Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing (30 page)

By the beginning of 1957 Miff had changed his mind about the title, now endorsing
Cooperama
, with
My Life, Starring
Tommy Cooper
as a fall-back. The company wanted to proceed with
The Tommy Cooper Show
. Miff resisted, citing ‘lack of originality’ in his defence: ‘Mr Cooper is a most unusual personality and it is only logical that a series starring such an Artiste should have a title in keeping with such a personality.’ A compromise was reached and the series was called,
Cooper,
or Life with Tommy
. So much for originality! In the absence of recordings and scripts, one is left to imagine the outcome. All the evidence suggests that it was a debacle.

An ominous footnote had been appended to Miff’s proposal: ‘There should be no studio audience.’ There is every indication to show that on this point he and the broadcaster were in accord. A letter from producer, Peter Croft listed the complications that arose if studio space had to be sacrificed. Scenery would have to take a stylized form, while only a small percentage of the audience would be able to see any one particular item. The same company’s
A Show Called Fred
and
Son of Fred
– presumably shot in the same studio – had managed without during 1956, but Milligan’s absurdist scripts starring Peter Sellers were so out of the ordinary that the absence of an audience did not seem to detract from their appeal. Tommy’s whole motivation as a performer was audience-based.

On 11 May 1957, two-thirds of the way through the run, Miff wrote to John McMillan, the Controller of Programmes, that ‘Mr Cooper is becoming increasingly unhappy at the prevailing state of affairs, particularly the scripts and the casting, with the result that he wishes an entirely new cast for the next programme.’ Scripts were an uncoordinated affair, with Freeman, Freddie Sadler, Richard Waring, and Patrick Brawn contributing episodes singly or in pairs. Antrobus had wisely left the fold earlier. Miff hardly needed to add that ‘such lack of cooperation was certainly never anticipated, otherwise this series would not have been undertaken.’ A few days later Peter Croft put pen to paper to make a complaint – and a point – of his own: ‘We have so far overlooked the fact that he is continuously late both for morning and afternoon rehearsals, resulting in a loss of approximately five hours per week of rehearsal time.’

As we have seen, Bernard Delfont took television matters into his own hands for the series,
Cooper’s Capers
, that materialized for Associated Television Ltd the following year.
With the master showman at the helm we can be assured that Tommy certainly had the sounding board of an audience on this occasion. The inclusion of the singer, Aileen Cochrane suggests a return to something nearer a variety, rather than a pure sketch format, although again his comedy magic talents were downplayed. The transmission time of 10.15 p.m. on Fridays – a shift from 9.30 p.m. on Mondays – would not have instilled confidence in the star. The director had to be replaced after the first show. Artist and agent could derive some consolation from the fact that Commercial Television had still to reach large sections of the UK. He would not return to television screens in a resident series until 1966, by which time the whole country was immersed in the culture of ITV.

Miff did nothing further about the series situation until the end of December 1959, when he plucked up the courage to write to the Corporation’s new Head of Light Entertainment, Eric Maschwitz about the possibility of a spring or autumn series for the BBC in 1960. The reply was prompt, but not promising, citing his commitment to a large number of series in those periods. As far as the Corporation was concerned Tommy’s best hope for exposure resided at the level of producer, rather than executive patronage. Bill Cotton, by now producing his father’s show,
The Billy Cotton Band Show
, sensed the chemistry that might exist between the jovial showman and the exuberant magical jester. He was right. Cotton Senior made a willing stooge as Tommy subjected the band-leader to the guillotine illusion – with all the gags he would perpetrate on Michael Parkinson on
his
show almost twenty years later – and used him as a special audience of one as he made a succession of paper balls disappear before Billy’s very eyes. This sequence had been brought to perfection by the New York master of sleight of hand, Slydini. As the balls became larger, the laughter from the audience became louder.
The routine was a brilliant demonstration of applied psychology. Each time Cooper went to make a ball vanish, an upward flick of the wrist propelled it over the bandleader’s head. Cotton had no idea what was happening until the magician asked him to get up from the chair and walked him round to show him the mound of tissue paper that had piled up behind.

Alongside
Dixon of Dock Green, Juke Box Jury
and
Perry
Mason, The Billy Cotton Band Show
was a comfortable cornerstone of Saturday night viewing in the early Sixties before
The
Generation Game, The Two Ronnies
and
Parkinson
redefined the face of weekend viewing a decade later. Between January 1960 and March 1962 Cooper made no fewer than four guest appearances with ‘the old man’ for fees starting at 250 guineas and rising to
£
325.00. Bill would get special approval for this sort of money, extending far beyond what the BBC had been accustomed to pay for guest artists in such circumstances, but inevitable in the face of increased competition from the commercial channel. Around 1960
£
350.00 was his standard fee for an appearance on the Palladium show or another production of similar stature on the commercial network. As the ITV audience grew, regular appearances on
Val Parnell’s Sunday
Night at the London Palladium
became more important for his profile, although in actuality, in spite of the persistence of ATV’s legendary booker, Alec Fyne, he turned down more than he did. For all Miff wanted to soft pedal his client’s identification with the comedy magic routine, it did present a gift to a format like the Palladium show, capable as it was of immense variation, unlike so many set comedy sketches and novelty acts. Tommy constantly made the excuse that he never had anything new. The real reason is that when he did have something new he did not want to waste it on the television audience. In 1963 Miff asked Fyne for a fee of
£
500.00 and top billing. In television they deemed this kind of status more
important than in the theatre. They settled for £450.00 and would have to wait until 1967 before achieving the star spot on a bill that also featured Al Read, Peter Nero, and host Bob Monkhouse. For that he received
£
1,000.00, but by then his television presence had taken a major turn.

In the overall context of his career the most significant enquiry for a guest appearance came in September 1960, for a cameo role as the Mad Hatter in a Christmas extravaganza loosely based on the Alice books. He did not accept the offer, although the idea of Tommy performing the ‘Hats’ routine at his own tea party might not have been as incongruous in Lewis Carroll’s eyes as it first appears. The enquiry initiated a dialogue with ABC Television, a rival to ATV and A-RTV on the franchise map, where it resided as the weekend contractor for the North and the Midlands. In time it would merge with A-RTV to form Thames Television. Virtually ninety per cent of Cooper’s remaining television appearances would be made for the company in one of its two manifestations. Initially they constituted guest star opportunities on ABC’s own showcase spectacular,
Big Night Out
, but in June 1961 a less likely invitation was extended for Tommy to appear on
Thank Your
Lucky Stars
, the pioneering pop programme that allowed teenagers to give their verdicts on the latest releases.

The show was produced by an ex-radio producer for Radio Luxembourg, Philip Jones. His biggest coup in the role came in January 1963 when having heard over the phone an acetate of a number called ‘Please Please Me,’ he booked an emerging rock group named The Beatles for their first national television appearance. For the moment it was enough to know that Tommy Cooper had made a comedy record –‘How Come There’s No Dog Day?’ on the ‘A’ side, ‘Don’t Jump off the Roof, Dad’ on the flip side – an excuse to add a touch of novelty to the standard fare of Alma Cogan, Michael Holliday,
and The Temperance Seven. Within a short while Jones would become Head of Light Entertainment, first at ABC and then at Thames, and as such the most influential individual in Tommy’s television career. A kind, unassuming man with total commitment to the talent he opted to promote, he was a showman on the inside rather that the outside. Performers warmed to this, sensing that he – unlike so many executives and impresarios – had no wish to upstage them or exercise his own ego on the back of theirs. In matters like these Tommy was relatively easy-going, but even so he always appreciated the special quality of Philip Jones.

Meanwhile in September 1962 Miff received an unexpected enquiry from the BBC for Tommy to star in its pantomime,
Puss in Boots
for transmission on Christmas Day. Tommy was at first resistant. Pantomime had never been his happiest medium. Producers complained that he had difficulty carrying the plot. According to provincial pantomime supremo, Derek Salberg, he was ‘very bad on lines; you could hear him for two or three minutes, then he just tailed away.’ Cooper must have felt torn between this responsibility and the demand of having to do double duty as the obligatory speciality act in the ballroom scene as events reached their fairy tale conclusion. Nevertheless, of the seven pantomimes in which he had appeared so far,
Puss
in Boots
had figured four of those times, mainly with Cooper as the King. Unfortunately the previous year the Bradford production had been fraught with calamity, beginning with major disagreements with the director, who in the opinion of the star had no sense of comedy, and ending with a smallpox epidemic that brought the run of twelve weeks to a close after eight.

In a letter of 14 September, Miff spelt out why he thought Tommy should forego the holiday he was contemplating at the time of the BBC project, in the process showing that he had not lost sight of further television horizons for his artist:
‘In my considered opinion it would be a mistake for you to miss this opportunity which would enable you to become established as a “Production Artiste” and once and for all nail the impression that you can only be used in solo spots doing your own material in other people’s programmes. This is a very important matter as far as your progressive career is concerned, and I do think that if you could postpone your holiday, you would be wise professionally to do so.’ Tommy gave in and Miff negotiated a fee of
£
525.00 to incorporate the recording and two weeks of rehearsals. The producer was set to be Richard Afton, a friendly patron from Tommy’s past.

What soon took on the aspect of a pantomime all of its own began late in the evening of 31 October when Tommy phoned Miff to complain about the script: ‘Says King part is nothing.’ Two days later Afton became ill, to be replaced by his colleague, Harry Carlisle. A flurry of telephone calls took place between Miff, Tommy, and Bill Cotton, now Head of Variety at the BBC. With Afton suffering a relapse and rehearsals due to commence on 5 November, the situation appears to have been resolved until the following day when Cooper failed to attend rehearsals. Holland Barrett, the Head of Artists’ Bookings, was forced to write to Miff to announce that owing to the short amount of rehearsal time at the BBC’s disposal, they had no option ‘but to make alternative arrangements’. In other words, Tommy’s services were no longer required. In a subsequent letter dated the same day, Barrett wrote: ‘I understand that you are maintaining that in the course of a subsequent conversation with the producer, he agreed that Cooper could play either the King or Jolly the Jester according to his preference. I find this hard to understand in view of the fact that the producer had already asked us to engage another artist (Reg Varney) to play the jester.’ Since Tommy appears to have raised his objection to the role of the King only two working days
before the start of rehearsals, it all seems somewhat disingenuous. The BBC had apparent good reason to take Tommy to court for breach of contract. In the circumstances the contract was cancelled and David Nixon stepped into the breach as King. Very late in the day Cooper had his holiday, but he won no marks with the Corporation as a result of the incident.

The episode cooled any immediate interest the BBC might have had to exploit the comedian in the wake of his success on
The Billy Cotton Band Show
. Meanwhile Tommy had plenty of offers for guest spots and a full theatrical diary. It was not until October 1963 that he sat down to lunch to discuss the way forward with Philip Jones. Events seemed to move quickly, with an offer for a series of eleven shows with an option for a further two. However, the insistence of ABC that Russ Conway and Susan Maughan should be co-starred with Cooper meant the series was stillborn. Jones did not lose interest, nor could he. The following year would see Tommy’s defining success in
Startime
at the London Palladium. The high profile of this show placed him in a category whereby television companies could ignore him only at their peril.

In 1964 the BBC returned to the fray. In April, Manchester based producer, Stan Parkinson – independent of the London-based monolith that was the Light Entertainment Group – came up with an interesting idea, a series of short programmes in which Tommy would be interviewed about all aspects of his life. Tommy’s ability to have people in stitches in pubs and clubs as he recounted incidents from his childhood, his service career and more would thus be able to reach a wider audience. The idea of the comic interview was not new. Terry-Thomas had been featured in this way with veteran announcer, Leslie Mitchell on
How Do You View?
while Benny Hill would later come to make the device his own, but in both cases the interviews were staged, the subjects being outlandish characters
drawn from their stars’ repertoires of comic types. Parkinson was favouring a naturalistic approach. Again the idea went away, presumably because of the insignificance of the slot offered. A Manchester based production did not carry the weight of a London vehicle. However, Miff did not forget the device. A more substantial enquiry came in October when Executive Producer, George Inns – in that less politically correct age, he had devised
The Black and White Minstrel Show
– began to float the idea of a series of fortnightly spectaculars for the spring of the following year. The following day Philip Jones, with almost telepathic instinct, rang Miff: ‘Any use in talking about another series for T. C?’