by John Fisher
Tommy was clearly out of his element, even though for a fleeting moment the audience was enthusiastic. According to the reviewer in the music newspaper, Sounds, ‘He’s so popular that you could sense a thrill going through the crowd when his name was mentioned, even though they were literally aching to see Police. Tommy took about five minutes to translate his initial welcome into booing, catcalls, and a minor bombardment of plastic cups. For one thing he seemed terrified of the fine mess he’d got himself into and for another he’d forgotten how to project himself beyond the living-room close-up of television. In sum he died the death.’ He had not been helped by the totalitarian efforts at crowd control that were taking place while he was on stage. The audience, pushed and shoved this way and that, turned tense and irritable. The Red Cross received a seemingly unending chain of casualties while the familiar strains of the Cooper repertoire sounded in the background. Tommy never minced words about the disaster: ‘Police were great – they were sensational – I wasn’t, but they were great.’ It may have been the most embarrassing engagement of his career. In his own words, ‘It was the most terrifying night of my life.’ The experience does not appear to have had any specific side-effects on his health. No sooner was Christmas Day over than he was heading south for the comparative comfort and safety of a short festive season at the Winter Gardens, Bournemouth. If ever an auditorium had been devised to test his ability to project himself beyond the more intimate dimensions of the television screen, this was the one. He had conquered there many times in the past and would now do so again. Psychologically it was the ideal venue for him to play to regain any confidence he may have lost in the South London debacle.
As 1981 began his health continued to hold steady. In July the doctor who now regularly examined him for appearance insurance purposes was pleased to write: ‘Mr Cooper told me that his alcohol consumption had diminished considerably. He admitted to drinking about four glasses of wine a day … He is obviously more of a risk than average for his appearance in view of his past history. However, I found him to be in a better state of health than when I last saw him a year ago.’ If one aspect of his physical condition did now begin to cause even greater concern it was his legs. For a while bookings were accepted with a view to as little travelling as possible. This inevitably had an effect on his income. During the last six months of 1981 he managed to fulfil forty-two appearances in cabaret and theatre; between the beginning of the New Year and a guest appearance for Eric Sykes at Thames at the end of March 1982 he made only six, a single week at Blazer’s for Savva at Windsor.
Things were noticeably winding down, although he still found the stamina to work with Sykes again in his latest semi-silent film, It’s Your Move in June 1982 and to travel to the Netherlands to appear on the Willem Ruis Lotto Show the following month. His mobility was not helped when on the latter trip he was rammed in the shin by a luggage trolley at Heathrow. In great pain he went straight to a two week theatre season at Sandown in the Isle of Wight. The engagement had to be curtailed after a week. Tommy would walk out onto a stage or cabaret floor no more than seven more times before the year closed. The irony is that as other aspects of his general health appeared to improve – or at least hold steady – his mobility let him down.
Whatever he might achieve in the remaining two years of his life was a bonus. The indomitability of his spirit was shown by the decision – one Miff allowed him to veto had he so chosen – to tour the Middle East the following year. A reasonably lucrative contract for £17,000.00 saw him playing exotic locations like Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Bahrain over a three week period in February 1983. During this time he had to work for only nine days, although considerable travelling was involved. Doubtless the appeal of the dry desert heat exerted its pull. He returned to something resembling a normal routine, although soon a recurring cough, the result of his chronic bronchitis, developed into pleurisy, which kept him out of action for most of May and June. In July he recorded a successful special for the BBC within the Saturday evening series strand, The Main Attraction, but the resumption of his standard touring pattern was disrupted again, by ‘post-pleuritic complications’, for most of August and September. He ventured back into a television studio for what would be the last time when he recorded, again for the BBC, his appearance on The Bob Monkhouse Show on 4 October 1983. He had been discharged from the Esperance Private Hospital in Eastbourne only three days before, having had no less than seven pints of fluid drained from his lungs, ultimately the result not merely of smoking what George Brightwell had once referred to as ‘his wretched cigars’, but chain-smoking them at the rate, according to his son, of forty a day. ‘His breathing got so bad,’ said Gwen, ‘he sounded like a train.’ His friends were becoming increasingly anxious. Eric Morecambe bumped into Peter Hudson at Thames around this time and asked, ‘How’s the big fellow doing?’ Peter explained about the fluid. Eric replied, ‘I’ve heard of people trying to smuggle spirits through customs, but this is ridiculous.’
In spite of his frailty, his entrance on the Monkhouse talk show may have been the most memorable he ever made. From the moment he spotted an absurd chicken costume left over from another production on a wardrobe rail in another part of the rehearsal rooms he was determined that he would make his entrance wearing those grotesque feathered legs with their ungainly claws, however painful it might be to thrust his own legs, ulcerated and permanently swathed in surgical bandages by this time, into them. Again I was the producer involved and he swore me to secrecy as far as Bob and the crew were concerned. Indeed only the wardrobe supervisor, director Geoff Miles, Mary Kay and I were alert to his plans, which once he arrived on set were not surprisingly accompanied by an avalanche of chicken jokes: ‘What have I done? I’ve fouled it all up. That’s what I’ve done … I’ve been silly haven’t I? I’ve gone off half-cocked …I’ve spoiled a big entrance, I have really. I mean was it something big I did or was it something paltry?’ I doubt if there was a chicken joke from all the American gag sheets he had filed away in Chiswick that wasn’t buzzing through his brain that evening.
Monkhouse was on the floor, bent up with laughter at the entrance of this strange hybrid, a man from the waist up, a chicken from the waist down, not content merely to walk on, but strutting like the genuine article as he pecked his passage this way and that towards the host to the uproar of the house. No one could have written the idea into a script for him, let alone for anybody else. Only Cooper could have grasped the initiative of such a mad device and carried it off for all the physical discomfort it entailed, as if he were a kid again revelling in riding his bumpy bicycle down the lane while reading a newspaper at the same time. The appearance also showed that he had lost none of his boyish enthusiasm for the latest joke shop gizmos, as he used a suction pad to plug an electric razor to his forehead for a shave and revealed his prized family heirloom of a genuine milking stool. As Tommy exerted pressure on one of the traditional three legs, milk squirted from the end. Again he was on such good form that even Miff was encouraged to write: ‘Your stint on The Bob Monkhouse Show was excellent. Even made me laugh. How about that?’
Away from his form on camera, the reality was less encouraging. Within six days of the Monkhouse taping Tommy was back in hospital. He appears to have recovered sufficiently to perform for four nights at the Circus Tavern in Purfleet at the end of October, but had scarcely completed that engagement when he was back in hospital with severe chest pains. Tests indicated the possibility of a heart attack. That the diagnosis was not conclusive appears to have been because of a veritable cocktail of complications relating to all his past frailties. He resumed his theatrical routine in February, but would fulfil only three engagements before embarking with Gwen on a ten day holiday to Las Palmas on 21 March. Common sense had prevailed when his favoured location of Las Vegas was embargoed by his wife. Photographs from the spell in the sun show Tommy beaming with happiness and ostensibly at peace with the world. He returned to fulfil a four night engagement at the Circu
s Tavern. It brought him back to performance pitch for his commitment to appear on the television show Live from Her Majesty’s on 15 April. A few days before going to Spain he had spent some time taping tracks for a possible commercial recording. The title had a prophetic irony all of its own. It was the cover of an old Cliff Richard single, ‘Just Enough to Keep Me Hanging On’. Sadly fate decreed he was unable to hang on much longer.
Surveying the last few years of his life, his family could take comfort from the fact that the cliché of the clown who in a trough of despair seeks alcoholic refuge from which he will never return did not apply to him. Although far too late, he did rally to the cause of his general well being. In this regard he represented a total contrast with Tony Hancock, perhaps not surprisingly given the drift of their respective comic personas, the one morose and lugubrious, the other a jester to the twinkling tips of his magical fingers. I am convinced that Cooper never really understood the problem that drink posed, namely that constant treatment and total abstinence were a sine qua non of recovery. To Tommy there was no such thing as total abstinence. When he came to rehearsals for his appearance on The Bob Monkhouse Show, he explained he had given up alcohol and tobacco. He then wasted no time in popping open a can of lager and lighting up a Panatella. Bob said, ‘I thought you’d given up smoking and given up drinking?’ He replied, ‘I have – but you can’t call this smoking and you can’t call this drinking, can you?’ The response was serious. The man was unstoppable. It never occurred to any of those present that the end was not far away. The paradox is that Hancock, a more intellectual man, probably did realize only too well what was happening to him. Ultimately his own hand signed the end of his life. Cooper had no idea he was on course so soon for an exit of a different kind. The very contrast in setting is chilling and characteristic at the same time, the one demise consigned to the privacy of a seedy Sydney apartment on the other side of the world, the other paraded sixteen years later under the happy gaze of millions of admirers. That is where we must join him now.
THIRTEEN
Death and Resurrection
The convoluted way in which the tragedy of Tommy’s death interacted with the routine of my own life on the evening of 15 April 1984 will remain stamped on my mind forever. The recent possessor of a video-recording machine, I decided not to watch his scheduled appearance on the LWT show, Live from Her Majesty’s when it aired at 7.45 p.m., preferring to tape it for enjoyment later in the evening when the chores of the day had been set aside. However, as the clock indicated that the programme must be coming to a close, I could not resist the temptation of switching on to sneak a preview of the finale for the sheer pleasure of savouring at first hand the accolade he was bound to achieve. A star studded cast including Howard Keel, Donny Osmond, Les Dennis and Dustin Gee, Adrian Walsh, The Flying Pickets, and the Brian Rogers Dancers joined host Jimmy Tarbuck for a final goodbye, but Tommy was nowhere to be seen. As I switched off the set, various explanations began to bombard my brain – the listings magazines had the week of his appearance wrong; the producer, David Bell had jumped the gun in including his name in a billing required by the press two or three weeks previously; there had been some disagreement at Miff’s end that scuppered the contract at the last minute; he had even imbibed a little too freely after performing his act earlier in the show. Denial kept at bay the possibility that his health might have been somehow responsible for the puzzling turn of events. And then, before I even began to think about playing back the tape to check on his presence, the telephone went berserk, a succession of calls releasing within me a capacity for tears I never knew I possessed: ‘Had I heard the news? Tommy Cooper was dead.’ Within minutes of the end of the show, Trevor MacDonald had resolved the mystery on the ITV mid-evening news bulletin.
At the end of the day I braced myself to watch the act that had been witnessed by twelve and a half million viewers a few hours before. He appeared to be as much on form as he had been on the Monkhouse show six months earlier, his complexion healthier, his smile as relaxed as at any time in his career, even if his legs betrayed the real truth of his condition. According to Tarbuck a special room with all creature comforts was improvised for him at the side of the stage so that he would not have to negotiate the tortuous backstage staircases that led to the dressing rooms proper. Jimmy’s introduction was loving and auspicious: ‘If you asked one hundred comedians who their favourite comic is, they would all say – the one and only – Tommy Cooper!’ The last person to speak to him was choreographer Brian Rogers, who remembers wishing him well in the wings as he got off the stool on which he was perched in the prompt corner to walk on stage. Brian remembers him handing a long clear glass to someone at his side. He assumed it contained vodka, but cannot be sure.
In the eight minutes that followed viewers were treated to a whistle stop tour of many of the gambits that had stood this favourite funny man in good stead for almost forty years. Here were wife jokes –‘My wife’s just phoned me. She said, “I’ve got water in the carburettor.” I said, “Where’s the car?” She said, “In the river.”’ And conceptual jokes, “My memory’s going. I cut myself shaving this morning and forgot to bleed.’ Here was the furtive preparation of a magic prop that the audience wasn’t supposed to see, but could not possibly avoid – as he secreted coins in a tin can from which he was going to produce them – and the surreal use of a prop that bordered on lunacy – as he aimlessly guided a pair of bicycle handlebars around the stage: ‘I can’t ride it. I’ve got a flat tyre.’ Here were the casual asides – as he addressed the orchestra, ‘I want you to play tonight like you’ve never played before. Together!’– and the familiar props – the table that developed female legs, the three metal rings that refused to unlink and his ever-present tribute to Gwen, the dove that turned out to be made of rubber.
He was in complete control of the theatre as dancer, Sandy Lawrence came forward to help him into a voluminous scarlet cloak. The last words he spoke as she fastened it down the front were an affectionate ‘Thanks, love.’ He then clutched his chest – something he had done in mock panic for comic effect thousands of times before – and without any ceremony or histrionics appeared to crumple to the ground, slowly sinking into himself as if the air was being sucked out of him. As the dancer departed, his body rolled gently back against the curtains. The fez stayed on his head, if slightly askew. People had always said he’d die with his fez on, but, as he used to joke, ‘I never took it literally. I mean the doctor said it would be the last thing I’d do.’ It all now happened so quickly. Freddie Starr, who was watching at home and is not an obviously sentimental person, wrote in his autobiography, ‘It probably doesn’t mean a lot to most people, but I’ve never forgotten that Tommy Cooper’s last word was “love”.’ At the same time Tarbuck, another comic from a younger generation who loved him quite as much as Starr, was watching the tragedy unfold on the monitor in the wings.
The theatre audience could not stop laughing, believing it to be part of the act. Meanwhile the radio microphone he was wearing only enhanced the sound of the death rattle, interpreted by the audience as a bizarre extension of the distinctive rasping cough-cum-guffaw that hallmarked every Cooper performance they had ever seen. For David Bell and director, Alasdair Macmillan time was standing still. Les Dennis recalls being in the wings with Bell and Tommy’s son: ‘When Tommy collapsed, David said, “Is that a joke?” His son said, “No, my dad has a bad back and wouldn’t be able to do that.”’ All Mary Kay remembers are four other words from Thomas: ‘This is for real.’ Macmillan cued the orchestra to play the music for the commercial break, the first of two in the three-part show. At that point on playback I stopped the machine, took out the video cassette, placed it in its box, wrote ‘Tommy RIP’ on the spine and consciously placed it not among the fast growing mound of cassettes a television producer and comedy aficionado automatically acquires in the combined line of duty and pleasure, but separately in a filing cabinet reserved for personal documents and papers of impo
rtance. It stayed there, not to be watched again, until circumstances of an exceptional kind prompted its playback almost twenty years later.
Those familiar with his repertoire – and of course the whole production team – knew from rehearsals that putting on the cloak was merely the prelude to a sequence that had constituted one of his funniest routines since the early Seventies. Stamping the floor with great self-importance to emphasize that there were no trap doors, he would stand with his back against the join in the curtains and proceed to extract from the garment a ludicrous assortment of objects that included a bucket, a long pole, a nylon stocking display leg, a beer crate, and a ten foot ladder. The comedy derived as much from the semi-silent asides between Cooper and the obvious back stage confederate who was feeding the things between his legs – ‘Hold it! Put it down a bit!’– as from the incongruity of the items produced. On this occasion viewers were deprived the bonus of Jimmy Tarbuck as the accomplice, invisible to the end until he appeared in the gap to protest he couldn’t pass anything more through.
