How to pay tribute to Tommy Cooper... seemingly 'Jus'-Like-That!'

Written by: John Hewer
Published: Sunday 22nd July 2018

John Hewer is bringing 'Just Like That! The Tommy Cooper Show' back to the Edinburgh Fringe. In this article he explains why he's fascinated with the comedian, and the work involved in creating the tribute show.

Just Like That! began, as that well-worn cliché states, as "a labour of love". Yes, it was my "labour" but to be held up as a mirror of the love that our nation holds for this most iconic of comedians.

Tommy has always been one of my dad's greatest idols: the work, the children, even the football, would stop if Tommy Cooper was on the telly. I'm ashamed to admit that, at first, I didn't appreciate what made his act so unique. Everything was going wrong! Even the jokes I'd heard before (albeit from my dad). What was with the fez? And that strangulated voice? Dad had introduced me to masters like Ronnie Barker and Ken Dodd... Why was he so keen to show me a bad magician?

Unsurprisingly, my attitude changed rapidly. The sure-fire set-pieces were the clincher. Who can fail to laugh at Tom's sheer glee during the 'Spoon/Jar' routine or the string of pantomimic gags surrounding Tom's attempts to smooth-talk a duck into the oven? Once these 'quickies' had grabbed my attention, I actively listened. Tommy was clearly a hybrid from the bygone era of music halls and an exciting post-war prodigy. He even looked funny.

Early 2013 and I'd picked up John Fisher's extensive book Always Leave Them Laughing. I'm a very slow reader, (I often forget I'm reading a book, I'm that slow) but this biography I completed in a matter of days. Apart from the more infamous incidents of Tommy's private life, what surprised me most was that the greater aspects of Tommy's performance had not been fully captured.

Everyone who knew or saw Tommy readily agree that he was at his happiest, and at his best, when working a live audience on the club circuit, a cultural relevancy which has changed significantly since the 50s and 60s. Club names like the 'Club Fiesta' in Sheffield and 'Poco-a-Poco Theatre Club' in Stockport were staples of the industry and Tommy appreciated them just as much as the punters and owners appreciated him. It was more than just a training ground. It was the constant of his career.

So many of his contemporaries - Morecambe & Wise, Frankie Howerd, Les Dawson - once TV had found them, they rarely returned to the clubs. Royal Variety Performances and the like were still honoured, but late night club gigs were a rarity. They didn't rely on them. Tommy was different though. Tommy loved magic. The 'joke-telling' element he could switch on and off, but the thing that made him very distinctive was the magic, and so he would return night after night, week in week out to touring the clubs, even when his health deteriorated. This aspect fascinated me.

There's no record of Tommy's ever-evolving stage act. The closest we get are the 5-10 minute "stand-up" sections which easily dominate every televisual spectacle. All the producers (and they were good producers) acknowledged that the best way to try and capture the essence of the man was to just let him get on with it. Royston Mayoh (producer of The Tommy Cooper Hour and Cooper!) would always keep a wide shot in the video mixing selection, so he had something to cut to when Tommy wandered off his camera marks etc.

Tommy wasn't particularly co-operative. He wouldn't openly rehearse these segments, apart from a crude, rushed camera tech on the actual morning of the recording. It's forgivable, therefore, that the editing is rather hectic. But what carries the most resonance is that these hampered golden nuggets are still so fondly cherished, and that this man, who we have no actual record of at his absolute best, is repeatedly voted as the funniest man that's ever lived.

It's a crying shame that no recording of Cooper working the clubs was ever captured. Fans of Morecambe & Wise will join me in rejoicing about the existence of live footage taken of their stage act at Croydon's Fairfield Halls in 1973. It contains a different energy and structure from their televisual appearances. It's a unique experience. Sadly, the closest thing we can reference to Tommy from this particular angle are his chat show appearances or the below-par Jus' Like That! series from 1978, where Tommy performed at the New London Theatre and, still recovering from a heart attack the previous year, is clearly not at the top of his game.

Back to 2013. To this day, I don't quite know why Tommy sprang so readily to my mind. The biography still loomed large, but I was determined that a winning formula away from a 'man behind the mask' interpretation would be something more wholesome and pragmatic. I wanted to emulate Cooper 'working' an audience so I set about gathering in all the magic tricks and corny gags from a plethora of TV shows, joke books, and famed material passed on from co-performers, writers, family members and audience reminiscences. Getting the Cooper family to understand that this was an all-out, unabashed celebration of Tommy, The Entertainer, wasn't difficult but it was the most important thing. I wanted to honour the man. To me, Tommy was a hero. But to them, Tommy was a member of their family. To Vicky, he was her dad.

I then spent what was a delirious, but unrepentantly happy six months on research. I was confident I could maintain an impression of Tommy for 20 minutes or so, but clearly the project was going to outstrip those expectations very quickly. Yes, there was a certain degree of standing in front of a mirror, but more than that was transcribing the jokes as Tommy said them, to retrain the brain (I guess?) to channel a different pattern to sentences, comic timing and rhythm. I maintain that anybody can do an impression of Tommy Cooper - especially if there's a fez to hand - but I wanted to extract everything to be gained from meeting those who knew him best, to visit his place of birth and childhood, to get a greater sense of the man, and then to infuse all of that information through a deftness of touch and vocal ability.

Friends and family had been supportive when I'd supposedly 'accidentally' dropped into a performance over a pub meal or get-together, and their encouragement was endearing, but it's the colleagues and ardent fans who you long to impress. I'm also not a comedian. I tried some compering once and failed dismally. I was younger, granted, but I didn't have the temerity to interact with a crowd in that sense. I'm equally envious of those who can ad-lib and not end up in a convoluted, vaporing mess!

I staged a series of preview shows over a period of five months. The first was well-received. The second was not... but the rest built up my confidence to our first (and, at that point, only) batch of performances. It was all a question of timing, really: firstly, the Heads at ITV were marking Tommy's anniversary in a different way; the docu-drama Not Like That, Like This aired two days after our local tour began; then we got a late booking in Edinburgh and enjoyed sell-out success. Meanwhile Martin Witts, the guv'nor at the Leicester Square Theatre, was opening a new performance space within London's first ever Museum of Comedy. He came to see our show and offered us dates, performing across Christmas and that helped launch two national tours and two further Christmas seasons.

Keeping Tommy's legacy alive has been a pleasure. Perhaps the most uplifting thing is that we get entire families coming along to enjoy the show. We spot them; three or even four generations in a line guffawing away at different gags and jokes. There will never be another quite like Tommy, although his influence and natural successors are clear. So "Long Live Tommy Cooper!", a timeless clown and what a marvellous gift he shared with us.