Tommy Coopers half Hour

Tommy Coopers half Hour
Datum van uitzending: 198x
Bron: Pal Betamax

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_C...

Tommy Cooper
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thomas Frederick Cooper (19 March 1921 – 15 April 1984) was a British prop comedian and magician. He was a member of the Magic Circle, and was respected by traditional magicians. He habitually wore a red fez, and his appearance was large and lumbering, at 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) and more than 15 stone (210 lb; 95 kg) in weight.[1] On 15 April 1984, Cooper collapsed with a heart attack on live national television, and died soon afterwards.

Thomas Frederick Cooper (19 March 1921 – 15 April 1984) was a British prop comedian and magician. He was a member of the Magic Circle, and was respected by traditional magicians. He habitually wore a red fez, and his appearance was large and lumbering, at 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) and more than 15 stone (210 lb; 95 kg) in weight.[1] On 15 April 1984, Cooper collapsed with a heart attack on live national television, and died soon afterwards.

Early life

Thomas Frederick Cooper was born on 19 March 1921 at 19 Llwyn-On Street in Caerphilly, Glamorgan.[2] He was delivered by the woman who owned the house in which the family were lodging. His parents were Thomas H. Cooper, a Welsh recruiting sergeant in the British Army and later coal miner, and Catherine Gertrude (née Wright), Thomas' English wife from Crediton, Devon.[2][3]

To escape from the heavily polluted air of Caerphilly, his father accepted the offer of a new job and the family moved to Exeter, Devon, when Cooper was three. It was in Exeter that he acquired the West Country accent that became part of his act.[4] When he was eight, an aunt bought him a magic set and he spent hours perfecting the tricks.[5] In the 1960s, his brother David (born 1930)[6] opened a magic shop called D. & Z. Cooper's Magic Shop on the high street in Slough, Berkshire.[7]

After school, Cooper became a shipwright in Southampton. In 1940, he was called up as a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, serving for seven years. He joined Montgomery's Desert Rats in Egypt. Cooper became a member of a NAAFI entertainment party and developed an act around his magic tricks interspersed with comedy. One evening in Cairo, during a sketch in which he was supposed to be in a costume that required a pith helmet, having forgotten the prop, Cooper reached out and borrowed a fez from a passing waiter, which got huge laughs.[8] He wore a fez whenever performing after that, the prop later being described as "an icon of 20th-century comedy