Cooper might have had a cuddly exterior, but there was a tougher streak that did not just manifest itself where money was concerned. If an audience gave him a hard time he could give them one back. At that legendary bear pit the Glasgow Empire, where Des O’Connor later faked illness to escape the stage, Cooper felt so unappreciated he walked to the front of the stage, told the audience to ‘fuck off’, packed his bags and caught the next train out of the city. Cooper got the chance of a stint at the Windmill after his fifth audition, doing six shows a day for six weeks for thirty pounds a week in late 1949. Whether it was the importance of the venue and the fact that having it on his CV would help him get better bookings or the naked women constantly milling about backstage, Cooper was particularly nervous here. Just before one performance he went to grab his fez and grabbed a pudding basin instead, putting that on his head by mistake.
But hard work and simple stunts such as pushing a knot up and down a piece of string did, as it were, the trick, and got Cooper noticed. The old guard of comedy was noticing him too. In the late 1950s Max Miller encountered Cooper, maybe spotted a kindred spirit, was suitably impressed and gave him one of his trademark white snap-brim trilbies. There was no single event that made Cooper an overnight sensation. He just grafted and grafted until he rose through the ranks, building up a huge fan base. He played clubs up and down England; he played Las Vegas; he did a TV special with Bruce Forsyth and Frankie Howerd. But the work was hard. There was a lot of travelling involved, and a lot of late nights in smoke-filled rooms. It is hard today to believe how much audiences smoked in the 1960s, but look at any archive footage of Baileys in Watford or the Night Out in Birmingham and you can barely see the audience for the fug.
Cooper was not averse to a bit of sleight of hand to get noticed, ‘borrowing’ tricks he had seen on trips abroad. One of his famous routines, playing the tune ‘Autumn Leaves’ on the piano until he and the piano were covered entirely in leaves, was not original; he had seen it done in Las Vegas. Today, when anything and everything is just a computer click away, he would not have been able to get away with it, but back then it was unlikely anyone in his audience in the UK had seen it done before. Gag theft is often frowned upon, but at least when Cooper did it he added his own unique personality to a riff.
His routine with a variety of hats, acting out a story and playing all the parts – fireman, policeman, soldier, etc. – by pulling the relevant hats from an increasingly muddled crate, also seemed original to anyone in the UK unfamiliar with the ancient art of chapeaugraphy, the manipulation of headgear, which had gone on in shows on the Continent for centuries. ‘I’ve got to get a bigger box,’ he would say as the routine got increasingly chaotic.
Even Cooper’s most famous exchange – with the Queen after the Royal Variety Performance, may have been more second hand than it seemed. Cooper was said to have asked the Queen if she liked football, and when she replied, ‘Not particularly,’ he asked if he could have her FA Cup Final tickets. John Fisher suggests that this line might first have been used by Bud Flanagan to the Queen Mother and that Flanagan may have repeated it to Cooper, not knowing he would magic it away for his own use.
As Cooper started to make good money he was often at loggerheads with Miff Ferrie, who he felt had too tight a stranglehold on his affairs. Cooper would write to him calling him ‘Little Caesar’ and Miff was understandably miffed. There was also the small matter of Cooper embarking in the late 60s on an affair with Mary Kay which meant that Miff had to be discreet when settling hotel bills. From 1967 Kay had started travelling with Cooper as his assistant, but very soon this blossomed into an affair that would last until Cooper’s death. He was not a womaniser taking advantage of groupies on tour, it was just that he was devoted to two women.
And at the same time there was a noticeable increase in Cooper’s alcohol intake. When he appeared in a small part on the Mike and Bernie Winters Show, Miff was put out because Cooper arranged the fee himself – a cask of whiskey. Miff thought it was demeaning for a star to be paid in booze but presumably he was also disgruntled because he didn’t receive 15 per cent as his commission either. At first a quick drink helped to settle Cooper’s nerves. It is not easy making an audience laugh without saying anything. People thought it was effortless, but of course just walking on took a lot of effort, and he thought that alcohol might help. And until it got out of hand maybe it did.
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