Update 3/6/13 Just heard today that comedian Joe Lycett has been cast as Dustin Gee in this project below. This is interesting – Gee was the double act partner of Les Dennis and died of a heart attack in 1986. Spookily Dustin Gee and Les Dennis had been the act due to follow Cooper on Live From Her Majesty's, the show Cooper died on in 1984. No news of whether Les Dennis will be portrayed in the Cooper biopic. But if he does, will Les Dennis play himself?
Hancock, Howerd, Sid James, Hattie Jacques, Kenneth Williams, Eric Morecambe. Just when you think every classic comedian has been done in a recent TV drama along comes Tommy Cooper. ITV has announced that David Threlfall will play the legendary clown in a dramatisation of his life penned by Men Behaving Badly writer Simon Nye.
The question, of course, is will this be another example of a drama that focuses on a comedian behaving badly? Too much emphasis is usually placed on the sad-clown-cliche. The spate of small screen biopics in recent years, mostly made by BBC4, have frequently homed in on the tortured artist angle. David Walliams played Howerd taking hallucinogenic drugs to ease his emotional turmoil, Ken Stott played classic depressive Tony Hancock, Michael Sheen did a brilliant job of Kenneth Williams hoovering in his spartan flat while wearing nothing but his underpants.
I've done a fair bit of research into Cooper's life myself. In fact a few years ago I was approached to write a biography of the Fez-festooned star and turned it down, pointing my publisher in the direction of John Fisher, who worked frequently with Cooper on his TV shows. Fisher subsequently wrote a great book about Tommy and is said to be a consultant on this forthcoming film, which may mean he is hands on or may mean that they have just bought his book from Amazon and slipped him a few quid, but it does mean that Simon Nye will have the facts at his fingertips when he sits down at his keyboard. Fisher certainly knows his stuff. He also wrote Jus' Like That, the play about Cooper which starred Jerome Flynn as the lantern-jawed lump.
Cooper is intriguing, because he sits halfway between the clowns who were tortured – from Joseph Grimaldi to Hancock and Howerd – and the pure comedians that were always "on" such as Eric Morecambe. Cooper did not seem to have many demons, but naturally he was insecure about his talent and worried over his career even when it was going well. Over the years life on the road and drinking and smoking heavily took their toll. There is a story that he was staying in a hotel once and asked for gin at breakfast which he poured on his cornflakes. He said it was healthier than fatty milk – a great gag, but one which did little to mask a growing problem with booze.
He knew he had to give up drinking and smoking but struggled. One time in front of Bob Monkhouse he cracked open a can of lager and lit up a panatella. Monkhouse said he thought he had given up. Cooper gestured to the weak alcohol and thin cigar and replied, ‘You can't call this smoking and you can't call this drinking, can you?" He famously died on the job – onstage, live on ITV in 1984. The audience laughed when he collapsed, thinking it was part of the act.
Reports have variously suggested that the drama will centre on either the last week of his life or his long-running affair with his assistant Mary Kay, while he was still married to his wife Gwen. It would not surprise me if the truth is somewhere in between – kicking off with that final performance but then flashing back to show what brought him to the stage. Cooper was a great talent but it still took hard work to get to the top and hopefully they will show that – alongside gags and his classic magic tricks.
As well as Shameless star David Threlfall in the title role, Amanda Redman will star as Gwen and long-time Cooper fan Jason Manford will be playing Ken Brooke, the magician who taught Tommy his tricks. My hope is that this will steer closer to the Eric Morecambe drama rather than the Frankie Howerd drama and concentrate on the comedy rather than the tragedy. You can't ignore his private life, but to make it the focus would be to miss the point of Cooper, who was a natural clown. He could make the audience laugh without even saying anything which is a truly special talent. Not many performers can be said to truly have funny bones. Tommy Cooper had funny bones in abundance.
