| Biography | Tommy Cooper was a British prop comedian and magician.
To escape from the heavily polluted air of Caerphilly, his father accepted the offer of a new job and the family moved to Exeter, Devon, when Cooper was three. It was in Exeter that he acquired the West Country accent that became part of his act. When he was eight, an aunt bought him a magic set and he spent hours perfecting the tricks. In the 1960s, his brother David opened a magic shop called D. & Z. Cooper's Magic Shop on the high street in Slough, Berkshire.
After school, Cooper became a shipwright in Southampton. In 1940, he was called up as a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, serving for seven years. He joined Montgomery's Desert Rats in Egypt. Cooper became a member of a Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes entertainment party and developed an act around his magic tricks interspersed with comedy. One evening in Cairo, during a sketch in which he was supposed to be in a costume that required a pith helmet, having forgotten the prop, Cooper reached out and borrowed a fez from a passing waiter, which got huge laughs. He wore a fez whenever performing after that, the prop later being described as "an icon of 20th-century comedy".
In 1947, Cooper got his big break with Miff Ferrie, at that time trombonist in a band called The Jackdaws, who booked him to appear as the second-spot comedian in a show starring the sand dance act Marqueeze and the Dance of the Seven Veils. Cooper then began two years of arduous performing, including a tour of Europe and a stint in pantomime, playing one of Cinderella's ugly sisters. The period culminated in a season-long booking at the Windmill Theatre, where he doubled up doing cabaret. In one week, he performed 52 shows. Ferrie remained Cooper's sole agent for 37 years, until Cooper's death in 1984.
On 15 April 1984, Cooper died of a heart attack live on television. |