Where Were You When Cooper Died?

One thing about live TV is that a few times you get a surprise you'll never get over, no I don't mean a baby Elephant taking a shit on the childrens TV show Blue Peter or Janet Jackson's saggy tit popping out at an American football game, no big deal on both accounts though the Elephant was more watchable.
I was watching a variety show on ITV in 1984 called 'Live from her majesty's', which was a theatre where acts would go up on stage in front of an audience and perform and it was televised , basic entertainment.
on stage was the famous British prop comedian and magician Tommy Cooper, 6 foot 3 inches tall with size 13 feet, he was born in Caerphilly Wales but his parents smuggled him across the border into Devon when he was just a few months old so he could have a better life away from the coalmines and the close harmony singing.

His act consisted of him telling jokes and messing up his own magic tricks in homourous ways though he was a skilled magician belonging to the magic circle.
He was also known for being tightfisted , for example just before he would get out of a taxi he'd pay and then slip the driver something saying to have a drink on him, the driver would find himself holding a t-bag.
A heavy drinker, smoker, wife beater and adulterer, loved by the public though. He would say that he could just walk out onto the stage and get a laugh without doing anything but it took at least a bottle of brandy to get him onto the stage in the first place. He nearly killed talk show host Michael Parkinson when he forgot to set the safety catch for a guillotine trick because he was too drunk, a producer stepped in and saved him.

I was watching him on stage , the usual "not like that like this" act with no energy or passion, I must of glanced away for a second, the act was crap but the audience were laughing, when I looked back Tommy just sat on his arse upright, the crowd still laughed, I was thinking how unfunny and that it just didn't seem right, the big red velvet curtain closed across the stage right on the line in which he sat, he just keeled over into it then the music played and they went to a commercial break, that is all I remember from that show it seemed so odd at the time.

Tommy lay backstage while others tried to revive him in the near darkness, due to legal reasons he could only be moved by Paramedics or the Police, the acts were at the other side of the curtain doing their thing on what little stage was left as the curtain was still closed, on the second commercial break he was moved and sent to the hospital, he was dead on arrival.

A total wanker who went the way a lot of the older performers wanted to go, on stage with the audience laughing or clapping, I suppose with the great stars/icons like Tommy Cooper, James Brown and even Gerald Ford many people just want to remember what they liked about them, lucky I'm here, fairy stories are for fairies.
Here are some of the jokes he used, some are so old they are imbedded into british culture.

I slept like a log last night. I woke up in the fireplace.

Sometimes I drink my whisky neat. Other times I take my tie off and leave my shirt hanging out.

Someone complimented me on my driving the other day. They put a note on my windscreen that said "Parking Fine". So that was nice.

Man walks into a bar. Didn't half hurt. It was an iron bar.

It's strange isn't it? You stand in the middle of a library and go 'Aaagh!' and everyone just stares at you. But you do the same thing on an aeroplane and everyone joins in.

I've got the best wife in England. The other one's in Africa.

I had a ploughman's lunch the other day. He wasn't half mad.

My dog took a big bite out of my knee the other day and a friend of mine said, "Did you put anything on it?" I said. "No, he liked it as it was."

I think inventions are marvellous, don't you? Wherever they put a petrol pump they find petrol.