Tommy Cooper (19 March 1921 – 15 April 1984) was an Anglo-Welsh prop comedian and magician. He was known for making an art of getting magic tricks wrong, although he was actually an accomplished magician. His brilliant delivery and timing of "one-liners" is legendary. He has been the subject of efforts by people in Caerphilly to publicise the town as his birthplace.
Despite his purported inability to perform conjuring tricks, Cooper was a member of The Magic Circle. Famed for his red fez, his appearance was large and lumbering at 6 feet 4 inches (1.9 m) and more than 15 stone (210 lb; 95 kg) in weight.
Born Thomas Frederick Cooper, in Caerphilly, Wales, he was delivered by the woman who owned the house in which the family was lodging. Cooper's parents were Welsh-born army recruiting sergeant father Thomas H. (Tom) Cooper, and his English-born mother Gertrude (née Gertrude C. Wright) from Crediton, Devon. In light of the heavily polluted air and the offer of a job for his father, the family moved to Exeter, Devon when Cooper was three and gained the West Country accent that was part of his act.
The family lived in the back of Haven Banks, where Cooper attended Mount Radford School for boys, and helped his parents run their ice cream van, which attended fairs on the weekend. At 8 an aunt bought Cooper a magic set and he spent hours perfecting the tricks.
Magic ran in his family - his brother opened a magic shop in the 1960s in Slough High Street (then Buckinghamshire now Berkshire) called D. & Z. Cooper's Magic Shop.
After school, Cooper became a shipwright in Hythe, Hampshire, and in 1940 was called up as a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards regiment of the British Army in World War II . He served initially in Montgomery's Desert Rats in Egypt. Cooper became part of the NAAFI entertainment party and developed an act around his magic tricks interspersed with comedy. One evening in Cairo, during a sketch in which he was supposed to be in a costume which required a pith helmet, having forgotten the prop Cooper reached out and borrowed the fez from a passing waiter which got huge laughs. From this incident arose two of the trademark pieces of business that were a hallmark of his later act; the ever-present Fez hat, and his aptitude for slapstick comedy.
When he was demobbed after 7 years of military service, Cooper took up show business on Christmas Eve, 1947 — he would later add a popular monologue about his military experience as "Cooper the Trooper." Cooper worked variety theatres around the country, and at London's Windmill Theatre he performed 52 shows per week.
To keep the audience on their toes, Cooper threw in the occasional trick that worked when it was least expected.
Cooper rapidly became a top-liner in variety with his turn as the conjuror whose tricks never succeeded, but it was his television work that catapulted him to national recognition. After his debut on the BBC talent show New to You in March 1948, he soon started starring in his own shows, and was popular with audiences for four decades, most notably through his work with London Weekend Television from 1968 to 1972 and with Thames Television from 1973 to 1980.
Cooper was a heavy drinker and smoker, and experienced a decline in health during the late 1970s, suffering a heart attack in 1977 while in Rome, where he was performing a show. However, just three months later he was back on television in Night Out at the London Casino. By 1980, though, his drinking meant that Thames Television would not give him another starring series, and Cooper's Half Hour was his last. He did continue to guest on other television shows, however, and worked with Eric Sykes on two Thames productions in 1982: The Eric Sykes 1990 Show and It's Your Move.
Legendary meanness
John Fisher writes in Cooper's biography, "Everyone agrees that he was mean. Quite simply he was acknowledged as the tightest man in show business, with a pathological dread of reaching into his pocket."
Friends remember he would persuade strangers to buy him a drink using magician's cunning. He would stand at a bar and, when he made eye-contact with a stranger say 'Yes?' to which the stranger would reply, "Can I get you a drink?" Cooper would reply 'What are you drinking?' to which the stranger would think he was being offered a drink, state his preference and hear Cooper rejoin, "I'll have one as well." Another stunt was to leave a taxi, slipping something into the taxi driver's pocket saying, "Have a drink on me." That something turned out to be a tea bag.
He was also known for meanness of nature. In 1964 he was opening act at the Royal Variety Performance but short of material. He asked Billy Mayo, a retired variety pro who had seen better days, for help. Mayo went off to a hardware store and bought a paraffin heater, which he presented to Cooper telling him to walk on at the beginning, put it down in front of the audience and say, "They told me to go out there and warm them up." Cooper did, and the gag received an uproarious reception. A few days later he met Mayo along with fellow performers in Soho where he received much praise for his performance but offered not a word of thanks to Mayo. At leaving time Mayo asked a favour of Cooper, "My legs are not so good at the moment. Would it be possible for your driver to drop me off at my flat?" Cooper replied by saying, "I'm not a fucking taxi service."
Cooper's drinking increased and had a devastating effect on his family and nearly ruined his career. Initially he drank to allay the anxiety of going onstage. He told his friend Eric Sykes, "People say I've only got to walk out on stage and they laugh. If only they knew what it takes to walk out on stage in the first place. One of these days I'll just walk out and do nothing. Then they'll know the difference." Cooper also related during a TV interview that he would walk on stage behind the curtain and give it a shake, if the audience didn't laugh he would shake the curtain even more violently. If the audience laughed he would burst through the curtain and start his show. If they still didn't laugh he would rush back to the changing room, grab his bag and leave the theatre.
What began as liquid courage became a psychological crutch. Michael Parkinson recalls working with Cooper on a dry ship: there was much agitation when Cooper requested brandy. Parkinson explained, "You give him the bottle or he doesn't go on. It's as simple as that. That's how he works." There was an incident in a hotel where he asked for a large gin and tonic at breakfast then poured it over his cornflakes, explaining it was good for him as 'milk is full of cholesterol'.
By the mid-seventies, alcohol had started to erode Cooper's professionalism and club owners complained that he turned up late or rushed through his show in five minutes. His popularity generally carried him through but sometimes he was slow-handclapped on to the stage, audiences shouting 'Why are we waiting?' In clubs and on television, his timing began to desert him, he looked sad and was sluggish, eyes glazed, energy lowered. His slight incoherence had been part of his act but now words were being left out to embarrassing effect. Despite production crews pouring coffee down his throat, classic gags were omitted and other lines repeated for no reason. His health suffered and, fixated about his increasing weight, he started buying under-the-counter slimming pills which he mixed with insomnia tablets to form a potent cocktail.
In addition, he suffered chronic indigestion, lumbago, sciatica, bronchitis (he smoked 40 cigars a day) and severe circulation problems in his legs. When Cooper realised the extent of his injuries he cut down on his drinking and the energy and sparkle returned to his act and some of his later television performances were a revelation. However, he never stopped drinking and could be fallible: on an otherwise triumphant appearance with Michael Parkinson he forgot to set the safety catch on the guillotine illusion into which he had cajoled Parkinson. Only a last-minute intervention by the floor manager saved Parkinson's life. In 1977 Cooper suffered a heart attack whilst in Rome.