Thomas Frederick Cooper (19 March 1921 – 15 April 1984) was a Welsh prop comedian, actor, entertainer and magician. He was large and lumbering at 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) and habitually wore a red fez when performing. He served in the British Army for seven years before developing his conjuring skills and becoming a member of The Magic Circle. Although he spent time on tour performing his magical act, which specialised in magic tricks that appeared to fail, he rose to international prominence when his career moved into television, with programmes for London Weekend Television and Thames Television.
By the end of the 1970s, Cooper smoked and drank heavily, which affected his career and his health, effectively ending offers to front new programmes and relegating him to the role of guest star on other entertainment shows. On 15 April 1984, Cooper died at the age of 63 after suffering a heart attack on live television.
Thomas Frederick Cooper was born on 19 March 1921 at 19 Llwyn-On Street in Caerphilly, Glamorgan. He was delivered by the woman who owned the house in which the family were lodging. His parents were Thomas H. Cooper, a Welsh recruiting sergeant in the British Army and later coal miner, and Catherine Gertrude (née Wright), Thomas's English wife from Crediton, Devon.
To change from his mining role in Caerphilly, which could have had implications for his health, his father accepted the offer of a new job and the family moved to Exeter, Devon, when Cooper was three. As an adult and on a visit to Wales to visit the house where he was born, Cooper was asked if he considered himself to be a Welshman, to which he answered, "Well yes, my father's Welsh... and my mother's from Devon. Actually I was in Caerphilly and left here when I was about a year old, I was getting very serious with a girl".
When Cooper was eight years old, an aunt bought him a magic set, and he spent hours perfecting the tricks. In the 1960s, his brother David (born 1930) opened D. & Z. Cooper's Magic Shop at 249 High Street in Slough, Buckinghamshire. The shop later moved to Eastbourne, East Sussex and was run by David's daughter Sabrina. After leaving school, Cooper became a shipwright in Southampton, Hampshire. 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 (NAAFI) 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 and having forgotten the prop, Cooper reached out and borrowed a fez from a passing waiter, which got huge laughs. He wore a fez when performing after that, the prop later being described as "an icon of 20th-century comedy".
Cooper was demobilised after seven years of military service and took up show business on Christmas Eve 1947. He later developed a popular monologue about his military experience as "Cooper the Trooper". He worked in variety theatres around the country and at many night spots in London, performing as many as 52 shows in one week.
Cooper developed his conjuring skills and became a member of The Magic Circle, but there are various stories about how and when he developed his delivery of "failed" magic tricks:
He was performing to his shipbuilding colleagues when everything went wrong, but he noticed that the failed tricks got laughs.
He started making "mistakes" on purpose when he was in the Army.
His tricks went wrong at a post-war audition, but the panel thoroughly enjoyed them anyway.
To keep the audience on their toes, Cooper would throw in an occasional trick that worked when it was least expected.
Cooper was influenced by Laurel and Hardy, Will Hay, Max Miller, Bob Hope, and Robert Orben.
In 1947, Cooper was booked by Miff Ferrie, a musician, to appear in a show starring the sanding dance act Marqueeze and the Dance of the Seven Veils. This was followed by a European tour and work in pantomime, and concluded with a season at the Windmill Theatre. Ferrie remained Cooper's sole agent for 37 years, until Cooper's death in 1984.
Cooper rapidly became a top-liner in variety with his image as the conjurer whose tricks never succeeded, but it was his television work that raised him to national prominence. After his debut on the BBC talent show New to You in March 1948, he began starring in his own shows. He remained popular with audiences for nearly 40 years, notably through his work with London Weekend Television from 1968 to 1972 and with Thames Television from 1973 to 1980. Thanks to his many television shows during the mid-1970s, he was at his peak one of the most recognisable comedians in the world.
John Fisher wrote in his biography of Cooper: "Everyone agrees that he was mean. Quite simply he was acknowledged as the tightest man in show business, with a pathological dread of reaching into his pocket." One of Cooper's stunts was to pay exact fare in a taxi and then when leaving the cab slip a tea bag into the taxi driver's pocket, saying "have a drink on me."
By the mid-1970s, alcohol had started to erode Cooper's professionalism, and club owners complained that he turned up late or rushed through his show in five minutes. In addition, he suffered from chronic indigestion, low back pain, sciatica, bronchitis and severe circulation problems in his legs. When Cooper realised the extent of his maladies, he cut down on his drinking, and his act regained energy and confidence. However, he never stopped drinking and could be fallible: on an otherwise triumphant appearance with Michael Parkinson, he forgot to set the safety catch on the guillotine illusion into which he had cajoled Parkinson, and only a last-minute intervention by the floor manager saved Parkinson from serious injury or worse.
Cooper was a heavy cigar smoker (up to 40 a day) as well as an excessive drinker. He suffered a heart attack on 22 April 1977 while performing a show in Rome. Three months later, he was back on television in Night Out at the London Casino.
By 1980, his drinking meant that Thames Television would not give him another starring series, and Cooper's Half Hour was his last. He did continue to appear as a guest on other television shows, however, and worked with Eric Sykes on two Thames productions in 1982.