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his way to the big time and Miff was determined Tommy should not spoil things for himself. He wrote to Val Parnell, the Managing Director of Moss Empires which owned the venue, asking for permission to pop into the theatre from time to time to view his client’s act, since ‘it is necessary, in the interests of his career, that I view his stage performance from time to time.’ He made it clear he was not asking for complimentary tickets. Parnell replied stating that it was not customary for agents to make frequent visits to view their clients, but that in the circumstances he would have no objection to Miff looking into the theatre occasionally. For the eight minute spot, which with laughs could never have played for less than ten, Tommy was billed as ‘Almost a Magician!’ his most familiar billing from the early part of his career. His first ventures into variety had been tagged ‘Six Feet of Fun’, followed, when Miff came on board, by ‘Television’s Mad Magician’. The new label paid homage to that surreal ragamuffin of the halls, Billy Bennett, whose ‘Almost a Gentleman’ had gone out of service upon his death in 1942. One wonders if Tommy was also aware of the early bill matter of the suavely sarcastic American radio comedian, Fred Allen at an earlier career phase when he was known as ‘Freddy James – Almost a Juggler’.

      He was not receiving a lavish wage. Bentine in the previous edition of the Folies had worked his way up to seventy-five pounds a week, but Tommy’s forty pounds was enhanced by frequent cabaret work at venues that now included the Savoy, the Dorchester, and the Berkeley, for which he regularly received an additional salary of seventy-five pounds. More importantly the press began to take notice. The most important young critic in the country, Kenneth Tynan went out of his way to eulogize him in the Evening Standard, describing him as our best new clown: ‘Cooper is the hulking, preposterous conjuror, who is always in a jelly of hysterics at the collapse of his own tricks. Convulsed by his own incompetence, holding his sides, he staggers helplessly from trick to trick; no man was ever less surprised by failure. Cooper, you see, has a distinct attitude towards life; a stoic attitude, a gurgling awareness of the futility of human effort. And this is what raises him above the crowd.’ No wonder Ronnie Waldman had pulled his enthusiasm up a notch or two. Even if Tynan failed to register fully Tommy’s inherent panic, acknowledge the look that cried ‘Help, what am I going to do next?’, a perceptive person reading between the lines of his appraisal would have spotted something of crucial importance, namely that Cooper was capable of being more than a just a novelty act guaranteed to enliven an otherwise dull bill. Like Howerd, like Wisdom, like Terry-Thomas he need not be shackled within the confines of being a turn.

      At the end of the run in February 1952 Miff punctiliously wrote to Parnell thanking him for his courtesy and cooperation during the run of Encore des Folies. The letter gave him an opportunity to tell Parnell that Tommy would be starring in his own television series commencing 12 March. On 21 December 1951 Waldman had written to the BBC Television Booking Manager, expressing his desire to build a new show around Tommy, in which he would not only give his usual performance of lunatic conjuring, but also act as compère and provide the central core of the production by reappearing all the way through. The water needed testing with Miff from a money standpoint, but Waldman admitted to his colleagues within the Corporation that he was prepared to go up to a weekly fee of eighty guineas for eight shows. Eventually Miff settled for sixty. Tommy and Gwen could feel pleased with themselves. Immediately after the Folies they flew off to Barcelona for two weeks’ holiday. Around this time they moved to their most desirable residence yet, a two-guineas a week basement flat in a stately red-brick mansion block, Waverley Mansions, in Kenton Street, not far from Russell Square. Tommy could also boast his first car, a new Vanguard Estate, which he later claimed was the best vehicle he ever owned, dismissing in turn the Triumph Renown, the Ford Estate and the Mercedes that saw him through to the end of his days. Most importantly the combination of a long theatre run and a television series enabled him to be back in town with his mates, not only the comics whose trials and tribulations he shared, but also the magicians with whom he felt most at home.

      The most vivid picture of Tommy the person at this point in his life can be gained from his magical cronies. Living near Russell Square he was only a short walk from the premises of L. Davenport and Company at 25 New Oxford Street. Every Saturday morning this mystical emporium – advertised as ‘Where the Tricks Come From’ – became the unofficial rallying point for a small group of young aficionados. Regular attendees included Bobby Bernard, Val Andrews, Billy McComb, Alex Elmsley, Cy Endfield and Harry Devano. It was not unknown for Orson Welles to add his weight to the gathering if he was in town. Between them they represented a motley bunch of professionals and amateurs bound together by a common enthusiasm. When they had outstayed their welcome at the magic store, the caravan would repair to a nearby Lyons’ Corner House for the rest of the afternoon.

      According to Val, Tommy was always on the look out for the latest novelty in the pocket trick line and was quite unable to contain himself from the headstrong demonstration of his latest acquisition as soon as they were in the café. He often had no idea how the trick worked and the Nippies, the Lyons waitresses in their short trademark aprons, would gather around in hysterics as he tried to master the intricacies of this newly purchased miracle. He once took great pride in genuinely fooling Bobby with a new version of the trick in which a coin was secretly concealed beneath one of three small red cups. In the old version you had only to look for the secret hair attached to the penny to announce where it was. Bobby had no idea what Tommy was up to as time and again he discovered the hidden coin. Cooper would register his excitement with what became a characteristic gesture, clapping his hands together like flippers and saying, ‘Dear, oh dear! Dear, oh dear!’ Except that in those early days the words were expletive based, a trait he had to purge from his behaviour when he started to mix with the Delfonts and the Grades. But as Bobby says, ‘We all knew what he was really saying!’

      For all his success he never bought a tea or a coffee for anyone. He used to say, ‘You get the teas, boy’– a clue to his Welsh ancestry – ‘and I’ll get the chairs.’ If the place was crowded he gave you the impression he was doing you a favour. It was a ploy he had developed in crowded NAAFI canteens. Then once you had brought over the teas that you had bought, he would launch into a lecture on how scandalous the charges were, working out the number of cups of tea that you should be able to extract from a packet for less than a farthing a cup. When he really had been broke, word got around that he had been unable to pay his Magic Circle subscription. According to Gwen he walked out on stage at one Magic Circle show and said, ‘You can all stop talking about me – it makes no difference.’ He turned around and there was a rubber dagger sticking out of his back. The audience was in uproar. When he became better off than most of his colleagues, it suited him to keep his hands in his pockets. Jack Benny kept up the pretence of meanness as a key trait within his comic persona; Max Miller, who supposedly never bought a drink for anyone, was a humanitarian by contrast when it came to secret good deeds. Alas, Tommy’s behaviour was a psychological kink in his make-up that had no bearing on his comic perspective whatsoever.

      Bobby can become quite agitated about his old chum. Put bluntly the Cooper of those early years was ‘a ruthless opportunist – he’d never pay for anything if he could find a way of getting you to give it to him.’ Or pay you what you wanted if he could find a way of getting it for less. He became the acknowledged expert at discovering he had left his wallet or chequebook at home. In this context the Bill Hall story is legendary. Hall was an eccentric double-bass player on the variety circuit in the act known as ‘Hall, Norman and Ladd’. In his spare time he was quite a deft caricaturist and had developed a sideline of reproducing sketches of his fellow pros as postcards for publicity purposes. One day Val spotted him in Lyons’ clutching a packet of postcards for Tommy. Bill told Andrews he was charging him three pounds for the service. Val was sceptical, but Hall assured him he knew how to go about things. Tommy arrived and quickly got to the point, ‘Bill, I’ve been thinking about the three quid …’ ‘That’s right,’ interrupted Hall, ‘unfortunately I gave you the wrong quote. I forgot to include the price of the special bromide paper they were printed on.’ Tommy took out his wallet and three pounds were extracted with the speed of jet propulsion: ‘No, a price is a price. You said three pounds. There it is!’

      For Val the vagaries of such behaviour were offset by the sheer dedication he put into his work, the midnight oil he would spend practising:

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