Jus' like that

Tommy Cooper has been a part of my life for as long as I can recall. I remember waiting despondently for my mother to be served in a greengrocer's shop and being momentarily cheered by a giant cardboard cut-out of the zany fez-capped wizard proffering a large citrus specimen of South African origin from the folds of his mysterious cloak. The caption said it all: "Cape fruit! ... Grapefruit!" Even without the distinctive chortle which Tommy would have added in performance, it made me laugh. I was about seven years old at the time.

I did not know then that as the years progressed I would, through the world of magic, come to know this gentle giant of comedy as a friend, and that as my career in broadcasting progressed I would produce several of his last television appearances. In the mid-Nineties, television brought me into contact with Cooper again when he became the subject of an extended 90-minute episode of my Channel 4 series Heroes of Comedy. Watching that programme was the actor and theatre producer Patrick Ryecart. Within days I had accepted his challenge to revive the magic of Tommy Cooper as a stage project. I had often wondered whether Tommy, had he lived longer, would eventually have played a West End theatre, talking to the audience about his life and reprising the highlights from his comic repertoire. Now I was going to do it for him.

At all stages of the project I had the cooperation of Tommy's widow Gwen, known affectionately to her husband as Dove. Lee Menzies was invited on board as co-producer and when pressure of work meant that Alan Ayckbourn, who was going to direct, had to pass, Simon Callow was thankfully keen to take up the baton. No actor knows more about the demands of the one-man show, which is what Jus' Like That – give or take a few surprises along the way – essentially is. An uneasy shadow, however, had always loomed at the back of my mind. Who would play this most singular of clowns? Many people can do a passable Cooper impression. But we were looking for more than that; someone who could reinterpret the essential spirit of this most life-enhancing of magicians. Auditions were held. And then the grapevine announced that we should meet Jerome Flynn. The Soldier Soldier star had not entered into our thoughts. A meeting was arranged.

At what was an obviously emotional time in his life, his father having died a few days before, Jerome came to Lee's office. He had no idea how Tommy worked his egg and bag trick, but a friend had sewn for him a small cloth bag. Equipped with egg as well, he launched into a pretend version of the famous routine – "Egg, bag! Bag, egg!". Along the way the egg was smashed unintentionally in the pocket of an obviously expensive jacket. We knew immediately from the vigour with which he addressed the trick and the comic panache with which he dealt with the disaster, that we had found our Cooper, an actor with intrinsic comic timing, a true sense of fun and a passion for his subject which had intensified from the moment of Tommy's death in 1984. Moreover, Jerome also appreciated the technical skills Cooper possessed as well as the courage he was prepared to show in the cause of laughter.

Those skills were evident the first time I saw Tommy live. In the early Sixties he was starring in a summer season at the Winter Gardens Theatre in Bournemouth. This venue was the permanent home of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, but for the three months of high summer, the local corporation moved the musicians out to make way for the star entertainers of the day. In the process many performers found themselves playing a stage not best suited to their talents, one which, Radio City Music Hall aside, still qualifies as the widest I have ever seen. I can visualise Tommy's entrance now. He came on from upstage, stopped at the apron, looked one way and then the other. He did not say a word. His doubting expression told all. Fancy putting him on a stage like this! He then turned to his right and taking all the time in the world – he might have been walking the dog – strolled all the way to the far end of this vast orchestral platform. Turning to the audience on that side of the theatre, he fired a salvo of one-liners. For about three minutes the laughter swelled. He then turned again and walked all the way to the other side of the stage where – you knew it was coming, which made it all the funnier – he embarked upon exactly the same sequence. This time around the audience, on both sides, laughed even louder. I know of no better example of how to break so many basic rules of comedy and variety technique in such a short time and yet to do so with such resounding comic effect.

As a comedian and a conjuror Tommy had technique to die for, combining as they did across the two skills to create the cunning illusion of a dysfunctional magician. His studied approach to the art of burlesque in its purest form was born of dedication and persistent attention to detail. Study tapes of Tommy performing the same sequence early and then late in his career and one is amazed by the precision maintained from the moment of initial mastery. The years of constant performance are proof of an impeccable sense of timing. It always looked – the muddle of the hats routine, the table that collapses, the indifference when the magic cabinet refuses to work – as if it was happening for the first time. And belying the overall effect of clutter and confusion is the aimless elegance which is Cooper in motion. The shoes may have been size 13, but they clothed a sure-footedness which is a wonder to behold and could at times border on the balletic. As a magician he was quite simply the most successful British performer of all time. No one left a Tommy Cooper performance not liking magic. And for all the bumbling exterior, there were pockets of stunning surprise and devious dexterity tucked away in the comic upheaval. Never forget the sleight of hand with eggs and balls and handkerchiefs, those bottles and glasses and goldfish bowls with a life of their own, and that guillotine so apparently vicious one prayed an ambulance would be standing by. In this area I have come to appreciate him all the more since he died. He brilliantly developed an attitude which enabled him to connect with the members of his audience through tricks and hocus pocus, without ever seeming to challenge them with it, to force it upon them, which is the curse of so many of the rabbit and wand brigade. With a meaningful twinkle in his eye, the legendary Spike Milligan once suggested to me that Tommy would have been his ideal choice for casting as Jesus Christ. "You can almost see him now, 'Fishes, loaves. Loaves, fishes. Huh huh huh! And here's a little trick I'd like to show you... as you can see there is nothing on my feet – I will now walk on this water over here!'"

The action of Jus' Like That is divided between Cooper on stage and Cooper in his dressing room. I have attempted to show the Tommy I knew away from the public stage. He loved to relax into a surreal but comfortable world of joke-shop gags and gimmicks. The roll call of such japes is legendary. The teabags deposited in the top pockets of London's cabbies: "Have a drink on me!" The occasions the tablecloth trick went wrong in public places, resulting in broken crockery everywhere: "I could never get that trick right!" The bizarre items of wardrobe which he would delight in wearing for outrageous comic effect: shoes with toecaps resembling pork pies and the bizarre chicken legs he wore unannounced onto the set of The Bob Monkhouse Show a few months before he died.

Most vivid in my memory is an afternoon spent in Ken Brooke's Magic Place. In the Seventies this informal emporium, upstairs at 145 Wardour Street, was the Mecca for all top magicians visiting London. For Tommy it was home from home. Ken Brooke was a brash but affectionate purveyor of magic to professionals, highly respected as the best demonstrator in the business. At the time Ken's best seller was a particular method of working the trick in which a whole newspaper is torn into pieces and then restored. There was no way Tommy was going to let go the opportunity to perform this latest "hit" of the magical world. On the occasion in question I entered the studio to discover a floor that resembled a cross between an explosion in a newsagent's and one in a glue factory. It was difficult to know who was teaching whom, Ken's high-pitched Yorkshire tones vying with Tommy's agitated West Country burr, as the latter suggested this detail and queried that. I am unaware that the item ever made it into Tommy's act. But I am sure that two grown men had the afternoon of a lifetime. And I still laugh at the memory.

Tommy died the most visible of deaths on stage during a live television transmission from the stage of Her Majesty's Theatre. Having recorded the show on a newly acquired VCR that evening, I vowed never to watch the tape again. We were two weeks into rehearsals, however, when I turned to Simon and Jerome and suggested that perhaps we owed it to Tommy to watch it quietly for one last time. Doing so was revealing in many ways. I had forgotten how Tommy, for all his advancing years and health problems, was at the top of his form. The moment when he lost consciousness was no less surprising. As the dancer went to wrap the magic cloak around him for his closing illusion, his beaming smile simply evaporated, and his body sank to the floor like a soufflé collapsing. Everybody in the theatre assumed that this was part of his act. For a while the television crew were aghast that Tommy, the ultimate professional, had not rehearsed this part of his routine. Slowly and sadly realisation dawned and the live transmission staggered into the inevitable commercial break. The most haunting aspect of that last performance, however, was his opening lines. En route to some quip about Beethoven, of all people, he asked the audience "Do you believe in reincarnation?" For several moments Jerome, Simon and I were speechless.

Only a few weeks before, I had discovered from his daughter Vicky that Tommy had actually believed in life after death. While the timing does not allow for Jerome to be the reincarnation of Cooper, we are fully aware that we are engaged in an act of resurrection.

© John Fisher 2003

'Jus' Like That': Garrick Theatre, London WC2 (0870 890 1104), previews from Thur, opens 8 April, booking to 21 June