Original subtitles

Dying on stage is an occupational hazard for every comedian.

But Tommy Cooper brought a whole new meaning to the phrase when he had a

attack during a live TV show at Her Majesty's Theatre in 1984.

The man literally died to the sound of laughter.

What's that in your head?

A bucket.

That's not a bucket, it's a saucepan.

Is it?

I've got the wrong hat, I tell you.

He was a brand, with the trademark red fez and the catchphrase.

So familiar it has been exploited by advertisers, impressionists, and even

Margaret Thatcher in her final conference speech.

Just like that.

But who was he?

This giant with size 13 feet?

whose mere entrance on stage had audiences erupting with uncontrollable

laughter.

There are comedians that you like, there are entertainers that you like, there

are people you love. Tommy Cooper, you wanted to do that too.

And, of course, that was a head start, because he could walk on really and do

anything he wanted.

He was an icon, respected by his peers.

And yet, despite the plaudits and trappings of success,

He was privately plagued by self -doubt.

Oh, he said, thanks, Vic.

He said, you made me look good. Thank you.

I was knocked out because he was just brilliant.

Brilliant, but of course, he didn't think he was funny. He wanted where

laughed.

Now, I place one egg there, one there,

one there, and one there.

Now the trick is this.

With my right hand, I hit the tray like that.

And the tray goes over, and the tubes go over there, and the eggs...

Well, they are supposed to go into the glasses.

And it hasn't worked yet, and I just want to know the reason why.

Like that.

Tommy Cooper was born at 19 Lwinon Street, Caerphilly, 85 years ago.

Tommy's father, also Tommy, was a Collier's son who spent time underground

before serving in the First World War.

Although Tommy Sr.

had endured tragedy in his life, he was renowned as a man with a gift for making

people laugh.

I'm positive the talent comes from his dad, you know, because it was in the

Cooper family, you know.

He was a character. If you had a party or a wedding, you never stopped

His uncle, Jimmy Cooper, was a moon -faced regular clown.

He developed an act for the halls and miners' clubs.

A comic more than a magician, but he did master one trick, the egg trick.

Years later, it would make its way straight into Tommy's routine.

Tommy was like this big kid shambling about, trying to do magic.

And as we know, he was a brilliant magician.

If you ever see him do bottle, glass, glass, bottle, bottle, glass, and the

table finishes up filled with glasses and bottles, anybody would look at that

and say, that man is brilliant.

For Tommy and his mother, the damp, polluted air of the mining valleys posed

constant health threat.

At the age of three, the family was moved to Devon to breathe the clean air

Exeter.

But the Welsh influence was to leave its mark, and perhaps the single most

significant act came from his aunt Lucy in Cardiff.

On Christmas Day 1929, she gave him a box of magic tricks.

and the means for a complex, reclusive boy to become the centre of attention.

Tommy started young. I guess, if I'm honest, it's almost an ego thing, where

are the centre of attention, you're doing something that none of your

can do, you're making them laugh, you're, if you like, becoming the class

but it becomes addictive.

It's often said that there are three rules to magic. The first one is to

practice. The second one is to practice. And the third one is to practice.

We do practice literally thousands of hours.

From the gorgeous to the ungainly, Tommy Cooper.

Six feet four and sixteen stone.

The sheer size of the man was in direct contrast to the childlike quality of his

gags. They just told me, they said, go out there and warm him up.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Oh, dear.

I'm wearing my tails tonight.

Do you like them?

Now, be honest. How do you like the show so far?

Oh, dear. I can always tell whether an audience is going to be good or bad.

Good night.

He used to sulk if he wasn't the centre of attention.

If you were all talking about sex or football or politics or something, and

was there, he'd be sitting very quietly, and then some cards would come out of

his pocket, and he'd start doing a trick.

There's the kid in him.

They're all looking at me now, I'm doing this card trick.

Like most boys of that generation, he left school at 14, and after a short,

unproductive spell as a shipwrights' apprentice, The six -feet, four -inch

signed for the structure and discipline of the household cavalry.

It's hard to imagine you on a horse. I mean, how do you manage?

Oh, they're big horses.

Simply in hands.

No feet, just hands.

No, it was very good, really. But this is a true story.

You see, when you get on a horse, as a recruit, I didn't know this, but when

put the girth around the horse like that, you see, the horse, it's true, it

blows itself out because it doesn't want to be tight.

See, so you've got to wait. Well, I didn't know this. But what you're

to do is just wait for a little while, because he still looks at you like that,

really.

He's a little bit suspicious, you know what I mean?

But then all of a sudden, you could have gone quick, and he goes, ooh!

But I did know this.

So as a recruit, I just went, not out with a girth, he went out with his

stomach, and I thought it was tight.

So we're all on parade, and they said, right in front of your horses, will you

do that?

They said, right, prepare to mount.

So we put your foot in the stirrup, and they said, mount!

And I put my foot in, and the saddle went right underneath.

So everybody said, I'm on top, I'm underneath.

It was during the war in Egypt that Tommy was to shape everything.

Entertainment's National Service Association, EMSA, proved to be fertile

for a generation of British entertainers.

He met his wife Gwen, or Dove as he called her, in a touring show.

Crucially, he could develop his unique brand of comedy magic.

When I got the phase, I got it when I was in Egypt. I was in the army there,

see. And we did a show.

At the YMCA, I used to wear a pith helmet.

Pith helmet.

Oh, my teeth is... Anyway, I used to wear this pith helmet. And then one day,

forgot to bring it with me.

So I... These waiters used to walk about with a pith and a long white gallipier.

So I took one off the head, and I wore it ever since.

Tommy Cooper was one of a post -war group of ex -servicemen who decided to

comedy as a profession.

The war had brought about radical change.

They were anarchic.

I think the post -war generation, the Peter Sellers, the Frankie Howards, and

the Harry Seacams, and the Dick Emerys, and the Tommy Coopers, they'd come

through a war and not got killed.

They had much money. They'd been abominably treated when they came out of

services. And they were all, obviously, by nature, doing jokes about officers

and the ruling class.

So there was a sense of rebellion about all those people.

So they thought, the hell with the rules.

Hence the goons and everything that happened around that time.

1941. 1941.

Any advance on 41?

There was no advance in 41. The war was a veritable stalemate. Was it, mate?

Yes, mate.

The impact of this group on British comedy is without parallel and set the

for the cultural revolution of the 1960s.

Add to this Cooper's natural gift for making people laugh.

Talent, time and place was perfect.

We had a flat in Chelsea and Tommy was staying with us because we were

rehearsing some TV work.

And I got a phone call from the police. They said, Mr. Cunningham, is Mr. Cooper

staying with you? I said, yeah. They said, well, will you get him off the

Road? I said, why? He said, he's stopping the traffic.

I said, what's he doing? He said, nothing.

And we went out and Tommy was buying stuff in shops and walking down to this

car, which was a Cortina, that's how long ago this is, and putting the stuff

the boot, shutting the boot and walking back. That's all he'd be doing. But

buses were stopped and people had doubled up just to walk.

And I said, how can I stop him doing that? He's Christmas shopping. That's

he's doing.

All great performers honed their act through thousands of shows.

Variety circuit was thriving.

Tommy was a regular, and like any true original, he spotted a gap in the

Most of Tommy's material, really, was very corny, but somehow Tommy had that

knack of making the line very, very funny.

I think this is an example of that.

It's a bathtub on the end of a piece of rope, and this is the actual prop that

Tommy used.

And all he did was...

They're on the stage like that, and they tap dance, and the audience will fall

about laughing.

He once said to me, there are a hundred brilliant magicians in this country.

I'm going to be the idiot.

He'd thought it through.

There isn't a fool about at the moment, he thought.

I'm going to be the fool. Because he could have done the act straight and

brilliant, but no.

Variety for years and years has been full of people who can do virtually

anything at the drop of a hat. And even some of them at 85 can get up and still

do tap dance, they can still do their act.

And Tommy had to learn to be special.

Two, three, four.

How's that?

And if you look in history of musical variety, there hasn't been another Tommy

Cooper.

As a reprieve from touring, the Windmill Theatre in Soho, famous for its semi

-naked chorus girl, was a magnet for aspiring comedians.

Tommy Cooper auditioned five times before joining the cast of a now

list of entertainers who cut their teeth there.

I was at the Windmill in 1957. I met a guy there called Bruce Forsyth. I never

found out what happened to him.

But it was a great school. It turned out these great comics.

Because I was just a little squit. I was the bottom of the bill. And you learned

to die gracefully. You did six shows a day, six days a week, 36 a week.

And you learned to cope with silence.

You weren't heckled. There was no aggression.

They hadn't come to see you.

They'd come to see the strippers.

And they would just open newspapers and things when you came on. And it was a

great school.

Now, with a regular West End gig, he wasted no time in writing to every

in town.

But not before considering the fledgling medium of television.

On 2nd June 1947, he wrote to the BBC asking for an audition.

He was summoned, but the feedback was less than flattering.

An attractive young man with indistinct speaking voice and extremely unfortunate

appearance.

Comma de pata with cod magic.

Nonchalant approach, but poor diction and unpleasant manner.

He had, however, secured the services of a dapper wee Scotsman, the agent Miff

Ferry.

The only thing I know about Tommy's relationship with this agent was that

did do what he was told, up to a point, and he would never take money, you know.

The club will try and pay him. No, no, send it to Mr. Ferry. I don't do that.

And he made out that his agent was the fellow with the big stick and he was

petrified of him. I'm pretty sure he wasn't.

Miff Ferry.

Yes, three Fs. Two in Miff and one in Ferry.

He was a legendary figure.

He was barred from rehearsals in the finish because he was always sticking

oar in.

Ferry signed him on a sole agency agreement.

at the unheard -of percentage of 15 % of all future earnings.

Miff Ferry, using contacts from his own days as a performer, relentlessly pushed

Tommy at the BBC, securing him a spot on a Christmas variety show.

The BBC head of light entertainment recognised that Tommy was a potentially

star. In 1952, after looking for the right vehicle, they eventually

Tommy in his own television series.

William G. Stewart, the TV presenter and a very fine director, said to me, the

genius of the man is, he's big, he's ugly, and he's clumsy, but when he

he glides. And if you watched Cooper, he's a skater.

So although it was all this bump, bump, bump, bump, and plodding about,

underneath, he was on roller skates, the man.

And I think that was the same in the brain. I think we got an opinion of

being like a big...

sloppy, lovable fella, but I think inside there was a serious, serious

So you missed that. You went over there, didn't you? You've got to watch me all

the time, you see.

Watch me all the time.

I must say, I'm delighted to be in the show.

I couldn't afford to be in the audience.

Thank you.

When I went to the house once, he was, because he's a big man, as you know,

13 shoes, very big, and every few minutes he started jumping up and down.

You know, jumping up and down like this. And I said, what on earth the matter,

Tommy? He looked so funny as well, this big man jumping up and down on the spot.

And he said, well, he said, I've just taken my medicine. And he said, I forgot

to shake the bottle.

Throughout the early 1950s, He also played lucrative cabaret gigs at the

and the Dorchester, where he came to the attention of the country's most

influential theatre critic, Ken Tynan.

Cooper is the hulking, preposterous conjurer who was always in a jelly of

hysterics at the collapse of his own tricks.

Convulsed by his own incompetence holding his side, he staggers helplessly

trick to trick.

No man was ever less surprised by failure.

Cooper, you see...

has a distinct attitude towards life.

A stoic attitude, a gurgling self -awareness of the futility of human

And this is what raises him above the crowd.

It's easy to overlook the scale of Tommy Cooper's success.

Here, in every sense of the word, he was a comedy giant.

And they loved him across the Atlantic.

He played Las Vegas to great acclaim, was offered a season at the Radio City

Music Hall in New York, which his agent had to turn down because of UK bookings.

And in 1963, a year before the Beatles conquered America, he twice appeared on

The Ed Sullivan Show, where the host introduced him as the funniest man ever

appear on this stage.

He was a constant television presence throughout the 60s and 70s and was

high when he played the Double Diamond Club in Caerphilly.

We all went as a family, well, all a family that wanted to go.

I was a bit worried because, you know, being family, I thought he was wonderful

naturally, you know, and growing up in that family like that.

But I wondered the reaction.

Of the people, well, it was unbelievable.

You had stand innovation.

I was very proud.

Plenty of headache.

Look at that.

They always say, take an asshole for a headache.

It was a headache.

You saw the joke on the page. You think, he's not telling that.

Tom was brilliant. It was a shared joke with the audience. It was like a

conspiracy.

He would do an awful joke, laugh himself.

And the audience would laugh. It's almost that he implied to the audience,

know this joke is terrible, you know this joke is terrible.

That's funny.

Comedy is a tricky one because you're being funny when you're told.

I mean, you're not being funny today, you're being funny at one minute past

when the chairman says, now's your chance, get up and do 20 minutes.

So it's a her's breath between success and failure.

It's very personal if people don't laugh.

You really feel it when the audience don't laugh, as if they don't like you.

They don't know you, they've never met you, but they've decided they don't like

you.

Comedians use very fierce words.

They say, I killed them if I made the audience laugh. I died if I didn't make

the audience laugh. Very emotive.

violent words to you, as if it's some gladiatorial, you know, which it is.

I'm wearing my tails tonight.

Do you like them?

His mother instilled in him a sense of diligence and hard work.

He would do as many as 50 shows a week, and he was earning a relative fortune.

But story after story tells of a startling lack of generosity.

He used to have a cigarette case with one cigarette in it.

And they'd go, oh, sorry, sorry. They'd go, oh, put them away, Tom. And he'd

smoke yours all night. He had a packet of 20 in his pocket.

But the cigarette case was a genius. There we are, look at that.

The legend went round about Tom would take a journey in a taxi and then he'd

the exact fare.

But then he would lean over and pat the taxi driver's breast pocket, pop

something in it and say, have a drink with me.

Oh, thank you, Mr Cooper.

And he'd go away.

And they'd look in the pocket and it was a tea bag.

And three taxi drivers have told me that.

The make -up of the man was he didn't know why he was a genius.

I think the reason for the frugality was it may not last.

Now, with his talent and our kind of forethought, we'd have sat there saying,

hey, let's go forever, mate.

How can this possibly stop? I'm doing nothing and getting paid for it.

And I think in the back of the mind was again that doubt, that doubt of the

character, the lovable man, but deep down a serious man saying, if this

tomorrow, what have I got?

By the early 80s, Tommy Cooper had been at the top of his profession for over 30

years. He was famous, imitated and rich.

But those who knew him best witnessed him as a melancholic loner.

As a young man, he wouldn't drink a half between shows.

But as his fame grew, he increasingly needed alcohol before going on.

It's not a good road to go on.

I think, well, have a drink and that'll give me a bit of energy.

Because, in fact, alcohol is depressive.

It depresses you. I can't have a drink and go on stage.

The energy comes from... Actually, the energy comes from giving

it away.

I'll give this bit and I'll keep that bit. No, give it away.

And more floods.

Tommy is a good drinker. He was a steady drinker. I've seen him do things like

once in a club in Liverpool, which shall be nameless, where he walked in with a

lady, I think it was Dove, and he looked at the optics and he said, I'll have a

large one of them and a pint of that.

And he went right along the bar.

And everyone thought, this is a lot of fun. That night, he never showed.

He wasn't in the club. And they rang his hotel in Liverpool.

I know because the agent was a pal of mine. And he rang and said, Tommy.

He said, yes.

He said, are you coming in? I don't think so.

I don't think I'll be coming in.

He said, well, there's 800 people here paid £20 each. He said, give me the

and addresses and I'll go around and apologise.

During the years of touring, Tommy's wife, Dove, stayed at home with the

children.

The affectionate term Dove could well have been ironic.

She was a powerful woman who could crack the whip with her husband and was known

as a prolific drinker in her own right.

His secretary, Mary Kay, they met at a rehearsal in 1967, soon became an

important part of his entourage and they enjoyed a deep, loving relationship up

until his death.

For almost 20 years, he was in love with two women.

They were the organising force in his life.

but could do nothing to dispel his personal demons.

In most entertainers, myself included, there's a huge element of self -doubt,

and I think it's that point where the back of your mind says, you know, watch

the galloping horses. The galloping horses are the ones that say, you can do

anything now.

You've made it now, you've cracked it, you're the other man.

You can literally do what you want, you can go on there.

And it gets to a point where you think, if I go on and do it and it doesn't

work, It'll shatter me.

So you're now afraid to do anything. You're afraid to do anything new.

And Tommy had that fear. I have it.

I just have this feeling sometimes that Tommy didn't like the character.

I'm not an expert on that. I just have this feeling that sometimes he disliked

the fact that he was the object of the laughter.

Light.

There, look. There, there.

The real stars, the real great ones, like Tommy, they think my reputation's

the line again tonight when I go on.

I know what I'm going to do, but maybe this is the night when they don't think

it's funny.

Tommy used this very table.

And at one stage, he picked up the table, he walked to the front of the

and suddenly, Tommy, all his tricks, things are going wrong.

What is he going to do? He's on live television. He can't put the table down.

And then, happily, he's got his leg.

Tommy's work schedule and his widely acknowledged alcoholism inevitably took

toll. He had been variously diagnosed with bronchitis, asthma, exhaustion and

even thrombosis.

He had suffered several heart attacks.

that were either played down or just kept secret.

And on that fateful night, 15th April 1984, ironically called Live at Her

Majesty's, he took the stage for his final performance.

wondering why this is funny and why this is going to work, but he'd learnt those

things and... Yeah.

A fellow said he was on a cruise ship and they docked in Port Said in Egypt.

And in the old days, before the security problems we have now, they used to have

stalls full of the local produce along the quayside. You know, they'd have,

like, stuffed camels and...

And along the line, there was a stall full of fezzes, green and red fezzes.

And leaning against the stall was this Arab chap in the full gear with the very

dubious woodbine with the green smoke.

And this British chap and his wife were walking down towards this stall,

talking. And as they got near, the Arab fellow said, You British?

The rogue said, Yeah.

And he put a red fez on and he went, Oh.

The rogue said, Did you know him?

He said, Who?

He said, Tommy Cooper.

He said, no.

He said, why did you do that? He said, everyone from Britain puts a fez on and

goes, ah.

What a tribute, eh?

Tommy was highly regarded by the others because he seemed to break all the

rules. Even the other comedians couldn't quite work out what it was.

And that was the joy of Tommy. You could never in the final analysis work out

what it was.

The tricks, the mumbling, the bumbling. All right, that's a good formula, but...

There's an X factory in there somewhere that the great ones have got, and you

never work it out, and neither should you. We mustn't know what it is, really,

or else the magic will have gone.

Keep it going, boys.

Keep it going now.

That's it. Loud and loud.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Don't jump off the roof, Dad.

You'll make a hole in the yard.

Mother just planted petulias. The weeding and seeding was

hard.

If you must end it all, Dad, won't you please give us

a break?

Just take a walk to the park, Dad, and there you can

jump in the...