Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing (29 page)

The most memorable line Cooper ever spoke in royal company remains the most controversial. There is no one who hasn’t heard at some time what he said to the Queen in the line-up after a Royal Variety Performance. As legend has it, he asked Her Majesty if he could ask her a personal question. The Queen replied, ‘As personal as I’ll allow.’ Tommy said, ‘Do you like football?’ She said, ‘Not particularly.’ He said, ‘Well, could I have your tickets for the Cup Final?’ The controversy surrounds whether the line was original with him. Max Bygraves attributes it to Bud Flanagan and Max certainly shared many royal stages with the leader of the Crazy Gang. Cooper never did. And yet others, not least court photographer on such occasions, Doug McKenzie, swear they were there when it happened. Jimmy Tarbuck, who was standing next to him, can even pinpoint the year, 1964, the occasion he shared the stage with Tommy, Brenda Lee, and Cilla Black. There is no reason to question the recall of any of these stalwarts, but the line is so much within the spirit of Flanagan, there can be little doubt that it was his origination. We shall never know
what gave Tommy the gall to repeat it, although McKenzie has an interesting sidelight on the circumstances. Tommy was disappointed that the Queen hardly took any notice of him in the line-up. As she walked away, he gave his attention-grabbing cough to regain her attention – ‘I say, your majesty,’ – and then asked the question. It was typical of Cooper to do it on the downbeat, investing it with a surreal originality of its own, but it was not truly his. According to Max it was first delivered to the Queen Mother, which most probably sets the year at 1950, when the young Bygraves shared the bill with Flanagan and Allen, Jack Benny, and Max Miller. Bud had been one of the speakers at the July 1964 Variety Club lunch. It was now November. Perhaps the old stager had educated the new pretender to the original exchange on that occasion, maybe in reminiscence with the Duke himself. Let us only hope it did not change the Queen’s opinion of him. Word has it that Bernard Delfont, one pace behind the Queen, glowered at the time. Tommy’s interjection was tantamount to addressing the monarch direct, which you never did. However, there is no record that Miff received a complaint from the Palace the following morning.

When Tommy was given his first series, television comedy was still at a tentative stage. Arthur Askey’s success was not wrongly perceived as little more than televised concert party. Richard Hearne, with his Mr Pastry characterization, was primarily a children’s performer accorded bonus adult appeal by nature of the grown-up fascination with the medium that purveyed him. By 1952 it was generally perceived that the only show to have achieved any sort of breakthrough in presentation terms was Terry-Thomas’s
How Do You View?
with its intimate approach and sketch comedy that scored visually. The star’s bizarre appearance with his gap-toothed smile, elaborate waistcoats and exaggerated cigarette holder, once wittily purveyed as a television aerial, were made for the medium. The challenge that faced Cooper as he contemplated his first television series,
It’s Magic
, was daunting, but the fact that magic was a visual performance form had to be in his favour.

A habitué of live performance, Tommy would have to adapt to the more exacting approach of a medium, where, as he admitted in later life, amid a welter of technical distractions the performer has to create his own atmosphere with the studio
audience situated on the other side of an enforced barrier of cameras, cables and the people operating them. That mood then had to filter into the homes of millions more. The number of people who have volunteered to me that Cooper is the only comic they have watched from their favourite armchair with tears streaming down their cheeks indicates that he was more than passably successful. However, when he looked back on his first series experience, he did so with a modesty that borders on the defensive. He always recognized it for the big break it was, but in interviews never referred to it as his own show, always as McDonald Hobley’s: ‘He had a show called
It’s
Magic
. I went in as a guest artist, but they kept me for the series.’ Hobley, one of the defining faces of pioneer television in this country, was the debonair continuity announcer who acted as master of ceremonies throughout the programme and proved a perfect foil to Cooper. But the
Radio Times
billing (as well as Cooper’s contract) left one in no doubt: ‘Tommy Cooper in
It’s Magic
’. Only then in humbler print do we encounter ‘A miscellany of mischief, music, and mystery, introduced by McDonald Hobley.’ The listings magazine also carried a credit, ‘Material for Tommy Cooper supervised by Miff Ferrie.’ There is no indication of who wrote what and one assumes that Tommy and Miff collated it from the usual ragbag of sources.

Miscellany is the spice of variety, but in this instance it almost certainly undermined the public’s expectation of the programme. It was not a magic show
per se
, as its title suggests, but clung to the word ‘magic’ in its figurative sense as the key that locked all the ingredients into place. Tommy’s burlesque interludes were interwoven with items that epitomized the ‘magic’ of music, of dance, of song, and so on. The slender assumption that each segment had a magic of its own was a dangerous one. An early format alludes to featuring the magic
of art (backed by music ‘while we look at it’), of ‘the countryside in spring’ (film backed by music), of the magic of detection (short whodunnit), of beautiful words (the balcony scene from
Romeo and Juliet
), even the magic of a piece of machinery. Very little has anything to do with the fez-capped giant on fast track to becoming a national figure, although – for all the wrong reasons – the threatened mishmash would have been totally in accord with the image of havoc and mayhem that he cultivated.

The format triggered an erratic response from Cecil Mc-Givern, the Controller, Television Programmes. A week ahead of the first transmission he wrote to producer Graeme Muir, expressing his fears of a clash of bad taste and, with inflated self-importance more worthy of military regiment than television studio, issued his command: ‘I rely on you to be utterly vigilant – and utterly ruthless – right up to the moment of transmission in cutting out anything and anybody you find to be in the least offensive. Putting, for example, Tommy Cooper in the same context as
Romeo and Juliet
is immediately a risk and you must accept considerable responsibility.’‘Offensive’ is not exactly the first word that comes to mind in considering Cooper’s humour and, as for Shakespeare, what a wonderful Bottom he would have made in the Dream. For all the flaws in the rationale of the show, McGivern reveals the paranoia that exists to this day in television commissioning editors with few if any credentials for the role. Nevertheless, it is surprising to encounter the insecurity at a time when the industry remained relatively cosy – because still experimental – and an Enid Blyton culture ruled.

A typical running order shows that Tommy contributed on average six appearances during a single transmission, all with Hobley and all brief, with the exception of his final six minute closing spot before the finale. Muir later commented pompously,
‘I rationed him to thirteen minutes of each forty-five minute show. I felt that this was enough. People either dote on Tommy or can’t stand him.’ The balcony scene went ahead, with no evidence of interference from Tommy. Most of the reviews agreed that if you found Cooper funny you would not dislike the show, only the
Evening Standard
referring to him as being ‘the odd man out all the time.’ The
Daily Mail
maintained, ‘He can produce more laughs to the minute on television than anyone else we have seen.’ But McGivern remained jittery. After the second show he sent a memo to Ronnie Waldman, the executive responsible:

1. The Breughel picture was hopeless.
   
2.  The last joke (mother and the walrus) was in doubtful taste.
   
3.  The dancing again.
   
4.  The programme had more ordinariness than magic.
   

Whether McGivern was happier with the parade of fire-eaters, table tennis champions, harmonica players, calypso singers, and other diverse attractions that Muir subsequently coaxed through his studio doors, we have no way of telling. Eamonn Andrews even read a poem extolling ‘The Giant’s Causeway’. To bolster the magic content, a guest magician from The Magic Circle was included each week. The show ran fortnightly from 12 March for eight episodes, an option for the final four being picked up along the way. Tommy was paid sixty and Miff twenty guineas a show. The true value was not in the worth of the contract, but in the avalanche of new enquiries for personal appearances that Miff received as a result. There was no rush to repeat the exercise of a series.

Writing in the Television Annual for 1953, editor Kenneth Baily was amazingly less than gracious about Cooper, given the populist fan-based slant of the publication: ‘The result was a hotchpotch which could only have been redeemed if the starring comic had been liberal enough in the inventiveness of his material to keep it fresh and full of surprise each time he appeared. Unfortunately, Tommy Cooper had not that liberality of material.’ In the circumstances, Miff must shoulder a large part of the blame. No recordings survive and the scripts are little more than running orders which give few clues to precise content. However, they do show that he mingled quick comedy sketches with the crazy conjuring and this would have added to the disjointed nature of the whole exercise. It was generally conceded that Tommy needed more experience as a comic to carry such a vehicle. He could only achieve that on the road. Thanks to Bernard Delfont, Miff was able to write to Waldman with a note of triumph in September 1954: ‘You will be glad to know that Tommy has had a most successful summer season at Southport, where, apart from his act, he has been playing sketches and can now safely be classed as a ‘production comic’.

Whatever the flaws of the production of
It’s Magic
there was no doubting the chemistry that existed between Cooper and Hobley and every effort was made to secure Tommy’s presence on the BBC’s 1952
Christmas Party
, hosted by the announcer, televised live on Christmas Day that year. Cooper always looked back on this one appearance as the turning point in his perception by the public. At the beginning of 1950 approximately 350,000 households had television sets; by the end of 1952 that number was fast approaching one and a half million. With only one channel to choose from, it is fairly certain that every single one of those homes would have been tuned into the festivities at Lime Grove at 7.30 that Christmas
evening. Tommy would have had to play to capacity at the London Palladium for several years to have gained the audience that saw him most memorably magicking a block of wood – from ear to ear – through the long suffering Hobley’s head. One reviewer wrote, ‘The Television
Christmas Party
usually depresses me because the enjoyment seems so artificial,’ but concluded that Cooper enhanced the situation. He stole the show in a bill that included Norman Wisdom, Arthur Askey, Frankie Howerd, Petula Clark, and many more.

For the time being high profile guest spots were his one means of staying in front of the viewing public. He teamed up again with Hobley on
Kaleidoscope
in February 1953 and with bandleader Henry Hall in
Face the Music
two months later, when he shared with the public his delight at the arrival of his baby daughter, Victoria a few days before on 2 April: ‘I’m getting a big play pen with bars all round. Once I get inside she can’t get at me!’ Most talked about was the occasion in August 1953 when in
A Little of What You Fancy
he enlisted the services of Gilbert Harding. In a stunt reminiscent of his defining anti-gravity milk bottle trick, he filled a large can with water, covered the mouth with a sheet of cardboard and balanced the can upside down on the head of the provocative host. Tommy explained that when he removed the cardboard, the water would stay suspended in the can. The trick failed and Harding was drenched. The television personality was capable of beaming charm or scathing scorn. Fortunately on this occasion he was in a lighter mood and, when questioned on the incident afterwards, referred to his guest star as ‘a delightful maniac’.

The next interest to be shown in featuring Cooper in a series of his own came with the arrival of Commercial Television in 1955. It is hard in retrospect to imagine the monopoly held by a lone broadcaster when it came to promoting talent. Had
the second channel not arrived Cooper might have stayed for ever in series oblivion. Fortunately for Tommy many of the most powerful people behind the new enterprise, like the Grades, Jack Hylton, and Val Parnell, were tried and tested variety professionals who understood what he stood for, not – Waldman excepted – civil servants running an entertainment enterprise. The first enquiry came from Associated-Rediffusion Ltd, the company awarded the London weekday franchise, on 24 August 1955, although his theatrical commitments prevented a series from materializing until March 1957. However, his presence at the Prince of Wales Theatre for most of this time placed him in a perfect position to gain exposure on the new wave of variety spectaculars that would stamp their own hallmark on the new channel. He made the first of many appearances on
Val Parnell’s Sunday Night at the London
Palladium
on 16 October 1955.
Saturday Showtime
was another vehicle that availed itself of Cooper’s talents during this time, a fast car between Piccadilly Circus and the studios at Wood Green just about making this an option in the days of live transmission.

When Miff eventually sat down to lunch with the executives at Associated-Rediffusion in April 1956, he had the uneasy memory of
It’s Magic
at the back of his mind. Miff was less than impressed by the trial script written by John Antrobus and Dave Freeman. In the first place, although the new format would have more skilfully crafted sketches, it was still variety-bound with guest acts and singers. Script editor at the new company was David Croft, who would one day set his stamp on popular British culture with a string of situation comedies of which
Dad’s Army
remains the most notable. Miff was adamant in a letter to Croft dated 16 May 1956, in which he emphasized how much thought he had given to the conundrum of presenting his artist on the small screen: ‘That is why I
suggested my idea for a series entitled
My Life by Tommy
Cooper
, the copyright of which, incidentally, I should naturally retain. This idea is, in my opinion, the only way of presenting him to viewing audiences to the best advantage, as frankly I am not interested in any ordinary type of show for him. So unless the scripts are written around this idea a lot of everyone’s valuable time will be wasted, and I can see no point in proceeding further.’

Miff’s idea was to show ‘what happens to Tommy Cooper during the course of an ordinary day,’ opening in his home and closing in his theatre dressing room before making his entrance on stage, ‘over which credits should run.’ The main weakness was that it deprived audiences of seeing arguably what they most wanted to see, their hero in all his calamitous splendour on that very stage. However, Ferrie’s tentative movement in the direction of situation comedy, or at least the comedy of situation – irrespective at this stage whether his client could cope with the genre or not – was prescient given that the two British pioneers in the field, Tony Hancock and Jimmy Edwards, had still – by a matter of weeks and months respectively – to bring the device to the medium. In addition he made one exceptionally astute observation to Croft about his client: ‘Regarding the trial script, it is far too
frenzied
. One does not have to create a
frenzied
situation for Tommy. Just write it smoothly near-normal and he’ll frenzy it up naturally.’ As for his involvement and his paranoia about what he regarded as
his
copyright, these were drawbacks that television companies would soon learn to tolerate if they wanted Cooper on their screens.

The BBC must have heard on the grapevine of the commercial interest. On 30 April the Light Entertainment front office expressed interest in a one-off Cooper half hour to be included in a run of showcases for comedians that would also feature Jack Benny and Max Wall, but nothing more was heard of the
project after a meeting with Miff at the Corporation on 2 May. Ferrie might have assumed that the Associated-Rediffusion interest was home and dry, but this was not the case. On 14 August there was cause to get jittery when a complication arose regarding technical facilities for a dummy run, leading Head of Light Entertainment, Michael Westmore to declare the project shelved for the time being. Miff wasted no time in rekindling BBC interest by dropping a line to Ronnie Wald-man, emphasizing that he had ‘finally figured out what is in my opinion the ideal format to enable him to be presented to the fullest advantage.’ Nothing however came of a meeting with his old colleague and had it not been for David Croft’s persistence at the new company Cooper’s television future might have remained at a loose end. Energized by a visit to see Tommy in person at the Prince of Wales, Croft made sure by 10 September that not only had a dummy run been scheduled for 26 October, before Tommy headed north for his autumn season at the Coventry Theatre, but that a deal was in place for a series of twelve half hours at a fee of £350.00 a show to be recorded in the spring of the following year. Sadly Croft would leave the company before he could add his own signature to what he had championed.