Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing (12 page)

He was not receiving a lavish wage. Bentine in the previous edition of the
Folies
had worked his way up to seventy-five pounds a week, but Tommy’s forty pounds was enhanced by frequent cabaret work at venues that now included the Savoy, the Dorchester, and the Berkeley, for which he regularly received an additional salary of seventy-five pounds. More importantly the press began to take notice. The most important young critic in the country, Kenneth Tynan went out of his way to eulogize him in the
Evening Standard
, describing him as our best new clown: ‘Cooper is the hulking, preposterous conjuror, who is always in a jelly of hysterics at the collapse of his own tricks. Convulsed by his own incompetence, holding his sides, he staggers helplessly from 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 awareness of the futility of human effort. And this is what raises him above the crowd.’ No wonder Ronnie Waldman had pulled his enthusiasm up a notch or two. Even if Tynan failed to register fully Tommy’s inherent panic, acknowledge the look that cried ‘Help, what am I going to do next?’, a perceptive person reading between the lines of his appraisal
would have spotted something of crucial importance, namely that Cooper was capable of being more than a just a novelty act guaranteed to enliven an otherwise dull bill. Like Howerd, like Wisdom, like Terry-Thomas he need not be shackled within the confines of being a turn.

At the end of the run in February 1952 Miff punctiliously wrote to Parnell thanking him for his courtesy and cooperation during the run of
Encore des Folies
. The letter gave him an opportunity to tell Parnell that Tommy would be starring in his own television series commencing 12 March. On 21 December 1951 Waldman had written to the BBC Television Booking Manager, expressing his desire to build a new show around Tommy, in which he would not only give his usual performance of lunatic conjuring, but also act as compère and provide the central core of the production by reappearing all the way through. The water needed testing with Miff from a money standpoint, but Waldman admitted to his colleagues within the Corporation that he was prepared to go up to a weekly fee of eighty guineas for eight shows. Eventually Miff settled for sixty. Tommy and Gwen could feel pleased with themselves. Immediately after the
Folies
they flew off to Barcelona for two weeks’ holiday. Around this time they moved to their most desirable residence yet, a two-guineas a week basement flat in a stately red-brick mansion block, Waverley Mansions, in Kenton Street, not far from Russell Square. Tommy could also boast his first car, a new Vanguard Estate, which he later claimed was the best vehicle he ever owned, dismissing in turn the Triumph Renown, the Ford Estate and the Mercedes that saw him through to the end of his days. Most importantly the combination of a long theatre run and a television series enabled him to be back in town with his mates, not only the comics whose trials and tribulations he shared, but also the magicians with whom he felt most at home.

The most vivid picture of Tommy the person at this point in his life can be gained from his magical cronies. Living near Russell Square he was only a short walk from the premises of L. Davenport and Company at 25 New Oxford Street. Every Saturday morning this mystical emporium – advertised as ‘Where the Tricks Come From’ – became the unofficial rallying point for a small group of young aficionados. Regular attendees included Bobby Bernard, Val Andrews, Billy McComb, Alex Elmsley, Cy Endfield and Harry Devano. It was not unknown for Orson Welles to add his weight to the gathering if he was in town. Between them they represented a motley bunch of professionals and amateurs bound together by a common enthusiasm. When they had outstayed their welcome at the magic store, the caravan would repair to a nearby Lyons’ Corner House for the rest of the afternoon.

According to Val, Tommy was always on the look out for the latest novelty in the pocket trick line and was quite unable to contain himself from the headstrong demonstration of his latest acquisition as soon as they were in the café. He often had no idea how the trick worked and the Nippies, the Lyons waitresses in their short trademark aprons, would gather around in hysterics as he tried to master the intricacies of this newly purchased miracle. He once took great pride in genuinely fooling Bobby with a new version of the trick in which a coin was secretly concealed beneath one of three small red cups. In the old version you had only to look for the secret hair attached to the penny to announce where it was. Bobby had no idea what Tommy was up to as time and again he discovered the hidden coin. Cooper would register his excitement with what became a characteristic gesture, clapping his hands together like flippers and saying, ‘Dear, oh dear! Dear, oh dear!’ Except that in those early days the words were expletive based, a trait he had to purge from his behaviour when
he started to mix with the Delfonts and the Grades. But as Bobby says, ‘We all knew what he was really saying!’

For all his success he never bought a tea or a coffee for anyone. He used to say, ‘You get the teas, boy’– a clue to his Welsh ancestry – ‘and I’ll get the chairs.’ If the place was crowded he gave you the impression he was doing you a favour. It was a ploy he had developed in crowded NAAFI canteens. Then once you had brought over the teas that
you
had bought, he would launch into a lecture on how scandalous the charges were, working out the number of cups of tea that you should be able to extract from a packet for less than a farthing a cup. When he really had been broke, word got around that he had been unable to pay his Magic Circle subscription. According to Gwen he walked out on stage at one Magic Circle show and said, ‘You can all stop talking about me – it makes no difference.’ He turned around and there was a rubber dagger sticking out of his back. The audience was in uproar. When he became better off than most of his colleagues, it suited him to keep his hands in his pockets. Jack Benny kept up the pretence of meanness as a key trait within his comic persona; Max Miller, who supposedly never bought a drink for anyone, was a humanitarian by contrast when it came to secret good deeds. Alas, Tommy’s behaviour was a psychological kink in his make-up that had no bearing on his comic perspective whatsoever.

Bobby can become quite agitated about his old chum. Put bluntly the Cooper of those early years was ‘a ruthless opportunist – he’d never pay for anything if he could find a way of getting you to give it to him.’ Or pay you what you wanted if he could find a way of getting it for less. He became the acknowledged expert at discovering he had left his wallet or chequebook at home. In this context the Bill Hall story is legendary. Hall was an eccentric double-bass player on the
variety circuit in the act known as ‘Hall, Norman and Ladd’. In his spare time he was quite a deft caricaturist and had developed a sideline of reproducing sketches of his fellow pros as postcards for publicity purposes. One day Val spotted him in Lyons’ clutching a packet of postcards for Tommy. Bill told Andrews he was charging him three pounds for the service. Val was sceptical, but Hall assured him he knew how to go about things. Tommy arrived and quickly got to the point, ‘Bill, I’ve been thinking about the three quid …’ ‘That’s right,’ interrupted Hall, ‘unfortunately I gave you the wrong quote. I forgot to include the price of the special bromide paper they were printed on.’ Tommy took out his wallet and three pounds were extracted with the speed of jet propulsion: ‘No, a price is a price. You said three pounds. There it is!’

For Val the vagaries of such behaviour were offset by the sheer dedication he put into his work, the midnight oil he would spend practising: ‘He worked harder at perfecting his act than any other performer I ever knew.’ The latest pocket tricks aside, he was a shrewd judge of the material that best suited him. And he was always fun. As Val says, ‘He had many good qualities and could be great company and was fun to be with. But I always felt that his obsession about the cost of things spoiled things for himself and others. I was sorry for anyone who had a business arrangement with him.’ Tommy used to get through three ‘Electric Decks’ a week, specially gimmicked packs of cards that create a convincing illusion of the cards flowing from hand to hand like a waterfall, until you take the lower hand away and they are seen to be strung together on a length of elastic. Val made these for the magic shops where they sold for seven shillings and sixpence. One day he told Tommy he was prepared to give him a special deal, bypassing the retailer on the way: ‘I’ll give you three at a time, twelve and six for three, or better still six for a pound.’
He wouldn’t play: ‘It seemed like more, it sounded more, and he couldn’t make the mental leap to see the bargain. So he missed out. Or thought I had some devious plan to cheat him which he could not fathom. There were times when he was not too bright.’ To an extent his caution with money reflected the hard times of his past, but was carried through to an extreme that bordered on the paranoid. Such may be the psychological fallout of having money sewn into your clothes as a child. It is a character trait that we shall need to return to before this story is over, but first there are further triumphs on stage and on television to chart, as well as the whole question of where he acquired his professional material.

With typical self-deprecating charm, the American magician and humorist, Jay Marshall once told of the time a small child came up to him and said, ‘When I grow up, Mr Marshall, I want to be a magician too.’ In his quiet, kindly way he looked at the child and explained, ‘Well, you can’t be both.’ In that sense Tommy, like Jay, never grew up. There was a sense that his act was a constant attempt to recreate the world of his childhood. Certainly without the magic Tommy would have been a dull man. To enter the consciousness of Cooper one needs to understand implicitly the world of the magician to which he gained admittance the moment he received his first box of tricks and where he remained happy, content and intrigued for the rest of his days. Patrick Page, who served for a spell behind the counter of Davenport’s magic shop, recalls how he was like a child transformed, glowing with joy as he surveyed shelf after shelf of the glittering prizes that were the traditional magician’s tools of his trade. Equally diverting was the vast array of practical jokes that would have taken him back to those comic paper advertisements of his youth: pencils that won’t write, cigarettes that won’t light, matches that
won’t strike, cigars that explode, teaspoons that leap into the air, and sugar cubes that won’t dissolve. Most important of all was something not obviously visible, the promise – conveyed so brilliantly by H. G. Wells in his short story, ‘The Magic Shop’ – that somewhere within these dusty walls must be the latest miracle, the ultimate marvel that will stamp your reputation as the ‘wizardest’ wonder worker in the whole wide world.

Tommy’s innocence was witnessed on one occasion by the actor Richard Briers. Cooper blew a stream of bubbles towards the audience and reached out to catch one in his hand. It did not burst. He had secretly palmed an imitation glass bubble in the hand and created the illusion of picking one out of the air: ‘The look on his face that he had done something that every child would like to do but never could, was exactly the look of my daughter, who was then three years of age, when she was blowing bubbles all about the place.’ It never occurred to Richard that Tommy might have been acting, but, if this had been the case, he could only have achieved the effect through his own inner reserve of childlike naivety. Leslie Press, the Punch and Judy man was once booked by Tommy to entertain at the birthday party of one of his children. Cocooned within his booth he was puzzled why the audience laughter was dwindling away as the show progressed. When he emerged he discovered why. All the kids had given up on Punch’s shenanigans, with the exception of Tommy, beaming like a lighthouse, and – it should be added in fairness – fellow comedian, Dickie Henderson.

I shall never forget an afternoon spent in his company at Ken Brooke’s Magic Place. In the Seventies this informal studio, on the second floor at 145 Wardour Street, was the Mecca for the elite of the magic world. With its cocktail bar, capacious sofas and plush carpeting, it was, for Cooper, home from home.
Ken Brooke was a brash but endearing purveyor of material to professionals, highly respected as probably the best demonstrator of magic there has ever been. At the time one of his best sellers was a streamlined method for tearing up and then restoring a complete newspaper, devised by the American magician, Gene Anderson and popularized on Broadway by the top magic star of the day, Doug Henning. There was no way Tommy was going to pass by the opportunity of learning how to perform this latest sensation. The preparations for the trick embraced something akin to an advanced course in origami and Boy Scout proficiency with scissors, paste and brush. That is before you even came to apply the dexterity necessary to put the effect into practice. On this occasion I entered the studio to discover a floor that resembled a cross between an explosion in a newsagent’s and one in a glue factory. It was difficult to know who was teaching who, Ken’s high-pitched Yorkshire tones vying with Tommy’s agitated West Country burr, as the latter made this point, queried that. Even allowing for the fact that they were notorious sparring partners, my most important memory is that Tommy was quite simply having the time of his life, matched only by the pleasure with which he would go home to perform the trick for Gwen at their dining room table that evening.

When Mary Kay first asked him what his hobbies were, she never expected him to reply, ‘Magic’. Golf, photography, or fast cars maybe, but not magic. ‘It was like watching a child play with a toy,’ adds Mary, qualifying her statement immediately with ‘but a very clever child.’ Her idea of relaxation was to head off into the country with a well-stocked hamper for a picnic in some secluded rural backwater, but Tommy had no such idea of bliss: ‘For him, the perfect picnic would be a small table in the corner of a magic shop, heaped up with an
hors
d’oeuvre
of new tricks and washed down with a magic potion
of unheard-of-power.’ Magic was with him at every waking moment. According to his wife he even practised card tricks on the lavatory. He probably had a pack of cards under his pillow as well. He used to say that he carried so many tricks and props around with him – far in excess of what he really needed for his standard act – that it resembled ‘a bloody circus’. At one count there were seventeen bags and cases full of magic and tricks on tour with him. He made no excuses: ‘That’s why I always have two rooms in a hotel. I use the sitting room as the practice room. I love what I’m doing, so when I try something new and it goes well, that’s a great tonic for me. It’s what I’m most concerned about.’

There comes a moment when enthusiasm shifts to obsession, as Gwen and Mary found. But, while his brain may have been disconnected from reality if by that we mean politics, sport and the world at large, there is no evidence to show that Cooper ever allowed his passion to betray his professionalism. Bob Hayden, a respected semi-professional magician from Southampton, recalls spending an evening back stage with Tommy during the run of the 1957 London Palladium pantomime,
Robinson Crusoe
, a production that entailed many more entrances and exits than a conventional variety show. He is still impressed by the way in which throughout the evening Cooper would switch on and off between the professional job on the one hand and his total preoccupation with coin twiddling and the minutiae of magical technique the next. The pocket trick
en vogue
was one called the Okito Box, a small metal container along pillbox lines in which a coin could be made to vanish and reappear at will. While Tommy was fixated on learning from Bob how much dexterity was required to accomplish this without loss of face, he also knew to the nth degree how many footsteps were required to walk from dressing room to stage, the split second scheduling of this
exchange with co-star Arthur Askey, or that with David Whitfield. The incident provides a valuable insight not only into his love of magic, but also into a surprisingly well ordered mind. In his case the line between love and lunacy, so often a by-product of obsessive behaviour, was kept distinct.

The fascination of magic, of course, is wrapped up in the secrets of the craft, on a level with the exhilaration in the pursuit of knowledge that has driven scientists and explorers from ancient times. To that can be added the capacity to appear to be doing what is clearly impossible, providing not merely enjoyment for others, but a considerable feeling of personal one-upmanship in the process. But, as the Hayden encounter may intimate, the most fun magicians have is in the company of their fellow magicians. For one thing magicians love to fool each other. In addition to the magic shops and the magic clubs a magic convention attracting anything from between 100 to 3,000 predominantly amateur and semiprofessional registrants is probably staged in the United Kingdom on an almost weekly basis, in settings ranging from the magnificence of the Blackpool Opera House to the cosiness of the lowliest village hall. It always surprises lay people to learn that at an international level, there is a circuit on which it is possible for a magician to earn his livelihood through performing, lecturing and selling his merchandise to other magicians without encountering a member of the public. These occasions represent a strange hybrid world where the mysterious mingles with the commonplace. If the public were to be admitted to anything but the performances of the classier acts the image of the genre would plummet considerably, but redeeming the whole atmosphere is an extraordinary bond of fraternity and friendship, only occasionally undermined by the feuding that will exist in any tightly knit community.

Tommy had a hilarious skit that he used to act out at parties,
often enhanced by wearing a bowler hat to represent the man who came through the door. It went like this: ‘Mind you, I could do without some of the visitors I get back stage. It’s Monday night. Knock, knock. “Come in.” “Good evening, Mr Cooper, I’m from the Doncaster Magicians’ Club.” “Oh yes?” “Yes, and I just want on behalf of the Doncaster Magicians’ Club to wish you welcome.” “Thank you very much.” He’d go out and the next night, the Tuesday night, he’d come back. Knock on the door. “Come in.” “Well, you remember me, Mr Cooper, from the Doncaster Magicians’ Club. I was in to see the show again tonight. Great fun, Tom. The way you did that trick with the silk handkerchief. Wonderful!” And on like that. Same the following night, the Wednesday, but no knock this time. Straight through the door. “Great again, Tom. But you didn’t have the handkerchief in tonight, did you Tom?” He’s got his wife with him now too. Thursday night, again, the door opens. You’ve guessed it! “Hang on a minute, Tom. Here, Gladys, Jim, Pete, come here. I want you all to meet Tom.” By the end of the week all his bleeding relatives are in here drinking my best whisky. It’s not on, is it?’ It was so funny that in June 1956 the comedian Digby Wolfe, who eventually went to America and became a writer for
Rowan
and Martin’s Laugh-In
, sought to recreate it for one of his own television shows. Needless to say Tommy did not grant permission. Had his name been attached to it, the airing would have lost him many friends within the brotherhood of magic. More importantly, he knew that as he toured the country, whatever the name of the provincial society, when it came back to the basics of the hobby they all shared, he was as bad as the worst of them.

He was totally accepted within this world. With one notorious exception, when an official attempted to refuse him entry to a major magic convention in Brighton in the mid-Seventies,
his celebrity never stood in the way of the privacy he craved at such events. He never minded signing autographs, but for most of the time he was allowed to mingle in the crowd, sounding out items for his act among the ‘Dealers’ – the indispensable trade fair where you could buy anything from an ‘Atomic Vase’ to a ‘Confabulation Wallet’, from a ‘Nudist Deck’ to a ‘Nemo Card Castle’– and genuinely appreciating the subtleties of the performers in the stage and ‘close-up’ shows, envying their inventive acumen and advanced manipulative skills as much as they revered his comedic gifts. And then at the end of the day, when he had a chance to share and show tricks among his peers in an informal setting over a drink or two or three, he came alive.

In the Cooper mind the landscape of central London was defined not merely by nightclubs, theatres and the memories of sentry duty. As the Forties became the Fifties Tommy would spend every minute at his disposal rattling around the loop of the magic supply houses like a ball bearing on a bagatelle board. In addition to Davenport’s, there was Harry Stanley with his Unique Magic Studio in Wardour Street, Max Andrews in Archer Street, Oscar Oswald on Duke Street Hill and Jack Hughes a few stops along the Northern Line at Colindale, supplemented by the flagship magic departments within the larger stores like Hamleys, Gamages, and of course, Ellisdons. In due course Ron MacMillan would open his International Magic Studio near the top of Leather Lane, Alan Alan would be forever identified with his ‘Magic Spot’ in Southampton Row, and Ken Brooke would move into Wardour Street, by which time Harry Stanley had relocated via Frith Street to Brewer Street. They were not all glamorous abodes. Tommy kept up a perpetual trek up dingy flights of stairs and along drab corridors, but as his reputation grew the men who purveyed the magic became all the more pleased to see him,
knowing that the inclusion of one of their items in his act could well result in increased sales, not least with television exposure. In the Sixties Tommy often dragged his friend, Eric Sykes along with him on these expeditions. As Eric has pointed out, they were so pleased to give him the latest novelty on their shelves that money seldom changed hands.

The most influential of these dealers was Harry Stanley. A sometime musician with the Jack Hylton band, he and Miff Ferrie shared a common ground that made him especially interested in the young entertainer’s progress. It was never Harry’s mission merely to sell the artefacts of the magician’s act. As an entrepreneur in his own right he promoted the craft in the eyes of the general public through West End shows and his involvement in the pioneering days of Commercial Television. More than any other individual, Stanley, through his publications and ability to spot a trend, shaped the British magical culture of the Fifties. One Sunday a month he would stage a small, intimate magic convention for magicians and their families at the Conway Hall in Red Lion Square, an event readily accepted by Cooper in his formative years as a platform upon which to try out new material without embarrassment. Harry certainly spotted the Cooper potential and was happy to spread the name by using Tommy’s endorsement of several of his lines in his early catalogues, the pages of which proclaim ‘Tommy Cooper enjoys using the Unique New Comedy Clock’ and
à propos
of ‘Playing Cards’ (a small harmonica concealed in a dummy pack of cards), ‘I sold the first one to Tommy Cooper and he has had plenty of fun using it.’

In time Tommy also struck up a rapport with Edwin Hooper. Known throughout the trade simply as ‘Edwin the Magician’, he kept a magic supply house in the unlikely venue of Bideford on the north coast of Devon. In a relatively short time this small time children’s entertainer built his business,
‘The Supreme Magic Company’, into the largest postal service for magicians in the world. No sooner had Tommy received the latest Supreme catalogue or sales sheet than he would phone Edwin, usually with the instruction, ‘Send one of each.’ Hooper would then point out to Cooper that he had already purchased some of these items and that besides some of them would not suit his form of presentation. He used to reply: ‘Never mind. Send them anyway. I’m just a big kid and it’s like Christmas when I receive your parcels!’ On one occasion Edwin even put pen to paper to spell out his dilemma: ‘You ask us to send the “Three Stroke Ball Production” – two sets. We are
not
sending these until we have your confirmation to do so … this is not an easy trick to do … so I thought we had better warn you first.’ However fair or unfair his assessment of Tommy’s digital skill, perhaps he had visions of his famous customer ruining the trick before the gaze of millions on live television and curtailing the prospect of further sales in the process. Edwin need not have worried. Tommy’s acquisitive tendencies never clouded his editorial judgement in knowing what was right for his act. The majority of his purchases were never performed in public, which not surprisingly – and perhaps mercifully – is the fate of most magic traded by catalogue, over the counter or, today, by means of the internet.