Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing

by John Fisher

  Tommy’s strengths outweighed any character defects. The simplistic approach is to say he was tolerated as a child or a fool, in the Shakespearean sense. Those who are more honest would concede that he was tolerated as a human being, one whose inner psychic drama was not much more, not much less complicated than that of the next man. Possibly comedians are weighted in the former direction, but when it comes to basics we all reflect one another. Without wishing to delve into the inner reaches of Kleinian philosophy, Tommy Cooper – to paraphrase the moral philosopher, Alexander McCall Smith – was not a nice person, because nobody’s nice. Allowing for that view, he might in the scale of things have rated closer to Mother Theresa then to Margaret Thatcher than one might imagine.

  For most of the time to be in his company was to bask in the sun. To walk through the street with him on the cloudiest day was to experience the glow manifested towards him by passers-by, as if a hurdy gurdy were playing and a fun fair lurked around the corner. It should be stressed that charity was not alien to him. His son recalled how they would be walking along together and he’d disappear: ‘I’d look round and he’d be tucking a fiver into some tramp’s hand.’ Every Christmas a large sackful of toys was delivered to Variety Club headquarters from the Cooper household: it is not difficult to imagine the fun he had going round Hamley’s and selecting them himself, under the pretence, of course, that he was ‘just looking for something for the act’. He was a major contributor to the Club’s funds as well as to the Grand Order of Water Rats and only time, health and modesty prevented him from aspiring to high office in both organizations. But his greatest generosity was reserved for the stage where he gave everything, his capacity for comedy welling from deep within him in an unstoppable flood. After a show he would be drained, empty, a spent force. In that sense he proved a colossus with a heart and spirit to match. To public and friends alike he was irresistible. He was also incorrigible. Once he arrived late for a cabaret date to be greeted by the distraught organizer, Michael Black. ‘You were on half an hour ago,’ said Michael. Without batting an eyelid he replied, ‘Was I? How did I do?’ Who could resist a man like that?

  His friends still debate how high his IQ was. As Michael Parkinson has said, ‘I could never work out whether he was the dimmest man I ever met – or the brightest.’ David Hemingway once overheard him in a hotel foyer: ‘My wife is coming later today. You will look after her until I get back, won’t you? Her name is Mrs Cooper.’ According to David, he was totally serious. Veteran comic, Jimmy Jewel recounted the occasion he gave Tommy a lift home from Blackpool one weekend during the summer season. Jewel was in considerable pain at the time, forced to wear a neck brace for a week after an accident on stage: ‘Tommy was the type of man who had to try everything – if you had a sandwich, he’d want a bite – and he said, “Can I try your neck brace?” I said, “Don’t be daft. I need it.”’ Nevertheless Jimmy gave in and for the entire journey Cooper sat there smiling happily while Jewel drove on in agony. He never decided whether the behaviour was that of an innocent kid or an inconsiderate adult.

  When Tommy returned from his first trip to America he brought a miniature tape recorder that he soon discovered wouldn’t work in this country. He moaned to Val Andrews about the shop that sold it to him, quizzing him on how he might dispose of it here. Three days later Val was back in the dressing room, being plied with sales talk for a wonderful recording machine he’d picked up in the States and spinning the line that what he really needed was a movie camera. Val thought, ‘You lying bastard!’ He had voiced the original complaint to so many he’d forgotten the conversation with the writer three days before. The naivety outweighed the deceit. On the other hand, magician John Derris remembers accompanying Tommy and a plane load of journalists to Gibraltar for a British Airways function. Cooper played ‘Spoof’ all the way with members of the British press and deductive reasoning became the order of the day. He never lost. He was an unlikely chess player, but picked up the game quickly with quite some success after Peter Hudson educated him to it during the lulls of a lethargic summer season.

  In over thirty documentary programmes produced on the lives and reputations of great comedians I have scrupulously avoided the ‘g’ word. The jury will remain out on whether Cooper was a ‘genius’ or not. Loftier minds have applied themselves to the precise definition of the word, the coinage of which has become debased by celebrity culture and the attempts of unthinking people to slap the label on anyone who achieves an above-average degree of success in virtually any activity from bee-keeping to napkin-folding. If the word implies a prodigiously skilled intellectual machinery linked to a thoroughgoing alertness and understanding of one’s ability, he was not. Tommy’s was an intuitive talent. If the similar gift of a painter or an inventor can command the tag, he almost certainly was. But, to say so categorically would be to subscribe, to what Alistair Cooke once described as that ‘method of bullying the reader into sharing a prejudice’. Genius, simpleton, or just plain lucky, no one could dispute that he was among the most original comedians of the last one hundred years, the century in which funny men and women were promoted out of the crowd and accorded a prestige and a platform that had not existed before. More importantly he maintained an innocence in an increasingly cynical age. At the risk of sounding propagandist, he emanated the most expansive comic aura of any comedian of his generation. He was also a magician without subterfuge, a clown without ego. It is no surprise that his memory touches depths in those to whom laughter and wonder are sacrosanct.

  Today his legacy is kept alive less in the reconstituted British comedy scene, where the performer and writer must come together as one, than in the heightened awareness on a global scale of comedy magic as purveyed by great clowns and skilled magicians both, like The Great Tomsoni and Teller, of Penn and Teller, in America, and Norbert Ferré and Gaëtan Bloom in France. Meanwhile it would be comforting to think that in the fertile comic realm that exists between lofty aspiration and pratfall reality, he might today be surveying his subjects. Stan and Ollie, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Hancock, Frasier, Captain Mainwaring, Basil Fawlty, and David Brent must all be there, different icons for different times, but timeless in attitude if not in cultural reference. As reputations in comedy are eclipsed with even greater rapidity, the fez will remain a constant emblem of a remarkable man who drew upon an endless capacity for fun and captivated all who came within his orbit. At a combined level of skill and technique, innocence and cunning, wisdom and wonder, eccentricity and human fallibility there has been nobody in British show business quite like him. He was his own invention and as vulnerable as the next man. At one point in his act he used to tell the audience, ‘When I do this trick, I don’t want you to clap. I want you all to sing, “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”.’ More often than not they did.

  He used to take pride in being impersonated away from the theatrical arena: ‘Women come up to me dragging little kids who can’t be a day over three. They nudge the kid and say, “Do it. Do it,” and then the kiddie says, “Just like that!” in exactly my tone of voice. It’s incredible and it kills me – I think people are marvellous. I’m a great observer of the human race and if I could, I’d sit on a bench and watch the world go by. We’ve never cottoned on to the fact that we’re so hilarious.’ He certainly never fully realized just how funny he was. I wish I could be back in his dressing room now to provide one last word of reassurance. Whatever his flaws and venialities, as his guardian angel, Max Miller would have said, ‘There’ll never be another!’

  Acknowledgements

  This book could not have been written without the ongoing support and friendship of Gwen Cooper and her daughter, Vicky. Their lives, and those of their son and brother, Thomas, are entwined with this project. In the years after Tommy’s death, their decency, modesty and complete lack of side stood proud as a major part of his legacy. The part played by Miff and Beatrice Ferrie in these pages is also recognized with affection. A large part of this story is theirs, at least fif
teen per cent! Mary Kay’s contribution to the life of my subject is also acknowledged in the spirit of the happy memories I retain of working with them both.

  I also wish to thank all the other people who have enhanced my knowledge and illuminated my understanding of Tommy Cooper, as well as those who have helped the progress of this book in so many different ways. The roll call – extending back as it does over many years – embraces:

  Russ Abbot, Ian Adair, Robert Agar-Hutton, Alan Alan, Ray Alan, Val Andrews, John Archer, John Arnatt, Brad Ashton, Tom Atkinson, Alan Ayckbourn, Larry Barnes, Kenneth Baily, Michael Bailey, Roy Baker, David Ball, Carl Ballantine, ‘Wizard’ Edward Beal, Laurie Bellew, Michael Bentine, David Berglas, Bobby Bernard, Michael Black, Peter Black, Sonia Blandford, Arturo Brachetti, Richard Briers, George Brightwell, Ken Brooke, Peter Brough, Max Bygraves, Simon Callow, Roy Castle, Paul Cave, Garry Chambers, Jack Chambers, Levent Cimkentli, Anthony Clare, Eve Colling, Alistair Cooke, Brian Cooke, Zena Cooper, Alan Coren, Sir Bill Cotton, David Croft, Barry Cryer, Paul Daniels, Jim Davidson, John Howard Davies, Dabber Davis, Eddie Dawes, Les Dennis, John Derris, Bernard Diggins, Ken Dodd, Richard Drewett, David Drummond, Geoffrey Durham, Kenneth Earle, David Elstein, Lee Evans, Gabe Fajuri, Norma Farnes, Janet Farrow, Jimmy Farrow, Richard Fawkes, Colin Fay, Norbert Ferre´, Ben Fisher, Jerome Flynn, Bruce Forsyth, Martin Freeman, Johnnie Gale, Patrick Garland, Carl Giles, William Gillette, Billy Glason, Michael Grade, Barry Grantham, Gilbert Harding, Rolf Harris, Yvonne Harris, Sir Rex Harrison, Bob Hayden, Trish Hayes, David Hemingway, Dickie Henderson, Lenny Henry, David Hibberd, Benny Hill, Dick Hills, Edwin Hooper, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Roy Hudd, Peter Hudson, Derek Humby, Clive James, Jimmy Jewel, Betty Jones, Freddie Jones, Philip Jones, Tudor Jones, Todd Karr, Richard Kaufman, Alan Kennauth, Joe Kerr, Dennis Kirkland, Bobby Knoxall, John Lahr, Anthony Lane, Peter Lane, Mark Leddy, Michael Legg, Derek Lever, Henry Lewis, Mark Lewisohn, Bob Loomis, Frankie Lyons, Garry Lyons, Alasdair Macmillan, John Edgar Mann, Kathleen March, Alfred Marks, David Marsden, Billy Marsh, Jay Marshall, Sandy Marshall, Topper Martyn, John Maxwell, Royston Mayoh, John McCabe, Billy McComb, Cecil McGivern, William McIlhany, John Kennedy Melling, Geoff Miles, Spike Milligan, Iris Mitchell, Bob Monkhouse, Ron Moody, Eric Morecambe, Frank Muir, John Muir, Tom Mullica, Murray the Escapologist, Norman Murray, David Nathan, C. Goodliffe Neale, Peter Newcombe, Denis Norden, Peter North, Patrick Page, John Palfreyman, Ann Parchot, Michael Parkinson, Johnny Paul, Gordon Peters, Jean Pike, Michael Pointon, Channing Pollock, Paul Potassy, Bob Potter, Lynda Lee Potter, Pete Price, Peter Prichard, J. B. Priestley, Mark Raffles, Marian Rashleigh, Betty Rawlins, Dennis Rawlins, Ted Ray, Brian Reade, Graham Reed, Tim Reed, Peter Reeves, Charles Reynolds, Brian Rogers, Patrick Ryecart, Derek Salberg, John Salisse, Ian Saville, George Savva, Terry Seabrooke, Sir Harry Secombe, Neil Shand, Ivor Shattock, Alan Shaxon, Aldo Silvan, Neil Simon, Anthony Slide, Tom Sloan, Nancy Banks Smith, Neil Somerville, Mrs. K. Spacagna, Johnny Speight, Harry Stanley, Freddie Starr, Richard Stone, Harry Stoneham, Roy Storer, Eric Sykes, Don Taffner, Jimmy Tarbuck, Brian Tesler, Johnny Thompson (aka the Great Tomsoni), David Thomson, James Thurber, Barry Took, Kenneth Tynan, Tim Vine, Dick Vosburgh, Ronnie Waldman, Orson Welles, Bill ‘Hoppy’ Wilson, Michael Winner, Sir Norman Wisdom, Ernie Wise, Chris Woodward, Jack Wright, Terry Wright, Mike Yarwood, Denis Yetman and Cy Young.

  Resources and institutions that proved of major help to research were the Family Records Centre and the General Register Office of Great Britain; the Hampshire Records Office, Winchester; the BBC Written Archives Centre at Caversham Park, Reading; the British Film Institute; the Magic Circle Reference Library; Southampton City Centre Reference Library; the West of England Studies Library, Exeter; Caerphilly County Borough Library; Caerphilly Twyn Visitor Centre; and the Tommy Cooper Appreciation Society. One wishes the latter well in its attempt to erect a statue of our hero overlooking the castle in the town where he was born. Invaluable in helping to amass information were the staffs of the Southern Daily Echo, the Exeter Express & Echo, and the South Wales Echo. While every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright material produced herein, the publishers would like to apologise for any omissions and will be pleased to incorporate missing acknowledgements in any future editions, provided that notification is made to them in writing.

  The latter stages of this project have been made easier by the careful diligence and support of my editor, Chris Smith, and assistant editor, Jane Bennett. Thanks too to Trevor Dolby for launching the project in the first place and the rest of the enthusiastic team at HarperCollins. I shall always be indebted to my agent, Charles Armitage of Noel Gay Management, for his patience, advice and comradeship at all stages, as well as to his colleague, Di Evans, for her contribution.

  Most important of all is the debt I owe to my wife, Sue, and my daughters, Genevieve and Madeleine, for allowing me leave of absence from so much domestic and family routine as my love and fascination for my childhood hero crystallized into the form that you are reading now. It is only matched by what I owe my parents, James and Margaret Fisher, for indulging their starstruck young son in his passion for all things magical and comedic in his formative years.

  Index

  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.

  TC denotes Tommy Cooper.

  ABC Television Ltd 202, 248, 249, 251, 254–5, 256, 258, 260, 261, 263–4, 269, 272–3, 277, 342

  Adair, Ian 114, 320, 445

  Adcock, Teddy 358–9

  Adelphi Theatre 188, 189

  Afton, Richard 91, 232, 250

  Airs and Disgraces 75, 91

  Alan, Alan 83, 109, 113, 120–1, 364, 450–1

  Allen, Fred 97, 150

  Allen, Steve 123, 158

  Allen, Woody 117, 123, 179

  Always Leave Them Laughing 153–4, 156–7, 413

  Amasis 55

  Andrews, Archie 92, 228–9

  Andrews, Eamonn 113, 302

  Andrews, Max 109, 135

  Andrews, Val 38, 52, 56, 73, 96, 99, 101, 148, 153, 161, 163–4, 165–6, 167, 169, 190, 227, 230, 267, 310, 311, 325–6, 450, 452, 454

  Antrobus, John 242, 245, 331

  Armstrong, Louis 7, 10, 216

  Artemus 39–40

  Ashton, Brad 148, 170, 176, 202, 256

  Askey, Arthur 53, 75, 107, 137, 139, 229, 236, 241, 277, 296, 320

  Associated Television Ltd 205, 245–6, 247, 248, 274, 275, 280, 301, 426

  Associated-Rediffusion Television Ltd 205, 242, 244

  Attenborough, Richard 342–3

  Bag of Nails Club, London 86–7

  Bailey, Michael 83–4

  Bailey’s, Watford 217, 218, 417

  Ballantine, Carl 128–30, 196

  Band Waggon 74, 75

  Barnes, Larry 72–3

  Bassey, Shirley xviii, 204

  Batley Variety Club 217

  Bayliss, Eddie 161–2, 297, 301, 303

  BBC xiv, 66–7, 92, 98, 149, 204, 205, 228–32, 243, 244, 246, 247, 249–50, 251, 252, 274, 275, 277, 280, 300, 301, 302, 382, 417, 431

  BBC Christmas Party (1952) 149, 240–1

  Beckett, Keith 300–1

  Bennett, Billy 97, 167

  Bennett, Cyril 276, 286

  Benny Hill Show, The 195–6

  Benny, Jack 4, 38, 74, 100, 142, 143, 190, 200, 235, 243, 345, 448, 449

  Bentine, Michael 88, 93, 97, 114, 253, 281

  Berle, Milton 123, 152–3, 154, 156–7, 185, 188, 257, 301

  Bernard Delfont Presents 189

  Bernard, Bobby 49, 69, 72, 83, 99, 135, 153, 170

  Best of Tommy Cooper, The 419

  Big Night Out 248

  Billy Cotton Band Show, The 246–7, 251

  Black, Alfred 188, 207

  Black, George 188, 207, 221

  Black, Michael 387, 388, 443, 453–4

  Blandford, Sonia 43–4


  Blazer’s 396, 399, 402

  Blue Lagoon Club, London 84, 86, 87

  Blue Magic 202, 204, 205, 206

  Bob Monkhouse Show, The 403–5, 406

  Bond, Derek 256, 257

  Book of Blackouts 159

  Book of Parodies 159

  Boswell, Eve xiv, 189

  Bournemouth Winter Gardens 182–4, 207, 298, 402

  Briers, Richard 104, 340

  Brightwell, George 256, 272, 273, 274, 275, 277, 282–3, 285, 286, 287, 403

  British Power Boat Company 34–5, 37–8, 40, 66

  Brooke, Ken 104–5, 109, 359

  Brough, Peter 92, 228, 229–30, 231

  Bygraves, Max 88, 136, 144, 208, 213, 234, 235, 344

  Caerphilly, Wales 18

  Callow, Simon 420, 424

  Cambridge Theatre 90, 440

  Cardini 119–20, 122, 134

  Carlton 124–6, 127–8

  Casino Theatre 296