Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing: The Definitive Biography of a Comedy Legend
The first ever intimate portrait of Britain’s best-loved, but little known, comedy entertainer. Fully authorised, and written by Cooper’s friend and colleague John Fisher.More than just a comedian, Tommy Cooper was a born entertainer. Working in a golden age of British comedy, Cooper stood – literally – head and shoulders above the crowd, and had a magical talent for humour that defied description.But there was a man behind the laughter that few people saw. John Fisher was Cooper's friend and colleague and witnessed first-hand the moments of self-doubt and inadequacy that contrasted with the genial exterior. Until his tragic death on live television in 1984, Tommy Cooper lived in constant fear of the day he would be found out by his audience. He could never accept the accolades that came so thick and fast from every direction, and died to the sounds of laughter that he never really believed.Supplementing his own intimate knowledge with material accessed for the first time from the archives of Cooper's agent and manager, Miff Ferrie, and with the full co-operation of the Cooper family, John Fisher's warm, honest and insightful writing skilfully brings alive the man behind the comedic mask in this definitive biography of a comedy legend.
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Tommy Cooper
Always Leave Them Laughing
JOHN FISHER
For Gwen,
For Vicky,
And for Henry & Doris Lewis,
who also had a daughter named Victoria.
Section One
1 Tommy’s parents, Thomas and Gertrude Cooper, circa 1920s. (Private Collection)
2 Three years old and ready for play. (Private Collection)
3 Eighteen years old and ready for the world. (Private Collection)
4 Enjoying a bottle and a glass off duty in Egypt in 1947. (Private Collection)
5 Gwen (far left), star of her wartime concert party. (Private Collection)
6 Tommy and Gwen, just prior to their wedding in Cyprus, 1947. (Private Collection)
7 The early publicity pose that defined an image. (Rimis Ltd)
8 Miff Ferrie: agent, manager, Svengali. (Rimis Ltd)
9 Later publicity pose when success was assured. (Robert Harper)
10 Baby Vicky seems unimpressed. (Chris Ware/Hulton Getty)
11 11. With baby Thomas in the garden at Chiswick. (Private Collection)
12 ‘Frankie and Bruce and Tommy’s Christmas Show’, 1966. (Fremantle Media)
13 ‘Do you like football?’ (Mirrorpix)
14 ‘Bucket, sand! Sand, bucket!’ (Hulton Getty)
15 Time to relax with the famous feet up at home. (Private Collection)
16 A sensation on the Ed Sullivan Show, New York, 1967. (Private Collection)
17 ‘When autumn leaves start to fall …’ (Fremantle Media)
18 ‘And ven zey are caught everyone vill be shot …’ (Fremantle Media)
19 Funny bones: with Anita Harris, promoting Tommy’s Palladium show, 1971. (Private Collection)
20 A rare private moment backstage. (Hulton Getty)
Section Two
1 A modern Mad Hatter. (Fremantle Media)
2 The caricature by Bill Hall. (© Bill Hall)
3 ‘Where’s Jerry Lewis when I need him?’: Dean Martin at the Variety Club Lunch held in his honour, with Tommy and Morecambe & Wise. (Mirrorpix)
4 Master of his terrain: playing the clubs in the Seventies. (John Curtis/Rex Features)
5 With Mary Kay during the latter years. (Private Collection)
6 ‘Look into my eyes’: the New London Theatre television series, 1978. (Fremantle Media)
7 A modern Punch and Judy: ‘That’s the way to do it!’ (Fremantle Media)
8 ‘On a clear day …’ (Fremantle Media)
9 ‘Look at the buffalo and speak into the tennis racquet’: with his son, Thomas Henty. (Fremantle Media)
10 ‘You’ve done some terrible, terrible things in your life!’: with Frank Thornton. (Fremantle Media)
11 T. C. – Totally Convulsed. (Fremantle Media)
12 With staunch straight man, Allan Cuthbertson. (Fremantle Media)
13 ‘And do have a piece of my homemade cake’: with Betty Cooper and Robert Dorning. (Fremantle Media)
14 Tommy as the public seldom saw him: at rehearsals during the late Seventies. (Fremantle Media)
15 Our hero sleepwalks for his hero, Arthur Askey. (Fremantle Media)
16 With Eric Sykes, special champion and dear friend. (Fremantle Media)
17 Image taken from the final television show, 15 April 1984. (Steve Blogg/Rex Features)
18 The last photograph, Las Palmas, 1984. (Private Collection)
19 Tommy’s ‘Dove’ amongst her souvenirs. (Daily Mail)
Tommy Cooper has been a part of my comic consciousness for almost as long as I can recall. Back in the Fifties I remember waiting despondently with my mother for her to be served in a greengrocer’s shop in the Southampton suburb of Shirley and being briefly distracted by a giant cardboard cut-out of the fez-capped zany producing a large citrus specimen of South African origin from the folds of his mysterious cloak. The caption said it all with the conciseness that characterized a Cooper one-liner: ‘Cape Fruit! Grapefruit!’ It might have been the other way around. It does not matter. Even without the trademark chortle that the man himself would have added in performance, my impatience gave way to laughter. I was scarcely out of short trousers at the time.
In later years I have often thought how appropriate it was to be familiarized with this great clown in a store for fruit and vegetables. For a child of the time his outsize noddle resembled the prototype of Mr Potato Head, the craze that encouraged kids to rummage in the vegetable bin and then to create an identity from the plastic accessories provided for his ears, eyes, and other facial features. A more academic allusion might align the whole Cooper appearance with the work of the sixteenth-century Italian artist, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, skilled at creating faces out of the constituent parts of the aforesaid bin. He would surely have applauded the appearance of Cooper that we all call to mind, one with not only a spud for a head, but runner beans for legs, bunches of bananas for hands, turnip nose, dark olive eyes, crinkly endive hair, even an upturned flowerpot for headwear. Today, when gardeners and chefs appear to command more air time and celebrity than clowns and gagsters, Tommy might have appreciated the irony.
