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The night of April 15, 1984, was one no comedy fan will ever forget.

Millions tuned in to watch the hit variety show Live From Her Majesty’s, only to see Tommy Cooper suffer a massive fatal heart attack right there on stage.

But, as he collapsed to uproarious applause from an audience who thought it all part of his act, the 63-year-old Welsh comedy legend died as he had lived – making people laugh.

“God, that was the saddest night of my entire career,” remembered the show’s compere Jimmy Tarbuck, speaking for the first time about that fateful evening of 25 years ago this Wednesday.

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“Tommy was doing the famous magic cloak skit, and I was hiding behind the curtain passing him different props which he’d then appear to pull from inside his long flowing gown.

“I’d hand him a paint pot, a plank of wood, gradually getting bigger and bigger until the final gag, which was me coming out carrying a step ladder and complaining I couldn’t fit it through his legs.

“But we never got to finish the routine because he suddenly dropped on to his haunches and was just sort of sitting there upright with his knees underneath him.”

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The 69-year-old Liverpudlian comedian recalled how the fez-wearing funnyman had looked frail that evening – theatre staff even having to knock up a makeshift dressing room for him in the wings so he wouldn’t have to climb any stairs – but he’d put it down to the ravages of years spent drinking and smoking heavily.

Jimmy added that no-one knew that something was wrong, assuming instead the tumble was all part of Cooper’s usual slapstick act.

“I was watching on a monitor backstage and we all thought he’d just stuck another physical gag into his set; he was a real terror for introducing new bits and pieces without warning.

“But, as time ticked on, we realised something terrible had happened and I called for a quick commercial break,” Jimmy told Wales on Sunday.

Several seconds of blank screen followed as London Weekend Television’s master control contacted regional stations to get them to start transmitting adverts.

Meanwhile, back on the London stage, desperate efforts where being made to get the curtain around Cooper’s motionless 6ft 3in slumped frame.

“He was a big bloke and very heavy; we just couldn’t move him,” said Jimmy.

“And this show was live, don’t forget, so I told Les Dennis and Dustin Gee, who were up next, that they’d have to work in front of the curtain.

“Dustin said that they needed more room and I replied: ‘Well, you ain’t gonna get it. You’re professionals, just get on with it.’

“Howard Keel was supposed to be following them and I recall telling him: ‘Howard, Tom’s not well, can you sing at the front of the stage?’ and to this day I’ll never forget his reply.

“He said, ‘I’ll sing up the f****** aisle if Tommy wants,’ which had me crying with laughter, despite everything.

But with Donnie Osmond and a 24-strong dancing troupe on after Keel, Tommy had to be stretchered away.

“One of the first to him had been my manager Peter Pritchard and the guy from St John Ambulance, but they couldn’t revive him and Tom was eventually declared dead upon arrival at Westminster Hospital,” said Jimmy.

“No-one knew he had gone, not even backstage. They told me he was doing OK just so I didn’t throw a wobbler while presenting the rest of the show because, of course, we had to soldier on.

“The nightly news bulletin came live from the theatre straight after we’d finished and it was announced to the whole country that Tommy had died.

“It was a huge shock to everyone who’d been roaring with him right up until the very end.”

And Jimmy added that Tommy would always be his hero.

“I’d known him years, shared a dressing room with him on my very first Royal Command performance in 1964 and he was just lovely to me,” he said.

“He was one of those comics who could just walk on and be hit with a wall of love – people simply adored him and that’s why he was so successful.

“It’s all about likeability and, by heck, he had that in diamonds.

“There are men who tell funny jokes, like Bob Monkhouse for example, and there are men who simply are funny, and that was Tommy Cooper – Tom had funny bones. “He was the comedian’s comedian.”



Tommy’s showbiz career started with a magic set: next page

Tommy’s showbiz career started with a magic set

BORN Thomas Frederick Cooper in a rented house in Caerphilly in 1921, his showbiz beginnings came when he was bought a magic set when he was eight by an aunt.

After being demobbed after World War II, he started auditioning his conjuror’s act around the UK, but noticed the botched tricks got the biggest laughs and developed his act accordingly.

His bumbling persona won the British public’s hearts and he proved a big hit on the variety circuit and later on TV.

There was a dark side, though, with stories of his heavy boozing.

His long-suffering wife Gwen – whom he called “Dove” – once said: “ There is one trick Tommy can do really well and that’s making a drink disappear,” while the man himself is even said to have poured alcohol over his breakfast cereal one morning, reasoning that it was the healthier option.

“Well, milk is full of cholesterol!” he said.

He initially drank to cure his stage fright and told his friend and fellow comic Eric Sykes: “People say I’ve only got to walk out on stage and they laugh. If only they knew what it takes to walk out on stage in the first place.”

But the booze eventually became a problem that began seriously affecting both his work and his family life.

He once hit his wife in front of their two kids and she left him, but would always return despite his drunken rages and his reputed infidelities. However, a heart attack in Rome in 1977 led to him putting a stop to both the violence and the affairs.

Cooper still drank, though – “for medicinal purposes only,” he’d joke, “I’m sick of being sober”. And as a result some gigs would be a self-destructive disaster of fluffed lines, forgotten routines, heckles and, sometimes, even total no-shows.

He was also a prodigious smoker favouring up to 40 cigars a day, which led to him suffering a glut of other ailments, such as chronic bronchitis and severe circulation problems.

Rumours are he was the tightest man in entertainment too, his biography claiming Cooper would frequently tip taxi drivers by slipping a tea bag in their top pockets and saying: “Have a drink on me!”

However, he cut down on the sauce just enough for his later TV performances to be something of a revelation.

Accordingly, his comedic influence is as strong today as ever, finding fans in everyone from Bruce Forsyth to self-confessed “Cooper nut” Sir Anthony Hopkins, who is even patron of The Tommy Cooper Society.

A statue of him was unveiled in his Welsh hometown in February last year, unveiled by Hopkins himself.