Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing

by John Fisher

  Another domestic hazard was the likelihood of household objects – even their children’s toys – being spirited away into some mysterious black hole in the service of magic. The kitchen clock was a prime target in this regard, conscripted for the ‘Watch, Watch, Watch’ gag as it was whisked out of the folds of a voluminous silk scarf. Gwen recalled the procedure: ‘I had a lovely old wooden spoon vanish. I was using it to make a cake in the morning and in the afternoon it had gone. The next time I saw it, it was on television!’ This was not her only cause for complaint: ‘Wherever he goes he’s got to have a whole lot of bags with him. We haven’t got a suitcase left in the house that’ll fasten, so he goes out with half a dozen carrier bags and even parcels tied up with string.’

  A telling detail of the way in which Cooper’s working methods invaded the day to day running of the house is recalled by scriptwriter and producer, Neil Shand. In the very early days of Cooper’s association with David Frost, Tommy did appear twice on his New York based talk show. He was on holiday at the time and had few props with him. It was suggested by Shand that he feature his comedy juggling sequence, but he explained that to do the routine justice he would need the clubs he was used to handling and the downside was that they were in Chiswick. Neil insisted this was no problem as they could be flown over in time by Concorde, the least the airline could do for Frost, their most frequent celebrity passenger. Cooper visibly relaxed when it became apparent he would not have to pay for the phone call home. ‘We’ll phone Sheila and get her to wrap them up,’ explained Shand, adding as an afterthought, ‘Just tell us where she can find them.’ ‘In the kitchen in a plastic bag under the sink,’ was the reply. Both maid and airline came up trumps. Tommy was able to dazzle America with his bona fide juggling skills and for a short while Sheila had a little more space in which to store the Brillo Pads, Vim, and Fairy Liquid that used to keep the clubs company.

  When it came to the practicalities of house maintenance Cooper was nowhere to be seen. ‘Useless!’ was Gwen’s instant response to what he was like around the house. There was the night he came home late from a cabaret engagement. When he switched on the lights they fused: ‘He hadn’t the foggiest idea what to do. I had to get out of bed and fix the fuse while he stood there clutching a candle like Wee Willie Winkie.’ One summer the whole family decamped to a rented house in Blackpool for the summer season. Vicky remembers Sheila becoming agitated when she discovered a leak in the roof. Most people would have been spurred to immediate action, calling the builders in as soon as they could. When the maid pointed it out to Tommy, he reacted, ‘You can have a shower under there!’ He couldn’t care less, shrugged his shoulders, gave out the famous laugh and left the room leaving the poor girl upset, confused, and quite unable to see the funny side of the situation. Apparently he loved watching westerns and horror movies on television, but as Gwen said, ‘You have to put up with him going round the house being Dracula or somebody for hours afterwards.’ You sense that mother, daughter, even maid would not have had it any other way. You also sense that the likes of Eric Morecambe, Frankie Howerd, and Benny Hill hung up their public personas once they locked the front door at night. With Cooper you could never be sure.

  Pictures of Tommy taken with his two children when they were growing up reveal a third kid at heart, but the evidence shows that he was an excellent and caring father. To both their parents’ credit Vicky and Thomas appear to have enjoyed a relatively ordinary upbringing, protected from the excesses of media attention. This involved Tommy having to absent himself from school speech days and sports days: the time he did attend, the event turned into an autograph-grabbing fiasco. And while it was easier for him than most parents to connect with them at a child’s level, there were moments when he revealed a more astute side to the parental role. On one occasion Thomas, who had been born on 19 January 1956, became involved with what his mother described as a ‘bad lot’ and found himself pilfering a pen knife and a ball of string from the local Woolworth’s. Gwen went hysterical, but Tommy said not a word, prolonging the agony until the time of reckoning that his son knew must come. That evening he took him aside and laid into him in the most fearsome tones he could muster: ‘If you ever, ever steal again … get me a packet of my favourite cigars.’ Of course, he never did.

  His daughter Vicky recalls that he never helped her with her homework, built her sand castles at the seaside, or drove her to her first party, but claims she always knew that in his eccentric way he loved her. Especially important were those moments on a Sunday evening when she too would be drawn into the assessment of her father’s new tricks. ‘That was only amber, was it?’ he’d enquire if she wasn’t impressed. He’d laugh if there was one she didn’t like. But always she felt special in his company, finding him to be an excellent listener who never appeared bored with the mundane problems she would force him to hear: ‘After sitting quietly for a few moments, he’d give me some absolutely sound advice. He was wise and kind and a great person to have on your side.’ But there were inconsistencies. Vicky still finds it hard to reconcile the man who would lay down the law like a strict Victorian paterfamilias one moment with the one who would keep her up in a restaurant until four o’clock in the morning the next. Thomas recalled the occasion his decision to become a skinhead caused domestic upheaval: ‘When I was a teenager I had my hair cropped to about a quarter of an inch all over because it was fashionable. Mum went berserk. She sent me to my room saying, “Just wait till your father sees that.” But when dad came up he opened the door and then fell about laughing.’

  Many are the tales told by Tommy’s contemporaries of visits to the household that fit so perfectly with the Giles cartoon view of the world. Eric Sykes remembers the time Tommy unexpectedly invited him back to lunch after a morning’s golf: ‘So there’s only the two of us sitting there and Dove came in from the kitchen with the biggest joint of beef you’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen one so big. She put it on the table and she looked at me and she said to Tom, “Why didn’t you tell me you were bringing company?”’ During a Blackpool summer season Jimmy Tarbuck received a more formal invitation to lunch after a morning on the links at Lytham St Anne’s. ‘She’s making a roast,’ said Tommy to the young comedian and two of the King Brothers who were playing with them. At the time the brash young comic was subsisting on a diet of junk food and the invitation to a meal like mum used to make was irresistible. As they came through the porch Tommy told his guests to wait and went in to see Gwen. The words needed no deciphering: ‘He said, “They’re not coming. They decided to play another nine holes.” She said, “They’re not coming? They’re not so-and-so coming?” And all the magic words were coming out. And she went, “They’re not coming? Well, I’ll tell you what …” and she came out and we were in the corridor. And she went, “Oh, hello boys! Isn’t he naughty?”’

  Roy Hudd tells of the occasion a group arrived back at the house after a Water Rats meeting. It was very late and Gwen was roused from her slumbers to come down to attend to their guests. Half awake in dressing gown, slippers and curlers she slumped in her chair as Tommy went into his goose-stepping Erich von Stroheim mode, circling round and round the room as he made the pronouncement, ‘Vhere are ze plans of ze Blenheim Bomber?’ ‘What about Dove?’ nudged one of them. ‘She’ll be fine,’ said Tommy. He would rib his wife mercilessly and not merely as the butt of all those gags bequeathed by Max Miller. One day the Farrows arrived early for a meal and Gwen was still in the bedroom changing. Tommy bellowed upstairs, ‘Dove, come down and meet your guests.’ She came down all apologies: ‘I didn’t mean to keep them waiting.’ ‘Well, put your wig on straight.’ Doubtless again it was Tommy’s way of telling her that he loved her.

  One memorable visit to Chiswick was made by Gene Detroy, the vaudeville animal trainer who brought his chimpanzees with him. Tommy couldn’t resist popping down the road to a home for unmarried mothers with a chimp wrapped up in a shawl. The matron opened the door and immediately went on the defensi
ve: ‘Please, no more children! No more children!’ Tommy pushed the bundle into her arms. Gwen thought the woman was going to faint as the head of the chimpanzee popped out. Tommy’s laugh was heard all the way back down the street. Detroy’s expertize was not confined to the simian breed. Tommy and Gwen wanted a dovecote to add a touch of gentility to the garden. Most probably Gwen also saw it as a gesture of recognition of Tommy’s pet name for herself. Their friend agreed to install a pair of doves. Dove was over the moon until it was discovered they were not a pair, but two females which proceeded to mate with all the pigeons in the neighbourhood. For weeks they were overrun with mangy birds.

  Throughout Gwen was happy to assume the role of long suffering spouse, her stoic attitude founded upon a love for her husband that entailed him coming home every Sunday wherever he might be appearing in the land. As long as she served him his favourite meals, kept his bed warm and ensured that his soup and tea were piping hot, all would be well with the world. Once when Freddie Starr observed, ‘She’s an angel,’ Cooper retorted, ‘She’s fucking gonna be, if this soup’s cold!’ When she was at a loose end there was the charity work for her Masonic lodge and for the Grand Order of Lady Ratlings to keep her occupied. For a short period she involved herself in the running of the magic and joke shop in Shaftesbury Avenue and in the late Fifties became responsible for displaying a most unusual exhibit at venues like the Festival Gardens at Battersea and the Schoolboys’ Own Exhibition at Olympia. This was a Victorian living room in which the furniture was entirely decorated with stamps, the pictures on the wall were made completely from stamps and all other ornaments and fittings were covered with them. It had been the life’s work of the musical clown, Albert Schaffer, for the benefit of whose widow the Coopers hoped to raise money. Gwen told the press, ‘The paintings look like oil paintings, they’re so lifelike. In one picture Mr Schaffer sent all over the world for a stamp to cast a shadow on a flower in a wood.’ Cooper had started out wanting to buy some musical instruments that Schaffer had used in his act. His own schoolboy enthusiasm was carried away when he discovered what else was on offer. Pathé Pictorial had a field day: ‘Imagine having to lick all those stamps – you’d want a constant water supply.’ Cut to shot of comedian with tap stuck to his forehead! As the Coopers lined up together to publicize the eccentric venture for the press, all seemed right with the world.

  However, there is always a price to pay for success and Tommy was eventually seduced by the affluence it brought him. Friends and relatives concede that Gwen always enjoyed her tipple. The same was not always true of her husband. His pals from the early days playing the nightclubs and variety houses in and around London testify that it was difficult to get him to succumb to half a pint of light ale between performances on a Friday night. However, he did once confide to Edwin Hooper, the boss of Supreme Magic, that his big ambition when he started in show business had always been to reach that stage where he could afford to sit back and relax after a show with a glass of champagne in one hand and a good cigar in the other. One wishes the money had been invested elsewhere. Eventually Cooper’s drinking habits would have devastating effects on his home life and came close at times to ruining his career and his sublime comical skills.

  The comedian who takes refuge in drink to allay the pressures of his work has become a biographical cliché, with Tony Hancock, Marty Feldman, and Peter Cook providing cautionary tales among recent British comic heroes. No one can deny that Cooper himself did not face similar pressures. The uncertainty that an audience may or may not find you funny on any one night, in any one town is an occupational hazard for the stand up comedian. No one summed it up better than veteran comic, Ted Ray when he explained to magician, Patrick Page what it meant to sign a contract as a comedian: ‘What you are doing, in effect, is saying to a future employer, that sometime next year, at a given date, time and place, you will be funny. It doesn’t matter what happens between now and then. You can be ill, broke, lose everything you have ever held dear. On that night you have to make them laugh, because you have signed a contract that says so.’

  Tommy knew within his bones that no one ever forgave mediocrity in a comedian and faced up to the challenge of his own particular situation. He once confided to Eric Sykes, ‘People say I’ve only got to walk out on stage and they laugh. If only they knew what it takes to walk out on stage in the first place. One of these days I’ll just walk out and do nothing. Then they’ll know the difference.’ His daughter vouches for the fact that he was a nervous performer, becoming more and more hyper as the curtain call approached, terrified he wasn’t good enough, his stomach all knotted up inside. He once told her, ‘People don’t know real fear until they’ve stood in the wings night after night.’ Hard as it is to believe, there was one occasion towards the end of his career when he went five minutes before raising a decent laugh. The venue was the Walthamstow Assembly Hall. Peter Hudson had done a warm-up spot ahead of him and died the death. As he came off, Tommy asked what they were like. ‘A bit sticky’, Peter replied. As the silence persisted in Cooper’s own act, he walked towards Hudson in the wings and whispered, ‘Is it time to come off yet?’ He then ambled back to the centre and for Peter’s benefit muttered – with the trademark shrug that did service for a thousand words –‘Sticky?’ He brought them round in the end. He never took any audience for granted.

  As Eric Sykes has said, ‘Comedy is a thing that everybody thinks they can do, but they can’t – any more than they can balance those twelve teacups on a cane.’ However, I refuse to believe that in the beginning Cooper resorted to alcohol as Dutch courage to get him ‘onto that stage’. He drank because he was successful. He had not done so in the earlier years of his career simply because he could not afford to do so. Now – beyond his wildest expectations – he could. Sadly in due course what began as a well-earned luxury with which to wind down after a show became the crutch that helped him through the challenge not only of pitting his wits against the world but of reproducing the highs he knew he was capable of. Michael Parkinson recalls working with Tommy on board a dry ship where the strongest drink served was Coca-Cola. There was much agitation among the crew when Cooper requested a bottle of brandy. They asked Parkinson for his advice. He replied, ‘It’s not a problem. You give him the bottle or he doesn’t go on. It’s as simple as that. That’s how he works.’ It had come to that.

  Aspects of his eventual dependency have farcical overtones. Vicky recalls his habit for hiding things: a general tendency to secrecy is a recognized trait of the alcoholic. After his death they found money and pills in the most unlikely places: ‘My mother once found a cheese sandwich under his pillow.’ According to Barry Cryer, there was the breakfast-time at a Bournemouth hotel when he demanded a large gin and tonic with his cornflakes. Television had produced a culture shock to his system with its early starts and this was the only way Tommy could face the day of location filming that loomed ahead of him. The poor waitress remonstrated, but Tommy pulled rank claiming the manager was a friend. He then poured the booze all over the cereal with the comment that it was far better for him: ‘Milk is full of cholesterol!’ One day Royston Mayoh had his film cameraman, Teddy Adcock, who was passing through Chiswick, deliver a script by hand to the house. Gwen answered the door and immediately went into overdrive: ‘Right – bring him in, throw him on the couch and fuck off!’ She thought Adcock was a hire car driver deputed to bring home her husband the worse for wear. Thankfully, in view of his problem, Cooper was himself a reluctant driver, travelling by train whenever he could, occasionally with a chauffeur bringing up the rear with his props by road. A favourite joke went, ‘I was driving home the other week and a policeman stopped me. He said, “Is this car licensed?” I said, “Yes, constable. What would you like? A gin and tonic?” The gag concealed a daunting reality. Brandishing a bottle of brandy he was once overheard asking a Chatham taxi-driver, ‘Have I got enough to get me to Chiswick?’

  And yet in the world of television I have yet to meet an
yone who saw him drunk. Peter Reeves recalls that when making the series for Paradine at the beginning of 1970 he did manage to forego drinking on the day of the show. This had something of an adverse effect. As Peter perceived things, ‘He was starting to dry out during this time. He would sweat profusely and energy would be diverted from the performance itself.’ The only time Cooper fell out with Peter Hudson was on the matter. During one of their many seasons together the comedy impressionist tried desperately to lure Tommy onto lager. He thought he had succeeded, until he noticed that no sooner was his glass half empty than he was topping it up with gin. When he begged him to stop, he flew back at Peter with an uncharacteristic ‘I’m the star of this show. I’ll drink if I want.’ The eyes would be glazed, the energy lowered, but he never appeared inebriated as such.

  I shall never forget the occasion one afternoon at Ken Brooke’s magic studio in Soho in the mid-Seventies when Tommy strolled in carrying a sturdy black leather pilot’s bag. He lowered himself into an armchair, opened the case and began to extract several small tot glasses followed by a series of bottles of fascinatingly different colours. I recall green chartreuse, yellow advocaat, in addition to gin, scotch, brandy, and other liqueurs and spirits. Then with concentration and precision, for all the world as if he were performing a magic trick, he began to pour small measures into the glasses, mixing two at a time, then three, sipping them all the while. Several minutes went by before he volunteered any sort of explanation to those present: ‘You have to keep experimenting to get any sort of taste.’ One drew the conclusion that his taste buds had burst like bubbles long ago. He kept up the ritual, sipping first this concoction and then that, all afternoon. No one needed telling that the ‘taste’ was immaterial. The liquid had the same effect regardless. Even in the last years of his life, when he did try considerably to limit his alcohol intake – and with some success as his later television performances reveal – you always knew that the black coffee was likely to be laced with whisky and that the principal purpose of the bottle of milk in the dressing room was to line the stomach in preparation for the bottle of brandy lurking not far away in the recesses of yet another plastic career bag.