Tommy Cooper

Tommy Cooper: the best quotes

Last night David Threlfall turned in an award-worthy performance as Tommy Cooper in the ITV biopic Not Like That, Like This. Here, we celebrate the fez-wearing comic conjuror's finest lines...

"I backed a horse at 20 to one. It came in at half-past four." Even if you don't care for the joke, it's irresistible as told by Tommy Cooper, perhaps the most intrinsically funny man who ever lived. David Threlfall is great as the comedian in this biodrama, with support from Amanda Redman as long-suffering wife Gwen and Helen McCrory as his mistress, Mary. A rather sad account of a man in declining health who spent a lifetime avoiding getting his round in, relieved by rib-tickling recreations of his stage act.

Amanda Redman on playing Tommy Cooper's wife

"It's about his double life - the stress, boozing and the hard work - all of which ultimately killed him"

Radio Times review

David Threlfall delivers a tour de force as Tommy Cooper, undergoing a transformation that's much deeper than just the donning of a fez.

Cooper's studied incompetence with magic tricks made him a star, but Simon Nye's script centres on Cooper's relationships with two women, his volatile and long-suffering wife Dove (Amanda Redman) and his mistress Mary Kay (Helen McCrory).

Cooper is hard to like - he drinks too much, he's tight with money and he's physically abusive - and by the end of two hours your patience may have run dry.

But Threlfall and Nye work hard to show why Cooper inspired abiding loyalty in both women, and in his friends and fellow comedians, right until that final show when he collapses on stage in front of a TV audience, an extraordinary 15 minutes from Threlfall who does the act note for note.

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As ITV airs biopic Not Like That, Like This, we take a look at some of his greatest gags.

Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This review

Simon Nye's script didn't shy away from the darker elements of Cooper's personality but it was balanced nicely with his incessant need to perform.

5 reasons Tommy Cooper biopic is best in a long time

We've had Hattie Jacques, Eric Morecambe and Kenneth Williams to name but a few. However ITV's two-hour-long film dedication to the life of Tommy Cooper, Not Like That, Like This, is the best biopic there's been for a while.

Tommy Cooper - Not Like That, Like This review

What this script successfully did was show just how fitting it was that Tommy's final hurrah was on stage, making everyone laugh as the be-fezzed fool that was so beloved, and not off it where life had become far more complicated, and ultimately unsolvable.

Not Like That, Like This - 'a so-so biopic'

David Threlfall's portrayal of comedian Tommy Cooper saved a mediocre biopic.