Tommy Cooper

The V&A Museum's plans for the Tommy Cooper collection

Comprising over 116 boxes of archive material and 24 props and posters, the Tommy Cooper Collection that London's Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) has recently acquired charts the career of the famous magician and comedian known for his trademark fez and endearingly flustered jokes. Museums Journal caught up with Simon Sladen, the senior curator of modern and contemporary performance at the V&A, and asked him about the importance of the collection, and what the museum's plans for it are.

How to do the perfect Tommy Cooper impression

Tommy Cooper's handwritten jokes are to go on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, after it bought the late comic's archive. The exhibition doesn't include his trademark red fez, but does feature a metal cabinet, in which his jokes were filed alphabetically. John Hewer is currently preparing to tour the UK with Just like That: The Tommy Cooper Show. He plays the comedian in the tribute, and has spent years perfecting Cooper's act and mannerisms.

Review: Just Like That! The Tommy Cooper Show

With his deadpan delivery, Cooper was the comedian's ultimate comic and this show clearly demonstrates why, although his gags are as old as the hills, they are still profoundly funny, of the ones included in this show, the jokes that raised the biggest laughs were, "I sold my wife for a car, it was a good swap," and "I asked a librarian if she kept books on pigmies and she said no, we keep them on shelves."

A selection of 12 comedians with blue plaques in London

Here's our guide to the 12 comics with blue plaques in London.

Tommy Cooper to be given blue plaque

Tommy Cooper is to be honoured with a blue plaque at his West London home.

Radio Times review

See where Tim Vine got his pun-slinging, and Count Arthur Strong his comic ineptitude, in this daily collection of sketches. Tommy Coopers shtick of useless conjuring was endlessly funny. Typically he would get a big laugh from apparently hashing a trick, then a roar of appreciation when it succeeded - and he'd top that by unwittingly revealing the mechanics of the trick. Three steps to comedy heaven.

Look out in tomorrow's show for a surreal walk-past by "Oliver Hardy" ("It wasn't was it?" asks Cooper), a ventriloquist "Cooper at Sea" on a rocking set, and eternal straight man Allan Cuthbertson struggling to keep the star on his feet during a karate sketch - Cooper was 6ft 4in and big with it.

Radio Times review

After being hit on the head, terminal womaniser Steven Toast falls in love - with a man. And not just any man, but Jon Hamm, handsome star of Mad Men, who's making a film about Tommy Cooper in Dorset.

"I've literally never heard of him," Toast tells his giddy agent Jane Plough (pronounced Pluff). But once "the Hamm", as he is referred to throughout, walks through the doors of the decrepit Colonial Club, Toast (Matt Berry) is smitten. Not even he can resist the Hamm's fabled "charm and charisma" ("It's like black magic!").

Toast's puppy-like devotion - he makes Hamm a mix tape of marching tunes and spies on him as he undresses - is both idiotic and funny, and Hamm plays along with an admirable poker face. Watch out for guests Heida Reed (Poldark) and Brian Blessed as Toast's dad.

Comedy film studio is flattened

As the dust clears away from the latest casualty in the war waged by the 'regenerative' bulldozers, it's left to Londonist to sift through the rubble and find out just what we've lost with the current demolition of Teddington Studios. This was where Tommy Cooper, Benny Hill and Morecambe and Wise filmed their shows, as well as more recent sitcoms such as Birds Of A Feather, The Office, Mr Bean, Black Books and Goodnight Sweetheart.