Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing

by John Fisher

  Good evening. I would now like to show you about ten hours of magic and for my first trick we have here a white handkerchief with black spots. I shall now make the spots disappear. There you are – a white handkerchief and there are the spots. (Shakes handkerchief and spots fall to floor) I have here a small piece of rope. For this I shall need the assistance of a gentleman in the audience. (Flings rope to member of audience in stalls) Thank you, sir. Would you now be so kind as to tie a knot in the centre of the rope? Right. You’ve done that? Now tie another, if you please. And another. Have you done that? Good. You may keep the rope. I’ve been trying to get rid of it for weeks. Now here we have two rabbits. This one is the white rabbit – white hat on box. And this one is the black rabbit – black hat on box. Right. White rabbit. Black rabbit. I shall now make them change places. Say the magic word (gibberish) and the rabbits have now changed places. The most difficult thing now is to get them back again!

  Now here we have an ordinary small frying pan. Piece of paper in it. I light the paper and what do we have? Just a flash in the pan! Now my next trick is really mystic. Yes, absolutely mystic. Genuinely mystic. And here is my stick! And now with the help of the boys I should like to play a solo on the harmonica. Sorry. I forgot to take it out of the box. Now we have a tray with four glasses on a cloth. I shall now whip away the cloth without disturbing the glasses. I whip it away just like that – or even quicker. On the count of three I shall whip the cloth away and the glasses will remain. One. Two. Two and a half. Three. There. (As he turns, glasses are seen to be stuck to the tray, the cloth slit accordingly for easy removal) I’ve done it. I shall now produce from this opera hat a live rabbit. I say the magic word. (Gibberish, followed by explosion) It was there. You have all heard of Houdini, the famous escape king. Here is a picture of him. (Takes photo out of envelope and surveys empty card) He’s got away again! Have you seen these? (Plays) Playing cards! Here is the white rabbit and here is the black rabbit. To make them change places. Huh huh huh.

  My next trick. Here we have a brass bowl. I now drop three coins in the bowl. One, two, three. There you are. Three coins in the fountain. ‘Oh, That Old Black Magic Has Me In Its Spell’. (Sings for few bars unaccompanied) ‘Honeysuckle Rose’. (Ditto) (Business with bottles and glasses on table – no dialogue) Have you seen this record? (Holds up black square with a hole in the middle) For square dancing. This magic wand was given to me by The Magic Circle. It’s the only one of its kind in the world. Absolutely priceless. (Snaps it over knee) Look at the grain! Here we have the white rabbit and here is the black rabbit. See the white hat on the white rabbit box and the black hat on the black rabbit box. Now to make them change places…

  Now Tommy builds to his big finish. After much shifty fumbling that he deigns the audience not to notice, he shows that the black rabbit is really blue and the white one yellow. ‘Howzat?’ Again most of the material would stand him in stead for the duration of his career. Peter Newcombe’s extended generosity is in evidence – perhaps in return for the plug for The Magic Circle – and we see the first mention of a catchphrase in embryo. Appended to this transcript, under the heading ‘additional material for possible use’, was the material he had previously submitted for use in the Hippodrome show. In this way the act was evolving constantly.

  However, for the billing he commanded in a show like Paris by Night he had to work harder than within the confines of a mere ten minute solo spot. The brief experience of a single summer show had enabled him to develop as a revue comedian, although in the approach to the London production he was churlish and short-sighted enough to enquire of Miff why he was doing three spots for the price of one! Miff’s response can be left to the imagination. West End audiences were now treated to A Few Impressions and the sequence that saw him volunteering out of the audience to assist another ‘conjuror’. The ‘impressions’ spot was prefaced by what may be the first extended story-style joke that he performed at an important professional level, the one about the three bears: after father bear and baby bear have enquired, ‘Where’s my porridge?’ the mother bear comes down and says, ‘I don’t know what you’re making all this fuss about. I haven’t made it yet!’ The parade of hats was tagged by Tommy quickly donning a coat for the finish: ‘Nelson – Half Nelson – It’s me all the time! Do you like the coat? Genuine camel hair. You don’t believe me? Look.’ When he turned, the coat was seen to have a hump on the back.

  The third spot was billed in the theatre programmes as It Never Fails. It is inconceivable that in Cooper’s hands this old piece of burlesque business ever did. After the initial surprise of the bowler-hatted Cooper stepping up on stage as one of two spectators conscripted by a magician of the old school, the routine settled into traditional slapstick fare. In the Prince of Wales show the other volunteer was played by Ronnie Brody, a short, staunch supporting comic of the period who, unlike Ronnie Corbett, who began in a similar mould, never built on the early promise he showed. Both Cooper and Brody were instructed to hold their hats in front of them. From the moment the magician broke an egg into Brody’s hat, it was totally obvious which way the sequence would go. Tommy found it quite hilarious, only to have the smile wiped off his face the instant a second egg was broken into his hat.

  Magician: I will now say the magic word … Abadaba … Abadaba …

  Tommy: You’ve abadabad my hat.

  Magician: (to Brody) Is the egg still here? (Brody nods) (Then to Cooper) Is your egg still there?

  Tommy: It’s here, but it’s not still. (Worriedly he swills it around in the hat)

  Magician: I shall now say the magic formula. Abracadabra. Sim Sala Bim. Shazam. Betty Grable. Betty Grable.

  BETTY GRABLE.

  Tommy: Forget Betty Grable. What about the egg?

  The magician admits failure and departs the stage amid histrionics that portend a nervous breakdown. From that moment the routine is played out in silence as both volunteers stand stranded on the stage, looking first into the wings, then with a start at each other, then into their hats, at the audience and back again. The comedy is played out entirely in looks with Cooper milking that Jack Benny effect for all it is worth. Brody is the first to take the initiative, coming over to Tommy to deposit every last drop of the egg in his hat in that of his colleague, before leaving him to his own devices. Tommy continues to stare with a stoic submissiveness that belies any initial disgruntlement, a lone figure on the vast stage, unsure of how to resolve his predicament until mischief takes over and he contemplates throwing the contents at the audience, then thinks better of it, puts on the hat, and walks off, the eggs having disappeared. Davenport’s supplied him with a special gimmick to insert in the hat for the purpose. The finish is a small detail in the wider significance of the routine.

  When in 2005 I was invited by the National Film Theatre to select thirteen favourite moments of film and television magic for a presentation to mark the Centenary of The Magic Circle, the choice of a Cooper moment presented the widest options, but without hesitation I homed in immediately upon this routine, recreated by Tommy possibly for the last time on an episode of the Thames variety series, London Night Out in the late Seventies. By now his son, Thomas was playing the magician, scriptwriter Dick Hills was filling Brody’s shoes, and Betty Grable had been supplanted in the sex appeal stakes by Brigitte Bardot. I chose it because the seven minutes represent the most concise lesson in visual comedy technique I know. At no point does Cooper over-react, his facial and bodily reactions a compendium of how to survive the worst extremes of the comic universe. Throughout the pace remains unhurried in the best Laurel and Hardy tradition, the self-conscious stance of his pear-shaped torso on its jittery legs feeding off the truth of every poor soul coerced into such duty by a mediocre magic act. Only the ending had changed. By now the Davenport’s prop had gone the way of a hundred other rust-coated gimmicks and he simply pulled out a flat cap and walked off in style. Walking back with the hat – quickly switched in the wings – he was now in a situation
to bombard the audience with confetti when the right moment came.

  At three spots for the price of one Cooper had proved that he amounted to more than what Miff must have feared he’d become, a solid supporting speciality act incapable of acquiring star billing. It was a dread that haunted Ferrie down the years. When in 1958 he was called by the TV Mirror for a comment from Tommy whether he thought there was a future for magicians on television, Miff snapped back, ‘Tommy Cooper is not a magician. He is a comedian.’ Even as late as 1965 he was remonstrating misguidedly with ABC Television for wanting to send out photographs of his client in a fez, pictures that branded him as ‘what I can only describe as a speciality act,’ adding, ‘It is the image of Cooper the Comedian that must be projected and not Cooper the Conjuror.’ By the end of the Fifties Tommy had more than consolidated his reputation as a comic in the broadest sense, having experimented with similar routines for other revue shows, principally in Blackpool and Coventry before returning to the West End under the aegis of Bernard Delfont at the Prince of Wales in Blue Magic in February 1959. In the process he built up a repertoire that stood him in good stead in later life when they provided – like the ‘Eggs in the Hat’ – sure-fire, but seldom seen material, with which to refresh his television appearances. Most popular in this supporting repertoire were ‘The Buffalo Routine’ and ‘Hello, Joe’. Sadly the names of the writers of both sketches have been lost to history.

  The former was a pastiche of Candid Camera, the routine which came back to haunt Cooper when Brad Ashton spotted it on American television. Set in a sport’s shop, the buffalo refers to the buffalo’s head in which the camera is hidden. Audiences also have to imagine a tennis racquet containing a secret microphone. Tommy plays the unsuspecting customer who enters wanting to exchange a pair of tennis socks, but who becomes increasingly riled as with each exchange he is told to ‘look at the buffalo’: ‘Once and for all, I didn’t come here to look at the buffalo. I don’t like buffaloes. I don’t want anything to do with buffaloes.’ Things only become worse when he is told to talk into the tennis racquet at the same time. Tommy is dispatched to the cashier and the shop assistant eats a clove of garlic in his absence. This is not the most subtle of routines. Tommy returns and things get further out of hand. In the tradition of the programme, the salesman eventually concedes what has been happening. As the news sinks in, he cannot believe the change in his good fortune, delirious at the fact that he is on television: ‘You’ve been having me on then. This is a joke. I’m on TV?’ It had to be seen. The great Swiss clown, Grock had a catchphrase, ‘Sans blague!’ which translated as ‘Get away!’ It would have been perfect here, had Cooper’s expression not said it all.

  ‘Hello, Joe’ teased the limits of reality even more so, as Tommy is interrupted on stage by what appears to be a distraught refugee from a shipwreck. Peering into the horizon he spots his imaginary long lost friend: ‘Hello, Joe.’ At first Cooper is puzzled, but is soon drawn into the fantasy, addressing the invisible man himself and sharing an invisible drink for old time’s sake, even brushing down his lapel when it splashes against him: ‘Careful – you spilt it all over me!’ The situation builds melodramatically with the intruder shooting Joe, the stage becoming a pool of blood and Tommy escaping to the refuge of a stool like a young girl fleeing a mouse. Tommy then spots the equally invisible Fred: ‘Put that gun down, Fred. I’ve got a knife. Take that, take that, take that.’ He ‘stabs’ him three times accompanied by three rim shots. Tommy is miraculously confused by the sound effect: ‘How come I shot him with a knife?’ Two invisible corpses now litter the floor as gingerly Tommy tiptoes his way over them. His mime was so good you could almost see the blood on the stage. The sketch took the conceptual humour that often crept into his act – ‘My wife got this fashion book and she opened the page and she said “I want that.” I said, “What?” She said, “I want that fur coat.” So I cut it out and gave it to her’ – into another dimension.

  For Blue Magic, which ran for thirty-eight weeks, Tommy had Shirley Bassey, scarce out of Tiger Bay, as a co-star. The second ‘Hats’ routine received its full dress West End première and his salary advanced considerably to £350.00 a week. However, during the latter part of the decade relations had become somewhat strained between the Delfont office and Ferrie. There were the trivial matters where Miff had to intervene on Tommy’s behalf, most often his obsession with who paid for the eggs and the stooges used in his additional spots. In fairness to Bernie, he almost invariably picked up the tab for the latter, but Cooper still thought he was getting a bad deal. The cost of forwarding telegrams from one venue to another on the Delfont circuit became an even more unreasonable bête noir, to the point where Tommy forbade the practice rather than dip into his own pocket. In the run-up to the 1957 London Palladium pantomime, for which Delfont leased his contract to Val Parnell and Moss Empires, Miff put Bernie in an invidious position by asking him to intervene between himself and producer, Robert Nesbitt, when a clash occurred a few days before opening between a high profile cabaret booking, for which Cooper was already contracted, and a full scale dress rehearsal called for that night.

  Miff pleaded he had no idea an evening dress rehearsal would be held three whole nights before opening. Then, just at the point he is asking for favours from Delfont, he sends him a letter hauling him over the coals for allowing his client to participate in a BBC sound broadcast from the Palladium to publicize the pantomime without his knowledge. In a telephone exchange Bernie deemed that Miff ‘was making a nuisance’ of himself. In his precious manner Miff retaliated that he was in no way going to deviate ‘from the usual way in which I conduct my business,’ in which everything appertaining to his client had to be drawn to his full attention before a decision was made. The schoolmaster tendency was showing. These were hardly the circumstances in which to plead with Delfont, in the same letter, to try again to secure Tommy’s release for the cabaret. The all powerful Nesbitt won the day, as he always would, and Bernie felt bruised.

  Further cracks began to appear in the relationship in the autumn of 1958, Delfont claiming – probably with some justification – that Miff did not discuss things sufficiently with his artist. The telephone log for 7 October records: ‘Blew his top! He (Delfont) is going to say where he will work. He either does six television shows or none at all. Would like to be released from contract. Banged phone down.’ The six shows were a series of programmes, Cooper’s Capers, that Delfont had decided to produce for ATV, the company run by his brother, Lew Grade, in a display of one-upmanship over rival broadcaster, Associated-Rediffusion, which had featured Cooper in a series during the previous year, and the BBC which was showing interest at this time. Whether Cooper did not wish to record a series at all at this stage of his career or whether he thought he should be entitled to twelve shows as in the previous A-RTV run is not known. Ferrie found himself dealing less and less with Bernie direct, more and more with his two lieutenants, Keith Devon and Billy Marsh. Indeed, it was Devon who called with the news that Tommy was going into Blue Magic, a peremptory month before the opening.

  On the back of Cooper’s success at the Prince of Wales matters were smoothed over. As Max Miller once said in another context, ‘People have a remarkable way of forgetting when you make money for them.’ In August 1959 Bernie and Miff were back on telephone terms, the impresario wanting to discuss Cooper on the basis of a £350.00 guarantee (his enhanced salary for Blue Magic) with the chance to make £500.00 for a guarantee of 40–45 working weeks. The offer does not appear to have been taken up. Blue Magic closed towards the end of 1959. After a short pantomime season in Puss in Boots with Edmund Hockridge, Derek Roy, and Petula Clark in Southampton, Cooper entered into an uncertain six-month period of stray cabaret bookings and the occasional television guest spot before opening for the summer as second top to Frankie Vaughan at Brighton Hippodrome.

  The institution of weekly variety was fading fast and Delfont would have to concede that in the restricted theatrical env
ironment of British show business there was no way he could monopolize the Cooper career in the Sixties as he had to a large extent in the Fifties. This did not stop discernible unrest when an offer to play the Palladium with Cliff Richard during the summer and autumn of 1960 was seen to clash with a commitment made by Miff for a Christmas season for Howard and Wyndham co-starring with Jimmy Logan and Eve Boswell at the Manchester Opera House. On 23 March Miff recorded an exchange with Billy Marsh: ‘Thought Mr Delfont had first refusal. Very upset, etc. (Delfont in the background nattering)’ Marsh threatened taking the matter to solicitors and a furious Delfont rang Stewart Cruikshank, the boss of the Howard and Wyndham circuit, who reported back to Miff: ‘Said Delfont came on rather excited, but as far as he was concerned he has no right to think he owns every act in the country.’ The upset didn’t stop Tommy playing the 1960 summer season in Brighton for Delfont, nor a seventeen week run for him in Torquay the following summer. But Miff sensed that to sustain the quality of Cooper’s bookings he had to diversify with other managements, a fact that deep down the impresario to whom Tommy owed so much must have understood. It should be added that his salary for the Howard and Wyndham show was £515.00 a week, giving Miff the opening to negotiate a percentage deal over and above the Delfont standard £350.00 for the Torquay season.

  Cooper would continue to work successfully for Delfont for the next decade, but only on an intermittent basis, most notably in two seasons with Frankie Vaughan, with whom he achieved a considerable rapport. Tommy idolized this most British of troubadours and his blundering burlesque of Vaughan’s song and dance act – a melange of every gag with a cane and a top hat ever conceived – became another staple of his repertoire. Not surprisingly, it became even more effective in close proximity to the elegance of the original when they shared the bill together. The 1964 London Palladium summer revue, Startime also featured Cilla Black, The Four-most, and the world’s greatest juggler, Francis Brunn. It broke all records, until Ken Dodd made his single-handed assault on the venue the following year. The success of the Frankie and Tommy combo was repeated for Bernie in a short ten-week season at the Bournemouth Winter Gardens in the summer of 1967. In the three years his salary had shot up from £400.00 to £800.00, indicative of the steep rise in his popularity on the back of his growing television success.