weren’t bright.”’ The sequence rambles on until the producer leaves in a huff –‘Well, it may have been a Daimler!’ At least the new writing team of Eric Davidson and Laurie Rowley, with support from Bayliss, was delivering to a standard, however little the prominence of Tommy’s old material left for them to do.
Cooper’s remaining television appearances would be confined to guest spots with Eric Sykes, Bob Monkhouse and the Dutch personality, Willem Ruis in the Netherlands. A special under the banner of The Main Attraction for the BBC in the summer of 1983 reunited him triumphantly with his old friend, Frankie Vaughan as Tommy’s ‘special guest star’– an instance of tables turned after so many years. Sadly a few years earlier he had been prevented from appearing in what might have remained in the archives as the crowning guest appearance of his career, when he was one of the few ‘local’ British acts to be extended an invitation to appear on The Muppet Show recorded under Lew Grades’s banner at Elstree Studios. Editorially the idea was sound. Kermit, Miss Piggy and company had worked admirably with the young American illusionist Doug Henning. Both Bob Hope and Milton Berle had found their match in Fozzie Bear. Alec Fyne at ATV had made the approach with an enquiry for November 1978 three months previously. Miff’s reply was that Tommy was not free. He did have cabaret dates in his diary, but nothing that, as Leslie Grade would have insisted, could not have been rescheduled. The request was renewed for January and was again refused. As things materialized by the time this date came around Tommy was incapacitated. In some ways Tommy Cooper could have been a Jim Henson creation, but alas the green felt and the red felt were not destined to come together and for that Ferrie has to take considerable responsibility.
One television show graced by Cooper as a guest on several occasions was This Is Your Life, in its halcyon days at Thames when Eamonn Andrews was the custodian of the big red book. Tommy steadfastly refused ever to be featured as a subject, unwilling to see himself made an emotional hostage to ratings, something with which Miff heartily concurred. This was a stand that went back to the show’s earlier life at the BBC. Besides, according to daughter Vicky, her father absolutely hated surprises. Perhaps out of loyalty to Thames, however, he went out of his way on four occasions to pay tribute to people he especially admired. He never left without leaving subject, friends and family, not to mention the usually placid Andrews, in a state of comic turmoil from which it was difficult for the show to recover. He came from his sick bed to accuse fellow magician, David Nixon of stealing all his tricks and claimed on another occasion that he had no idea who actor Bill Fraser was. Bob Todd, the lugubrious sidekick of countless Benny Hill shows as well as the occasional Cooper programme, provided a third occasion to cut the bile of false sentiment as Tommy saw fit.
Most memorable was the show to celebrate Eric Sykes. Arranged in tiers above and alongside Eric and his family were many members of the British comedy elite, including Spike Milligan, Jimmy Edwards, Johnny Speight, Max Bygraves, Terry-Thomas, Hattie Jacques and Frankie Howerd. To witness this veritable first eleven reduced to hysterics was an amazing event, the sight of Milligan alone helpless with laughter as he wiped the tears on his shirt sleeve providing a genuinely touching moment. The show that set out to be a tribute to Sykes became by default a tribute within a tribute to Cooper. It said everything that needed to be said about the respect in which he was held by the comedy profession. His files show that these appearances were scripted by him with possible help from Eddie Bayliss. No one would have guessed from the sense of anarchy that prevailed, although the fact, if known, would probably have enhanced the esteem extended towards him by all present.
However inconsistent it had been, one thing remained constant in Cooper’s television career. That was the tolerance and affection that was sustained on his behalf by those working with him. The excesses of his lateness have passed into folklore. Production crews and supporting cast members would curse and tear their hair out as the scarc
e seconds of studio or rehearsal time ticked away, but the moment he arrived with his plastic bags clinking away in each hand and that beaming smile plastered all over his face, all animosity dispersed. Among top comics he was not alone as a sinner in this regard. Perhaps only he got off so lightly. On one notorious occasion he walked in late for rehearsals in a bowler hat and pyjamas: ‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t get up!’ Obviously he had changed in the back of the car for the gag, but as Eric Sykes, his director on that occasion, observed, ‘How could you be cross with a man like that?’ Producer Dennis Kirkland has added the observation that Tommy had been waiting at the top of the road in the hire car for nearly an hour watching everyone go in and waiting for the optimum moment in which to spring the surprise! Mary Kay recalls a different detail, possibly from another occasion, when Tommy arrived in dressing-gown and nightcap clutching a teddy bear.
At times like these he might have been a schoolboy back in the Fawley playground, although as Mary has pointed out his basic unpunctuality was a flaw that undermined everything he preached to others, namely ‘that attention should be given to every possible contingency and problem. He knew it was a serious weakness. “I don’t like it,” he would say, “but it just seems to happen.”’ In truth the years of playing in theatres and nightclubs had rendered mornings non-existent in the normal sense. As Dick Vosburgh joked, ‘You scheduled him early for location at your peril. Even a bromo-seltzer was too much for him to handle!’ Royston Mayoh tried to coax Thames into recording a cabaret show with him at midnight, the time when his body clock was most responsive, but unions and bureaucracy stood in the way. As Roy added, ‘Ask Cooper to sparkle at eight, he’d only just finished scratching himself!’
Journalists and photographers kept waiting were possibly harder to placate, but overall conceivably more allowances were made for Tommy Cooper than for the average star. That he came with no side, no swagger helped to justify the privileges accorded him. He drew affection towards him like a magnet and that excused a multitude of misdemeanours. The rank and file on the studio floor doted on him as one of their own. He always had a trick to show them, a gag they could swap with their mates. Here he would allow himself to be a little off-colour, as on the occasion he sat on the set of The Bob Monkhouse Show during rehearsals. He went through the blocking of his material for the director, Geoff Miles, but the laughter conveyed from the studio floor to the control gallery bore no relationship to what Tommy was demonstrating for the cameras. Gradually the whole crew and production team became caught up in an avalanche of laughter triggered by the sight of a dummy sexual appendage of Sir Les Patterson proportions protruding beneath his left sock and trouser leg. If Tommy had seemed unnecessarily restless on the occasion, unable to keep his leg still, now we knew why. It took a considerable time for the studio to return to normality. But the outward display of bonhomie came at a cost. Dennis Kirkland, who worked with Cooper both as producer of his last special at Thames and as a floor manager throughout his career, insists like so many that he was the same off camera as he was on: ‘You just get on with Tom. He’s hysterical. He’s everything that everyone wants him to be.’ It was easy not to notice the pressure this placed on the man himself, something that, as we have seen, Miff Ferrie fully understood.
Directors and producers worth their salt – on Cooper shows the roles were usually taken by the same individual – knew how to make their own concessions. You were bound to flounder if you failed to acknowledge the spontaneous nature of the man. Royston Mayoh admits, ‘To direct Tommy Cooper in the accepted sense was a nonsense. Tolerance was the key. My job was to give him his fences, tell him where not to exceed. He was never difficult, never vindictive. The only thing he seemed embittered about was Miff Ferrie’s dog. “That fucking dog,” he’d say. “I’ll even eat that fucking thing!” And you were always alert to his health. When his legs were such a problem, if a script came in that required him to go upstairs, you made sure he never saw it, however funny it was.’ The main frustration for all directors was attempting to contain a comic giant of six feet three and a half inches within a three by four frame. The moment they cut to a mid shot they often halved his comic value, but not to do so brought its own problems for the viewer preconditioned by grammar of this kind.
The abiding memory of so many who worked on the shows is the rehearsal of his solo spot. In the early days he complained that the time allowed for this was crowded out by that allocated to sketches and guest musical acts. Eventually an hour of every camera rehearsal was set aside for the purpose. It consisted of Cooper on stage muttering to himself – he never rehearsed gags out loud – then moving backwards and forwards between two tables all the while going ‘Pitter, pitter, pitter’ and ‘Patter, patter, patter’. Mary Kay captured the process perfectly: ‘Then he would suddenly say “Woof” and mutter some more and then say “Woof, woof” and gesticulate with his hands as though he was persuading us to do something. He looked as blankly at us as we did at him. Once more he’d move about and say “Patter, patter, patter” and “Big woof”. That was it. He’d insisted on time for his stand up and hadn’t shown us anything. The “Woof”, of course, was meant to represent the laughter from the audience.’ It was all over in ten minutes.
For the star, the exercise was valuable at a psychological level, part of what Mayoh described as helping to create the atmosphere in which he excelled, something in which he had the full support of the technical crew. As for sketches, Mayoh again held the key: ‘The best you could do is arrange the supporting cast around him so that if he wandered off on some track of his own they could catch up. There was no point in telling him he was three inches off his mark. You just moved the mark and let him get on with what he did best.’ As actress Sheila Steafel commented, ‘You didn’t really work with him. You were there. You worked around him.’ When it came to the scripts themselves there is a half-myth among writers that he was bad at remembering their lines, but Mary Kay insists that he applied a schoolboy diligence to learning his words by rote. Audio tapes exist of the process. I think she can be believed that for the most part he would often be word perfect while others in the cast would arrive unprepared. Apparently he was fond of quoting Spencer Tracy on this point: ‘All you have to do is know your lines.’
Writers, actors, producers, all come together in their memory of the moment when rehearsals had to stop for him to perform his latest magic trick. It had nothing to do with the show, unless he could find a way at a later date of giving it a comic twist, but obviously represented his own subconscious attempt at a bonding exercise with fellow team members. As actor Gordon Peters observed, ‘You never got close to him any other way. He was totally obsessed in his own world.’ Perhaps that obsession makes his success in such an essentially collaborative medium as television all the more remarkable. With a fully lit stage and a responsive orchestra, stage work came second nature to him. Television was always bound to be a bigger challenge.
I have left to last what may have been his funniest moment in a television studio. Sadly it was not recorded. It happened at a time when fellow comic, Dick Emery was hitting the headlines with the break-up of yet another marriage. Tommy was enjoying an after-rehearsals drink with Barry Cryer in the bar at Teddington Studios. He looked at his watch and saw it was fast approaching eight o’clock. He then remembered that Morecambe and Wise were taping their own show that night. ‘Let’s go down to see the boys,’ said Cooper. Tommy had no difficulty getting past the flashing red studio transmission light. He sidled along the edge of the audience seating rostrum as Eric and Ernie forged ahead with their warm-up, which was in full flow. Barry held back as Tommy barged into the act. The place was in uproar as he grabbed Eric by the arm and went down on his knees, shedding tears by the bucketful. It took several moments for the laughter to subside. Eventually Ernie managed to say something: ‘Tommy, what’s the matter?’ After a sob or two more, Cooper composed himself and said, ‘Dick Emery has gone and left me.’ At which point he stood up and left as
suddenly as he appeared. As Eric would have said, had he not been rendered speechless by the incident, ‘Well, there’s no answer to that!’ Perhaps Cooper did not need so many scriptwriters after all. For a man who did not like surprises, he never lost his knack for giving them.
TEN
Method in the Madness
All great performance is based on a finely tuned individual balance of skill, ego, and personality. In Cooper’s case there can be no question that he possessed the latter trait in profusion, while, as we have seen, his ego – unless the word is qualified as the need for an audience’s affection – was, for such a giant of comedy, a relatively low-key affair. However, in using incompetence as the peg upon which to hang his public image, he could not help but raise the question of the extent of the first attribute. The anatomy of a physical comedian of Cooper’s accomplishment, like that of a soccer superhero, can be seen to comprise a framework of poise, agility, heart and mind. There were actually times on stage when he resembled a football star with his ability to change direction with amazing cunning, the feints and swerves of his body adding a balletic quality to the equation. The risks he took in the cause of laughter showed no lack of courage at a level worthy of a Victoria Cross in the front line of comedy. How rational he was is another issue.
I doubt if Cooper ever really stopped thinking about his work. His absorption in the preparations for a performance was legendary, never leaving a single thing to chance – ensuring that he had two, sometimes three of every prop he needed – and constantly preoccupied with the secret workings of a mechanical flower pot or an exploding cigar rather than a matter of deeper introspection. A stage hand once commented on his habit of treble-checking every prop before a show: ‘Tommy’s no fool. He knows where every single bit of gear is. It’s like a space-launch countdown.’ For a standard cabaret appearance, this amounted to over one hundred props distributed over three tables, not to mention free standing items like the gate, the table that disintegrated and the pedal bin with the shock-horror head that popped up from inside. Anyone who observed the process would have to admit that there was something Zen-like in his application to the task. Photographs and sketches made to help the process reveal the bird’s eye view of his stage to be as fascinating as the most surreal version of Kim’s Game. Hidden among the props were prompt cards – anything from postcards, shirt stiffeners and the dividers from packets of Shredded Wheat – containing new jokes to be tried and mistakes (plotted) to be made. His son Thomas, who in later years helped his father with this chore, once said that Tommy knew where everything was blindfolded.
