Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing (28 page)

There were also the – seemingly – more trivial matters of a manager’s routine, like the occasion when the Thames booking executive reported that Tommy had agreed to make a walk-on appearance to tag a sketch for Mike and Bernie Winters for a crate of Scotch. Miff was adamant: ‘My acts do not work for cases of booze.’ When he was told during another enquiry that Eric and Ernie had received payment in kind for a personal appearance, he replied, ‘Told him if Morecambe and Wise cared to work for cameras [
sic
] that was their business, but my acts work legit.’ Ferrie always heaved a sigh when he heard from a venue that Tommy wanted his bar bill made out to ‘props’. And as Tommy’s income soared, so he was prepared to lean on Miff for a certain kind of advice: ‘Do I know anyone
who could get him dear stuff (tape recorders) at a discount?’ It was left to Gwen to be complimentary about their escalating good fortune. In April 1969, she dropped Miff a note, ‘I’m glad to see my husband’s money is going up. It won’t be long before I get that new mink coat!’

On the debit side there was Miff’s almost complete lack of understanding on the matter of comedy, compounded, as Bruce Forsyth has remarked, by the fact that he thought he had been placed on God’s earth to produce great comedians. Gordon Peters, a comic who showed much promise within Miff’s clientele for a few years, testifies to this defect: ‘I was very down and he said “I’ve got a good idea for you.” He reached under his desk and brought out this false leg with the comment, “I’m sure you can make something of this!”’ The failing will become more apparent when we examine Tommy’s television career in depth. For now let it be said that there
were
moments when in the context of the cosy, friendly image that he saw as so important to his client Miff was indisputably correct, on one occasion stopping him from holding a puppy over a candle flame for a television skit – ‘Hot Dog!’– and on another chastising him for punching a teddy bear as a running gag in a stand-up magic routine.

Tommy’s daughter is of the opinion that the tensions between her father and Miff turned much of the time on a power struggle between Miff and her mother. Gwen had always commanded Tommy’s respect when it came to assessing comedy material. In the early part of his career she had more than held her own in other ways. According to Val Andrews, there was the modest charity show where they encountered another magician – Francis Keep, alias ‘Uncle Boko’ – with a fez like Tommy’s on the same bill. Gwen went backstage and sorted him out: ‘You won’t be wearing that!’ During the run of
Paris
by Night
Tommy had wanted to feature a gag that involved
throwing a paper dart through a window on one side at the back of the set. The idea was that it came whizzing back though the window on the opposite side, accompanied by the sound of a jet engine at full blast. Delfont protested that the gag was too expensive to stage, but Gwen stood her ground: ‘If the plane gag isn’t in on opening night, there will be no opening night.’ It stopped the show.

It is not difficult to imagine Gwen, jealous of her husband, resenting Ferrie when there was so much she thought she could be doing for him herself. As Vicky said, ‘Consequently she would wind Tommy up something rotten about Miff. Father would get angry and mother would goad him to get on the line to Miff. More often than not Miff would slam the phone down. Then five minutes later I’d be delegated to call Miff back so that the slanging match could continue. Father would get all hot and bothered, while mother sat impassive at the table with a stony face as things got worse.’ It became a vicious circle as Tommy kept insisting to Miff not to phone Gwen when he was not there, protesting, ‘It is bad for her health and upsets her nerves badly.’ While all this may not sound the perfect recipe for happy Sundays at home, Vicky concedes today that Miff did get a lot of things right for her father and kept his business affairs in order in a way that would have defeated many a lesser agent.

In retrospect one of Miff’s shortcomings was his inability to spot the occasional window of opportunity that could have enhanced the Cooper career at any given time, the 1960 Las Vegas offer being one instance. Openings that were slammed shut in other media will be detailed in later chapters, but it has always intrigued me that he refused resolutely for Tommy to have any involvement in radio. In 1955 Cooper was courted relentlessly by the producers of
Educating Archie
, the hit BBC radio show starring ventriloquist Peter Brough and Archie
Andrews that for ten spectacular years catapulted an incomparable parade of new British comedy talent to stardom. The list embraced Tony Hancock, Max Bygraves, Hattie Jacques, Beryl Reid, Benny Hill, Harry Secombe, Dick Emery, and many more. The combination of the cheeky schoolboy dummy and the ingratiating comedy magician ever anxious to educate his young friend to the sort of tricks and japes that characterized his own schooldays seems irresistible. The vocal contrast between Archie’s high falsetto and Tommy’s gruff tones must have constituted a radio producer’s dream: Cooper had the most distinctive new voice in comedy. Even Brough’s own powers of persuasion were brought on board by the BBC, but without success.

Ferrie’s reasoning appears to have been that his client was a visual performer, a ruling with which Tommy does not appear to have disagreed. However, it contradicts Miff’s desire to develop his client as more than a novelty act. His magical background had not stopped another performer, David Nixon becoming a superb straight man to Arthur Askey on radio in the Fifties. Peter Waring, a debonair, laid-back patter magician, who specialized in throwaway lines like, ‘A bachelor is a man who’s got no children . . . to speak of,’ had stolen a march on them both until his suicide took him off the air in 1949. The greatest British wireless comedian of the Fifties was Tony Hancock. Watching thoughts flicker across his morose countenance on television tended to obscure the fact that his presence on the radio compelled you to imagine his expressions when you were listening. Max Wall was another visual clown who built for himself a substantial radio following. The final dampener to the argument would have been Peter Brough himself. The idea of a ventriloquist on radio was a non-starter,
until
one considers the medium for what it is, namely a theatre for the imagination, something understood as vividly by the
likes of Dylan Thomas and Francis Durbridge as by Brough’s original scriptwriters, Eric Sykes and Sid Colin. Another approach in the same year for Tommy to appear as a regular team member on the panel game,
My Wildest Dream
, a precursor of
Does the Team Think
?
, was more reasonably turned down. Whatever his ad-libbing powers, they were unlikely to hold their own among practised wits like Ted Ray, Tommy Trinder, and Jimmy Edwards.

A fragment found in Tommy’s papers from around the late Forties suggests that he had not always been averse to the idea of appearing on the medium. Headed ‘Radio Script by Tommy Cooper’, it begins:

It then segues into ‘I have just returned from a tour of Germany’ mode. Around the time of the Peter Brough enquiry, both Val Andrews and Freddie Sadler turned their hands to writing pilot scripts for a radio series for him. Sadler’s began:

The script held little promise. The idea of satirizing familiar theatrical and cinematic genres had been taken to new heights by Frank Muir and Denis Norden in
Take It From Here
. There seemed little point in building an entire thirty minutes around an extended sketch with Tommy as Frankenstein, although on the assumption that you knew what Cooper looked like, which most of the country did by the mid-Fifties, there could have been no funnier casting. Had Miff seen the script, he would have felt vindicated in his decision. On the other hand, had the
Educating Archie
opportunity been grasped, Tommy would have achieved a public relations boost to die for – with repeats the show attracted an audience of eighteen million – and resident star guest status with none of the responsibility of having to carry the show. The elegant and unassuming Peter Brough always managed that with no trouble at all.

If the golden age of BBC radio comedy could not claim Cooper’s success as part of its glorious achievement, there was another British institution with which he would become inseparably and triumphantly linked. His appeal to royalty, quite as much as to the working men’s club circuit, underlined his classlessness. Whenever he was billed to appear on the Royal Variety Performance, he would unquestionably steal the show. Today the annual event is a shallow celebrity-obsessed shadow of its former self. In an era when there
was
a variety profession and genuine respect both for real talent and the royal family, it was a true accolade to appear, as he did in 1953, 1964, 1967, 1971, and 1977. The challenge of playing a crowd that has one eye on the royal box most of the time is legendary. Few have the ability to cut through the ice to the
satisfaction of the whole house. In 1963 John Lennon succeeded with the line, ‘Those in the cheaper seats clap your hands. The rest of you just rattle your jewellery.’ The following year Tommy came close: ‘I’ve brought the wife. I said, “How much is a ticket?” They said, “A hundred pounds.” I said, “How much is a programme?” They said, “Six pounds.” I said, “Give us a programme. She can sit on that.”’

Possibly more important to Cooper were the more intimate occasions he entertained the royals, both in their own environment at Windsor Castle, and at a succession of Variety Club luncheons when the presence of the Duke of Edinburgh signalled the occasion for an impromptu double act between the pair. The first dates back to 1955. Television producer, Richard Afton was involved in organizing the event and called Miff excitedly on 20 January: ‘Very Confidential!! The lunch date for Tommy on 8 February is fixed. The Duke of Edinburgh will be there sitting alongside Tommy. When he heard that T. C. was being invited he accepted with alacrity as “Tommy Cooper is the Queen’s favourite comedian.”’ Pathé Pictorial was at the Savoy Hotel to film the event for posterity. When he failed to make a beaker in a tube disappear on a tray, he asked the Duke to stand with the request, ‘You hold it!’ The Duke obliged, at which point the beaker vanished right under his nose. ‘You’ve done it! You’ve done it!’ shouted Tommy above the applause. He whipped off his fez to reveal a smaller one underneath, presenting it to the Duke to take home for Prince Charles: ‘That’s for a certain very small gentleman.’ He repeated the formula in even more spectacular fashion at a similar event in July 1964, this time asking the distinguished guest to hold a bowl of water on a tray. Tommy threw a cloth over the bowl, which disappeared without trace, until in a brilliant piece of unrehearsed stage management the onus of exposure was placed on the Duke as he showed
the bowl attached to the side of the tray the audience was not supposed to see. The publicity value of the event was enormous.

A personal hat trick was achieved when Tommy was the principal speaker at the sixtieth birthday party given for the Duke by the Variety Club in 1981. He rose to the occasion wearing a bizarre set of mouse ears, which he justified as an elephant deterrent: ‘People don’t know this but elephants are frightened of mice. If an elephant saw a mouse, it would run away. It would go. And it works, cos if you look around the room you won’t see an elephant anywhere.’ He then turned to Gwen by his side and muttered, ‘A bit subtle that, wasn’t it?’ As the laughter built, he attempted to adjust his bowtie. It fell apart in his hands. ‘What did I do?’ For the entire world he looked as if he was besieged by demons from another planet, the nervous laugh his one last link with reality. He then coerced Gwen into a card trick: ‘First take four cards, madam, and then give me one back. Now can you say out loud what is the difference between the first hand you had and the second hand you have now?’ ‘The Queen is missing,’ came the reply. ‘Well, you can’t have everybody!’ said Tommy.

When it came to delivering an after-dinner speech or similar there was no one to top him. Members of the Grand Order of Water Rats were treated to a typical display of his rugged wit when he delivered an unforgettable address at a lodge meeting in March 1981. Having referred to the true etymology of the title of the organisation whereby ‘Rats’ is ‘star’ spelled backwards, he went on to make the observation that ‘air raid’ spelled backwards was ‘diarrhoea’ and that his agent, Miff Ferrie was ‘just as big a bastard spelled backwards as he is forwards.’ Perhaps his irreverent streak was most in evidence in 1983 at a Variety Club function held in this country to honour Dean Martin. It is unlikely that Martin, an infrequent
visitor to these shores, had ever set eyes on this man before. Nevertheless he would have felt the goodwill the man generated and, being the showman he was, Dino laughed along with the flow as Tommy got into his stride: ‘I lie awake and think of the old Martin and Lewis films. And when you think of those two, it’s amazing how things turn out. Dean Martin has become an international star known all over the world. I often wonder what happened to the Eyetie who used to do all the singing!’ At this stage Tommy’s physical condition was weak, but he still had the ability to punch home his humour to an audience. His ability to prick the pomposity of formal functions and lodge meetings contributed in no small measure to his popularity within the profession, aligning him with that earlier master of the revels and royal favourite, Bud Flanagan.