Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing (36 page)

As for the writers, Vosburgh still recalls the dread his team felt when Miff descended upon them like a miasma in studio or rehearsal room. In the end his obstreperousness became so overwhelming that Cooper insisted he be banned from all television studios thereafter. It had long been established between artist and manager that he absent himself from the theatres where Tommy was working for fear of upsetting the star. Dick still bristles at the mention of the Scot’s name and recalls a sketch that provided the defining moment of his own antagonism towards him. In this Tommy played the part of ‘Fingers Figgins’, a burglar complete with mask, crowbar and bag of swag over his shoulder, who enters a labour exchange – now a job centre – looking for work. When the script was circulated a telephone conversation ensued between Dick and Miff, during which Vosburgh asked, ‘Are you saying it isn’t funny?’ Ferrie replied, ‘Being funny has nothing to do with it.’ Dick, who thought his own reputation was on the line for no other reason, pressed him on what was wrong. To this day he curses him roundly and often for his response: ‘I have spent the last twenty years keeping Tommy Cooper in gainful employment. He would
never
be seen entering a labour exchange.’ It reads like a sketch itself, but Ferrie was nothing if not serious.

At Thames, Mortimer and Cooke constantly came up against a similar barrier. As Brian Cooke explained, ‘Ferrie didn’t understand comedy, constantly saying “Tommy wouldn’t
do
that!” Since all that Tommy ever
did
do was appear on stage or television, it somewhat limited our scope. We navigated our
way around it by having him do fairly mundane things that he (Tommy) had to do, such as buying a suit or having a meal. “For heaven’s sake, Miff, he has to
eat
!” “But people would recognize him,” said Miff.’ “Er, not in
this
restaurant. They’re all Chinese. They’ve just come over. They’ve never watched television in England.”’ And so the battle waged. It got easier as Miff realized that Cooper could handle sketches where
he
portrayed a waiter or a chef or whatever and still get big laughs. As Brian adds, he always played himself anyway and was always likely to whip a bunch of feather flowers out of his sleeve if he thought the sketch was not going as well as he hoped.

The concluding shows of the LWT series reveal a raggedness that suggests under-rehearsal and too few ideas too late. The old pattern asserted itself with Ferrie, perhaps now with some justification, claiming that scripts were being finalized and guests booked without consultation with Cooper or himself. With one show left to record Miff wrote to Tommy on 10 April 1970 expressing his dissatisfaction with Paradine, not least at the level of overseas exploitation: ‘As you know, the primary object was “to produce and develop ideas and projects for feature films and television programmes directed towards the promotion and enhancement of the talents of Tommy Cooper throughout the world,” the main foreign target being the USA.’ He also expressed concern for Tommy’s health with specific reference to the additional stress of ‘all that goes with the making of a television series’. Tommy never presented less than a genial front, but Miff was sympathetically aware of the pressures beneath the surface: ‘From my long experience of you I know only too well how you have to put the act “on and off”, and I fully realize that it is sometimes just not humanly possible for this effort to be maintained throughout.’

Cooper’s continued high presence in the ratings ensured that
there was even greater interest in him as a live attraction. Miff recommended a return to club and stage work, to which he readily agreed. It would be three and a half years before he returned to television screens in a new production. The only exception was a stray episode of the LWT series – so bad it was not originally aired – transmitted as a ‘special’ in March 1971. In later years he made comic capital out of the gap by saying that by then so many people were impersonating him that nobody knew he’d been away. In truth the repeats of his past shows saw to this anyhow. The real underlying cause of his exile, however, was the fallout from the Paradine situation.

Four days later on 14 April Ferrie wrote to Brightwell disturbed ‘at the way this project has disintegrated’. Notwithstanding, Paradine was keen to exercise its option for a second series – the contract provided for a total of three series in all – but was happy to have the date by which it was due to exercise the same deferred by a month to 1 August. In acknowledging this Miff wasted no effort in cataloguing the grievances between the two parties. Top of the list was the disappointment at foreign exploitation level. Then after a schedule of niggling housekeeping difficulties and a reiteration of the usual script and guest aggravations he added, ‘Tommy Cooper’s own personal feeling in this matter is “that he would not go through that again for a million pounds”.’ It was not the first time Ferrie had voiced the sentiment on behalf of his client to Paradine.

It is worth noting that on the same day, 23 June 1970, with that gift of timing with which he appeared so sensitive, Philip Jones called the office. The journal simply says: ‘Very pleasant, etc.’ On 31 July Frost exercised the option of Paradine for a second series. David added a sweetener, the offer of a whole week of guest appearances on his New York based talk show that had taken over from Merv Griffin on the American
networks and would accord Cooper a level of exposure way beyond the small pickings achieved by the earlier special. As David explained this was a ‘first’ in talk show terms and could be publicized as such. Five days later Tommy, perhaps unwisely, declined. Matters quickly went downhill. In Miff’s opinion, on the basis of the overseas failure, the contract was null and void and there was no option to exercise. Paradine had failed to fulfil its part of the undertaking and there was no way Cooper would work for the company again. To its credit Paradine refused to become litigious. All Frost wanted was to get Cooper back on screen, and time and creative energy were both being lost.

Many and varied were the ways suggested to find the best way out of the tangle. Miff offered Frost first refusal on all Cooper’s television appearances in the USA; David rejected the somewhat meaningless proposal. At one point there was a suggestion that Thames might take over the baton from LWT in essentially the same arrangement with Paradine. Cyril Bennett at LWT attempted to break the stalemate by suggesting that Tommy’s company, Tommy Cooper Arts Ltd, package the shows for Paradine with Miff as executive producer [
sic
], David’s dedication to his own career as a performer having understandably prevented him from fulfilling that role satisfactorily himself. All efforts were made by Brightwell to insist that Tommy and Miff would have full creative control. More than a year went by. On 10 October, Tommy, not unnaturally exhausted as he approached the end of his Palladium season, wrote to Miff: ‘I should like you to deal with the Paradine situation on my behalf as you think fit.’ But there was no way this changed his opinion with regard to working with or for Paradine again. Miff had already taken legal advice, which accepted that there was an argument that the contract could be deemed invalid, although it advised restraint. Matters came
to a head, however, when Ferrie discovered that Paradine, far from making attempts to exploit the LWT series in America itself, had in fact merely assigned all rights in this regard to LWT, leaving the broadcaster to arrange marketing ‘at its discretion (without being under any obligation to attempt overseas sales)’. The point was enforced to Brightwell in a letter on 14 October 1971 which stated categorically on legal advice that the assigning of such rights constituted ‘a fundamental breach of the contract which entitled Tommy Cooper Arts Ltd to treat it as having been repudiated by Paradine’. In other words Tommy was under no further obligation to the company. Significantly, on the previous day, 13 October, Miff had received a telephone call from Philip Jones enquiring of the situation and suggesting a series of six half-hours in the spring of 1972. Miff reported that the matter was ‘
sub judice
’. Jones asked Ferrie ‘to keep his call also as confidential’.

Frost enlisted the help of his agent, Richard Armitage of the Noel Gay Organisation, to help fight Paradine’s corner. For a while there would appear to have been a standoff. The situation was not helped by David’s professional preoccupation elsewhere and the ill health of Brightwell, whose spells in hospital were sadly becoming as frequent as Frost’s transatlantic trips. On 16 March 1972 Cooper’s solicitor sent in a copy of his firm’s fees, making the point that ‘there appears to be nothing for me to do at present in this matter.’ On 6 April Brightwell emerged from hospital again to write to confirm ‘that we would wish to continue with the production of television programmes at the earliest possible moment contingent upon his club and theatrical appearances.’ The letter was its own sad admission of failure. Miff returned from holiday to advise George that as far as he and Tommy were concerned the matter was closed. There was something of a rearguard action by Paradine’s solicitors, Harbottle and Lewis, in July
1972 when they wrote to contest the claim that the contract was null and void. On 7 August Miff dashed off an emphatic reply: ‘Tommy Cooper’s position was set out in my letter of 14 October 1971 written to Mr George Brightwell of your client company following advice received from my Solicitors, Messrs Goodman, Derrick & Co. after consultation with leading counsel, Mr A. Leolin Price, QC. If your clients wish to discuss the matter further with me, I am quite prepared to do so.’ They did not reply. Miff has scrawled emphatically on his file copy: ‘No acknowledgement’. Possibly Frost was worried by the bad publicity an adverse legal action might have brought him. That Cooper of all people was prepared to take the initiative and stand to lose an estimated
£
25,000.00 if the ruling went against him is indicative.

Miff did not rush to pick up the phone to Philip Jones. Implicit throughout the entire saga had been the procedure whereby if Paradine dug in its heels, Tommy could simply remain off television and concentrate on theatre and cabaret in the hope that Paradine would eventually realize it was holding a worthless piece of paper. It remains an accepted truism of show business that you can never force an artist to perform. He had already been off the screen in new product for fast approaching two and a half years. It would obviously be circumspect to advance with caution. Not until the beginning of November did Thames make the offer of four one hour specials to be recorded in 1973. Within a week a deal was done whereby Tommy would be paid
£
18,000 for the quartet: in the words of Thames’s booking executive, Iris Frederick, ‘Believe me, Miff, we have never paid out anything like this before!’ Recording would not commence until May of 1973. However, before 1972 was out, Frederick had come back to Miff with an option (eventually exercised) for a further four specials at
£
5,000 a show for production in 1974.

On 9 December Miff wrote to Cooper to confirm the news, but added a caveat that the long shadow of Paradine might threaten in the distance, that a court case – for all the advice of learned counsel – could still work against them, and that there was always the possibility of an injunction being issued to restrain him from appearing on television. Tommy sensed he had been off the box for too long and took the chance. Besides, he would be back home at Teddington Studios, the picturesque facility on the bank of the Thames where in its film studio days Max Miller and Gracie Fields had shot some of their more memorable movies for Warner Brothers. It was nearer to his Chiswick home and more congenial in so many ways than the cold hinterland of Wembley, the makeshift home in those days of LWT before it relocated to the South Bank. Paradine’s solicitors made one last desperate play to make life difficult for Thames in the summer of 1973, but Lord Goodman’s firm dashed off a sharp rejoinder that simply referred them back to the earlier correspondence.

The hour long shows transmitted under the banner of
The
Tommy Cooper Hour
reverted to an extended version of the format of his earlier Thames programmes. Peter Reeves and resident actress, Clovissa Newcombe were not invited to return. Occasional musical guests at the level of Anita Harris, Dana and Vince Hill were welcomed back to the fold. The historical interview segment had exhausted its strongest potential and the pressure was taken off booking high profile guest names in favour once again of that second division of comedy support which at the time of the Ealing comedies enjoyed far greater prestige. Sheila Steafel, Hugh Paddick, Glyn Houston, an almost unrecognisably young Richard Wilson, veteran variety comic turned actor Tommy Godfrey, and Janet Brown – before her breakthrough to stardom on the back of her Margaret Thatcher impersonation – all graced the series.

More importantly Mortimer and Cooke were back as sole scriptwriters for the initial four shows, the first of which opened with an effective reworking of the ‘Autumn Leaves’ sequence. An elegantly clad Cooper and a chiffon-attired chorus of dancers gradually became enveloped in swirling mist as Tommy made his own attempt to sing the Streisand classic, ‘On a Clear Day’. The Cooper cough took on a new logical purpose as, arms thrashing, he hacked his way through the fog. It would have been funnier still to someone who had not seen the leafy original. This show also contained the sketch already referred to in which waiter Cooper, wearing goggles and snorkel, turns the catching of a diner’s favoured trout into a veritable aqua-display. Most memorable was the one-man play in which Tommy donned the half and half costume that portrayed a Nazi officer in one profile and a British brigadier in the other. Although at one point Bob Monkhouse intimated to me that Tommy had used a similar device on one of his early
It’s Magic
shows, I have been unable to verify this. The idea itself is as old as Dan Leno’s joke book and can be traced back in a rudimentary form to the
commedia dell’arte
where one actor would portray two characters not in profile, but with a mask on the back of his head and a reverse costume, requiring a turn from front to back to effect the change. Many years later a one-person tango was performed with success in the sexually ambivalent world of Thirties Berlin cabaret by the speciality dancer, Lela Moore. According to Italian quick-change star, Arturo Brachetti, who features his own version of the tango in which he plays both the sexy seductress in one profile and the trim gigolo in the other, the device was even used in fairground sideshows in the early part of the twentieth century as a serious ‘half-man, half-woman’ come-on amidst the dwarfs, fat men, and tattooed ladies