John Kearns on Tommy Cooper: ‘A comic’s job is to play the fool’

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/feb/04/john-kearns-tommy-cooper-comedy-heroes

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Next to my bedroom mirror I have a postcard of Tommy Cooper staring back at me. He looks how you imagine. He holds a cigar delicately between his thumb and index finger. It reminds me of how Bernie Mac used to hold his microphone, with a grace and elegance usually reserved for Fred Astaire. The picture is there reminding me never to rehearse in front of a mirror, as Cooper never did. I remember reading that at the age of 14 and jotting it down. It felt like a precious lesson alongside the advice given to Bill Bailey: “Keep saying funny things.”

Of course Cooper’s magic tricks were practised and his props were placed meticulously, but his rhythms and looks were gifted to his audience, their laughter guiding which way he went. He was a big man, yet always light, stepping on stage with sensitivity. Think Laurel and Hardy, or Newman sprinting along the street in Seinfeld; to watch them move like ballroom dancers is inherently funny.

As for Cooper’s image, it was a paradox. He wore a fez, yet never acknowledged it. You almost wondered if he’d dressed himself. As he switched from unadulterated bravado to childlike innocence, his eyes would check in with the audience. Ted Hughes wrote how adults were just children “behind the armour, peering through the slits”. He’s like you and I, the child within who attempts to please and then fails. He shows us his vulnerability and yet a moment later is acting like it never happened – he’s straight into the next trick. There is always optimism even when we know to expect failure.

When I watch old clips of Tommy Cooper, I’m not looking for a particular routine or gag but rather to be with him. I try and remember this when I perform, as comics can get caught up in their own ideas, their theories, their jokes. Who wants that? In my first Edinburgh show I played an excerpt from a Woody Allen interview where he argued “the degree to which you’re a funny person – that’s how much you’ll succeed – not to the degree of the funny material that you have”. Easy for him to say, he had the material! Cooper arguably didn’t. We can all tell one of his jokes, but the glee’s not in the telling, it’s the rhythms, the impression…

One of the finest achievements of my career thus far was a review from this very organ saying in the course of a whole show “there’s nothing you can actually identify as a joke”. I slapped that over all my posters. In Cooper’s hands anything was funny and when I see his mannerisms, his picture, even his silhouette, he reminds me that a comic’s job is primarily to play the fool and not necessarily have all the answers.