Tommy Cooper – the King of One Liners

Tommy Cooper – he even borrowed his fez.

Tommy Cooper T-shirt

“I said to the gym instructor: ‘Can you teach me to do the splits?’ He said: ‘How flexible are you?’ I said: ‘I can’t make Tuesdays’.”

“Dyslexic man walks into a bra”

“I went to the zoo the other day, there was only one dog in it, it was a shitzu.”

Tommy Cooper was renowned for his scatter gun one-liners, keeping audiences on the edge of their seats with his unpredictable manic style.  Despite  hailing from an comedy era that is often seen as incompatible with modern day political correctness, Cooper’s gentle and often surreal humour is still effective as ever.

Cooper’s hesitant and often deliberately awkward persona as the ‘incompetent magician’  proved to be all to convincing for his early BBC audition. Deriding his “comedy patter with tired cod magic’ (fish magic?) talent spotters described him as a “unattractive young man with an extremely unfortunate appearance”.  Perhaps they were after a different type of talent? None the less, Cooper went on to become a well paid and sought after TV and stage comedian.

Like many ‘funny men’ Cooper had a difficult personality; at times generous and warm, but also capable of  tight fisted meanness and volatile behavior. Slipping something into a taxi driver’s pocket and telling the driver to “have a drink on me” (the driver would later find a tea-bag) can be seen as a humorous gag but he was widely known as “the tightest man in show business”.  Even Cooper’s trademark  fez was borrowed from a waiter in Cairo during an act that required a pith helmet that he had forgotten.

“My therapist says I have a preoccupation with vengeance. We’ll see about that.”

Coopers death was as bizarre as any of his one-liners. Performing on a live UK TV broadcast Cooper suffered a fatal heart attack and collapsed whilst on stage. Used to his visual performance the crowd misunderstood his collapse as part of his act and the curtain was forced to descend with his legs sticking out on stage – producing more riotous laughter. The legend of his death and blanket refusal to rebroadcast his performance has meant that it remained unrepeated until May 2009 , when a German broadcaster accidently broadcast the performance during a comedy compilation program. This lead to the clip being made available via the Internet, on sites such as You Tube.

You may be interested in our Tommy Cooper t-shirt showing the great comedian in his trademark fez.