Spoon Jar Jar Spoon

[cats meat man]

There's a bunch of us going to see Clive Mantle starring in Jus Like That,A Night Out With Tommy Cooper soon and I was just wondering if anyone else had been to see it or has seen Tommy Cooper live on stage,or have their own favourite recollections of him.We'll all be wearing fez's on the night-Not like that-LIKE THAT!

[Phil Carter]

Hello Cats,

I happen to have a couple of lovely tales of the great man, as a family member worked at Thames studios, in Teddington, where we lived during the late sixties and throughout the 70's.

However, my favourite one was when he walked into a tiny grocer's shop in the Broadway, Teddington one Saturday morning, and had the owner, the assistant and every customer who came in in fits of laughter, making jokes with carrots, potatoes and various other vegetables. Making a King Edward potato dissappear and reappear as a turnip was one. Overturning a whole boxful of apples carefully stacked at an angle was another. Complete chaos, and total hilarity..a middle aged lady customer apparently wet herself with laughter! The whole thing lasted for about 20 minutes or so, and he walked out with a bag full of veg, never having paid a penny for it all. With apples, potatoes, carrots, broccoli and veg of all manner all over the floor.
The owner, now retired, is my very best friend's father. The same sort of thing happened when other comics walked in at various times over the years, the late, great Eric Morecambe included.

Tommy Cooper, comic genius.

best wishes

Phil

[cats meat man]

Thanks Phil,great story
'I backed a horse at ten to one-and it came in at twenty past four!'

[Phil Carter]

I went to the doctors the other day.. he said...
"Go behind the screens, take off your clothes and then stand on this chair"...
I said "why?"
"I want to sweep the floor"

best wishes

Phil

[The Grave Maurice]

I can't say that I'm familiar with the guy's work, but this Wikipedia article makes him sound like a miserable old bugger.

[Phil Carter]

Hello GM,

Trying to capture in mere words, the magic of Tommy Cooper, the effect on the individual, is almost pointless. I can assure you that this man made several generations of people cry with laughter. Other comedians, his peers, social commentators, the general public, infact almost everyone who knew and watched this man on stage, had the highest regard for his comic genius and his timing. His ability to turn something very normal into something incredibly funny, his facial expressions and his projection of almost child-like innocence, combined with his true brilliance as a magician and entertainer, made the man a household name in Great Britain, from at least the 1950's until his untimely death on stage in 1984.
Yes, one would probably have to have been brought up in Great Britain to fully appreciate the genius of the man, but I can assure you, to millions of people, he never presented himself as "miserable" and caused an inordinate amount of hilarious laughter.
His peers described him as a one-off comic genius, and that there would never be another in the same vein. There are millions that would agree with that conclusion.

best wishes

Phil

[The Grave Maurice]

Phil, you may well be right, although it's difficult, from a distance, to see anything funny about an egocentric, alcoholic, wife-beater. Me, I prefer Tony Hancock who, as far as I know, was only an egocentric alcoholic.

[The Good Michael]

They have a lot of his stuff on youtube. Not a jot of it is funny. It's kind of like the humor in which people laugh at just stupid stuff. It is so tiring and so quickly.

Mike