Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing Read Online Free Page A

Working in tandem with the chaos was a stream of anarchy that was nothing if not liberating, ahead of its time in reflecting the message of modern stress therapists to rid us of the clutter of our own lives, the Christmas presents never used, the gadgets that never worked, even the jokes we wish we had never started to tell.
    In mocking the conventions of magic and comedy he made fun of the performer that we might like to think exists in us all. James Thurber had a special insight into the formula. It is unlikely that the great American humorist ever saw Tommy Cooper. Even if his failing eyesight allowed him the privilege on a visit to London in the Fifties, he showed amazing prescience in the Thirties when he entitled a New Yorker article‘The Funniest Man You Ever Saw’. To read it today is to play an instant game in which Cooper has to be cast into the main part, not merely because he possibly was the funniest man you ever saw, but because here was a type, that of the compulsive gagster, that Thurber and Cooper clearly intuitively understood. ‘He’s funnier’n hell,’ explains one character. ‘He’d go out into the kitchen and come in with a biscuit and he’d say: “Look, I’ve either lost a biscuit box or found a cracker,”’ says another. As for card tricks, there was no stopping him:
    ‘And then he draws out the wrong card, or maybe he looks at your card first and then goes through the whole deck till he finds it and shows it to you or –’
    ‘Sometimes he just lays the pack down and acts as if he’d never started any trick,’ said Griswold.
    ‘Does he do imitations?’ I asked.
    ‘Does he do imitations ?’ bellowed Potter. ‘Wait’ll I tell you –’
    As the title character passes off the use of a pencil eraser as some magnificent vanishing trick, claims the invention of the hole in the peppermint wondering whether it will prove a commercial proposition, or emerges from the bathroom with a tap in his hand, ‘I’ve either lost a bathtub or found a faucet!’, one can imagine Cooper bringing the whole piece to life. But the telling line is yet to come:
    ‘Laugh? I thought I’d pass away. Of course, you really ought to see him do it; the way he does it is a big part of it – solemn and all; he’s always solemn, always acts solemn  about it.’
    For all the outward mayhem, Tommy never performed without solemnity. Seriousness and sincerity never failed to hallmark anything he did in the cause of laughter. And as for imitations ? Well, wait till I tell you! There was the one of the swallow (‘Gulp!’), the one of his milkman that no one seemed to get, not to mention Robert Mitchum’s father and Frank Sinatra, where he donned a trilby for effect. After the laugh, he’d drop the hat and the ground shook. It happened to be made of cast iron. Even Louis Armstrong was conjured up with a scrunched up handkerchief and a single toot on a child’s plastic trumpet. ‘Right!’ he would sheepishly admit to himself as he faced up to the fact that it was not quite what the audience expected.
    He corresponded to the Lord of Misrule in ancient times, licensed to make play of our expectations of life, right down to the bare bones of language itself: ‘Now before I begin my act proper, I’d like to say this. This . Funny word that, isn’t it? That . Now that’s funnier than this!’ That he had far greater effect than any distant forebear may be attributed to the fact that the world in which he operated has become more complicated, more ambitious, more self-satisfied than it ever was when the original Tom Fool would have been expected to wear cap and bells in lieu of red felt and tassel. The mass media of our own time have also helped to raise Cooper to the status of an enduring national figure. Since his death his caricature by Gerald Scarfe has been the subject of a postage stamp in 1998; he has featured as the lead figure in the poster campaign for the celebrations staged nationwide by the