Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing: The Definitive Biography of a Comedy Legend

Tommy: Don’t be silly. What gave you that idea?

Gwen: Well, we’ve been married now for five weeks and this is the first time you’ve been worried about food!

One routine they worked on was a pastiche on American Broadcasting with its leaning towards product placement:

Gwen: Hey, bighead. Get out of that bed. We’ve got a programme to do.

Tommy: Will you quit yapping! Six o’clock in the morning. Who’s to listen to us? Some burglars, maybe. Oh boy,

I’m tired.

Gwen: Why don’t you stay home some night and try sleeping?

Tommy: Sleeping? On that Pasternak Pussy-Willow Mattress? Pussy-Willow? It’s stuffed with cat hair. Every time

I lie down on that cat hair my back arches!

Gwen: Oh, stop grumbling! Here’s your tea!

Tommy: It’s about time. (Sips) Phoo! (Spits) What are you trying to do? Poison me?

Gwen: It’s that McKeesters’s Vita-Fresh Tea! It won’t kill you.

Tommy: It won’t? Why do you think the government makes them put that skull and crossbones on the packet? (Tommy screams)

Gwen: What is it?

Tommy: Your hair! It looks as though you just took your head out of a mixer.

It was obviously an act in progress. Gwen recalled in later years that they were once rehearsing in a room in Cairo. The slanging match was so convincing, the caretaker wanted to call the police. Later they tried a softer, kindlier, less negative approach:

Gwen: Good morning, Tommy dear.

Tommy: Good morning, Gwen angel.

Gwen: Sweetheart, I must say you look refreshingly well-rested this morning.

Tommy: Yes, thanks to our wonderful Pasternak Factory-Tested Pussy-Willow Mattress. The mattress that takes all the guess work out of sleeping. So soft and restful.

Gwen: Yes, sweetums. Here’s your tea.

Tommy: Thank you, doll. (Sips) Ahhh! What tea!! It must be –

Gwen: You’re right, lovey. It’s McKeester’s Vita-Fresh Tea, the tea with that locked-up goodness for everybody.

Tommy: Quick, darling. Another cup. Ahhhhhh!!

Gwen: Oh, peach-nut! You’ve spilled some on your vest.

Tommy: Good. Now I can try some of that Little Panther Spot Remover. No rubbing. Just slap some Little Panther on your vest and watch it eat the spot out.

Gwen: And imagine – a big two-ounce bottle for only three pence farthing.

Tommy: Or, if you are a messy eater, you can get the handy economical forty-gallon bottle.

Gwen: Angel eyes, I have so much to say this morning.

Tommy: Stop. Don’t move, Gwen.

Gwen: But, darling!

Tommy: Your hair is breathtaking. That sheen. That brilli ance. What did you do to it?

And so on … ! After the war there is evidence that they tried out the act before a civilian audience at the Theatre Royal, Margate, but it was a non-starter. According to Gwen, Tommy wanted to stay together as a team, but she had never lost faith in that first impression of her husband as a single act through the glass partition on the Alexandria ferry. Her devotion and dedication to the man and his career would endure until the end of her days.

Cooper was quintessentially a solo performer. In recent years the claims of one Frankie Lyons to have been part of a double act with him back in 1946 during the CSE years have to some people’s minds been exaggerated out of belief, not least when they were given additional importance when formulated in the mid-Nineties into a stage play by his son, Garry. An army concert party is by nature an informal organism, a makeshift showbusiness world in which all the members are expected to work alongside one another in sketches, musical numbers and passing exchanges of corny humour known in the trade as crossovers. Tommy’s exercise book provides us with examples. The initials could refer to ‘Cooper’ and ‘Frankie’, but more likely stand for ‘comic’ and ‘feed’:

C.: Hello there. Maybe you can help me. I’ve got a problem and I don’t know whether to go to a palmist or a mind reader for the answer.

F.: Go to a palmist. You’re sure you have a palm!

And again:

C.: You’d love the dimple in her chin though. You’d love the dimple in her chin.

F.: Why twice?

C.: Double chin!

Out of such brief exchanges a permanent double act is not born. Besides, they evolve out of genuine warmth and respect between the two partners, never at the suggestion of some would-be producer with officer status playing fanciful games with his cast of conscripts. One is reminded of Steve Martin’s classic comedy sketch of the failed Hollywood agent pairing off his make-believe charges: ‘Laurel, you go with Costello; Abbott, you go with Hardy.’ It just doesn’t work that way. Cooper and Lyons never got past first post. Even had they been in line to become the next Flanagan and Allen, the new Jewel and Warriss, Lyons quite obviously lacked the drive and self-sacrifice at the core of true star talent that not only Tommy, but Gwen on his behalf, showed once they returned to home shores. In later life Cooper pondered the quality in a reflective moment: ‘I often wonder what separates the amateurs from the pros. Being persistent, I suppose. There are bound to be tough times and a lot of people give up. But I was determined. Besides, there’s a great streak of optimism in me.’ In other words show business has its own Darwinian structure.

Tommy set his sights on the London Palladium and got there. Frankie settled for an honourable other existence with a modest, but skilled job in engineering. With all the good will in the world, Tommy would never have reached the top variety theatre in the land with him in tow. Had one been casting Lyons alongside the likes of William Hartnell, Michael Medwin, Harry Fowler and company, one would have to settle for Sam Kydd, the chipper insignificant sidekick of a hundred service movies, but never a star. In his later years Tommy found himself lined up against a handful of dependable British character actors as occasional straight men. They all floundered in the shadow of the fez. Terry Seabrooke, one of Britain’s foremost professional magicians, acted as a technical consultant to a production of Frankie and Tommy and formulated his opinion: ‘It showed Tommy as a nasty type with a terrible, ruthless temper. It certainly was not the Tommy I knew for so many years.’

Inevitably the play attracted tabloid scrutiny. In addition, as if to rub salt into wounds a story was brought into the open by Lyons concerning the discovery of illicit drugs on a truck transporting CSE theatrical props that had been overturned on a road in Palestine in early March 1947. A British driver and a British sergeant were arrested and half a ton of hashish and opium was supposedly seized. It is an acknowledged fact that throughout the Middle East at that time demoralized soldiers were profiteering on the black market. Lyons alleges that rumours started to circulate around CSE headquarters in Cairo that Tommy was the sergeant implicated. On 27 August 1947 The Times reported that a lieutenant, described as the manager of a road show called Juke Box, had been acquitted of conspiring to smuggle the drugs that had been seized. At the beginning of March, just days after his marriage, Tommy had been on tour starring in the Juke Box show, but any evidence that he may have been implicated is circumstantial, his possible involvement beyond belief. His mind was now on other matters. Within a month or so he would be on his way back to England. He already had a strategy for entertainment success back home and could look forward to his new wife joining him soon after. It is also hard to think he was bright enough to figure as a criminal mastermind and had real suspicion fallen upon him, his return would have been curtailed. As for drugs per se? Magic was his drug. He had no need – as yet – for other substances. In later years, as we shall see, he would become prey to alcohol abuse and the mood swings that came with it, as susceptible to pain and anger as any other human being. It is jumping the gun to intimate he may have been accountable to such demons so early, as Lyons’ whole treatment of him suggests. Eventually the stage manager and an Arab accomplice were charged and convicted, and in their embarrassment the British authorities were happy to draw a veil over the incident.

Meanwhile, with or without Gwen or Lyons at his side, the embryonic version of Tommy’s comedy magic act stayed sacrosanct. As he wrote in his notebook at the time: ‘Spoon Gag – Rope Gag – Fifteen Card Trick with Assistants – Egg Bag – Finis.’ Professional show business beckoned. It may be appropriate to give Frankie Lyons the last word: ‘He was determined. No matter whom, no matter what, he was going to get there.’ And – happily for us all – he did!

FOUR (#uc4885778-0f4b-51d2-a7d1-827980508e0e)

Life Gets More Exciting … (#uc4885778-0f4b-51d2-a7d1-827980508e0e)

Upon his return to England, Tommy headed straight for the parental home at Langley. Gwen still had professional obligations to fulfil for the CSE in the Middle East and any semblance of a normal married life remained on the horizon. The drafts of letters he wrote to her from ‘Devonia’provide an insight into those early days of readjustment at all levels, professional, domestic, and emotional, as well as trite but touching testament to his undying love for her: ‘Have I told you I love you today? Well, my sweet, I do. I can’t live without you, longing for your arms around me. I love you, my beautiful wife. I’m thinking about you every minute of the day.’ He bounces her along continually with holiday camp enthusiasm – ‘Keep smiling and your chin up! It won’t be long now’–and goes out of his way to allay the anxieties Gwen obviously nursed regarding her family’s feelings vis-à-vis their marriage –possibly without their initial knowledge –so far from the white cliffs of Dover: ‘I told them all the news and put the matter to rest. So, my sweet, you have nothing to worry about as they are all happy and longing for your hasty return.’

It seems a typically cockeyed Cooper way of doing things that he should meet his in-laws without first being introduced by his wife, but the self-motivated initial bonding experience went well on a fleeting one-night visit to Eastbourne, during which he met her mother, father, brothers, and grandma, as well as being treated to a pub crawl, a car ride to Beachy Head (‘But boy was I cold up there!’) and a visit to his father-in-law’s metal works. The latter provided the red letter opportunity of the whole trip as he suffered withdrawal symptoms for the metal shop at the Hythe boatyard: ‘I must admit your father has a nice workshop indeed. He’s a very busy man. Then I broke up the work by showing some tricks for ten minutes. Your brothers were delighted with them and kept asking the time as they made sure they didn’t work after one o’clock. Ha! We all went back to lunch.’

He wasted no time in testing the shallows of full time show business: ‘This week I’m going to London to see an agent called Tommie Draper. Wish me luck, my sweet. How I miss you. With you here I wouldn’t be half so scared! Ha!! I know what you would say, “Now go out there, bighead, and kill ’em.” So roll on Friday.’ No record survives of his first civilian audition in Gerrard Street. Within weeks the happy couple are reunited and inevitably set their sights on a home together in London. But not before Tommy has written asking for another audition at the Windmill – not at this juncture forthcoming – and, more importantly, a further one at the BBC.

On 2 June 1947 he wrote from Langley to a Miss Cook at the Corporation requesting that he be given a chance: ‘My act consists of cod magic and comedy, which I think would be quite suitable for television.’ He received a response almost immediately. On 5 June he was summoned by the Television Booking Manager to attend a ‘preliminary audition’ at 25 Marylebone Road the following Monday, the ninth, at 11.45 a.m.: ‘Your performance should not exceed ten minutes in length.’ The outcome was negative in the extreme, recalling the notorious report given Fred Astaire’s initial screen test at Paramount: ‘Can’t act; can’t sing; slightly bald; can dance a little.’ Cooper was disparagingly immortalized as an ‘unattractive young man with indistinct speaking voice and extremely unfortunate appearance’. His act had taken seven minutes of their time. In truth his bizarre persona and anarchic approach defied classification among the starchy Corporation bigwigs of that time. As a postscript, the report card filled out on the day added, ‘nonchalant approach, but poor diction and unpleasant manner’. Someone wanted to add insult to injury. Not that Tommy saw this at the time. A courtesy letter arrived at his parent’s home a week later simply advising that his performance was deemed unsuitable for ‘our TV variety programmes as at present planned’. It is the irony of ironies that by the end of the year he had made his television debut, almost certainly with his audition act – it was his act – on a gala Christmas Eve variety show hosted by the musical comedy star, Leslie Henson. However, such a prestige booking belied the reality of the struggle ahead for the Coopers as they tried to come to terms with life on the first rung of the show business ladder in a shabby London town befogged by austerity and a Pyrrhic sense of peace.