Trivia

He collapsed on stage while in the middle of his act on a live Sunday evening variety show, falling backwards through the centre of the stage curtain. As he began to snore loudly (often a symptom of a massive heart attack) and as his feet remained protruding underneath the bottom of the curtain the theatre audience assumed this was part of his "failed magic trick" act and continued to roar with laughter. After a few moments of confusion the orchestra struck up and the show went to a commercial. Although the incident had been seen live by millions of viewers at the time, the sequence was never shown again out of respect to his family and to his memory.

His sudden death, along with Eric Morecambe's inspired Ronnie Barker to retire at the age of 59, rather than work himself into an early grave.

In August 2004 twenty years after his death, he was voted the funniest Briton of all time in a poll conducted by the Reader's Digest magazine.

Father of Thomas Henty.

Although his stage and TV act portrayed him as a failed magician whose tricks always went wrong, he was in fact an accomplished magician and a member of the Magic Circle.

John Fisher writes in his biography of Cooper: "Everyone agrees that he was mean. Quite simply he was acknowledged as the tightest man in show business, with a pathological dread of reaching into his pocket." One of Cooper's stunts was to pay the exact taxi fare and when leaving the cab to slip something into the taxi driver's pocket saying, "Have a drink on me." That something would turn out to be a tea bag.

Once while performing in Cairo, he was required to wear a costume that included a pith helmet. He misplaced the helmet, and in order to quickly find a replacement he grabbed a fez from a waiter's head and placed it on his own. The audience simply loved this gesture and started laughing really hard! Thus was born his trademark red fez.

In August 2016, it was announced that the Victoria and Albert Museum had acquired 116 boxes of Cooper's papers and props, including his "gag file", in which the museum said he had used a system to store his jokes alphabetically "with the meticulousness of an archivist".

He was influenced by Laurel and Hardy, Will Hay, Max Miller, Bob Hope and Orben.

A statue of Cooper was unveiled in his birthplace of Caerphilly, Wales, in 2008 by fellow Welsh entertainer Sir Anthony Hopkins, who is patron of the Tommy Cooper Society. The statue, which cost £45,000, was sculpted by James Done. In 2009 for Red Nose Day, a charity Red Nose was put on the statue, but the nose was stolen.

He had the same agent over his entire career.

He was a member of the Grand Order of Water Rats.

A memorial service was held for him at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London on 19 July 1984.

Between 1973 and 1980 he made 28 shows for ITV.

He was offered the role of the Fakir in Carry On... Up the Khyber (1968), but was unavailable.

In 1969 he was voted ITV's Personality of the Year.

In 1977, Tommy had a heart attack whilst in Rome, and after lung trouble he had to forgo his affection for cigars.

He was suggested for the role of One-Round in Tueurs de dames (1955), but stage commitments prevented him from auditioning.

In a 2005 poll The Comedians' Comedian, Cooper was voted the sixth greatest comedy act ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.

In May 2016, a blue plaque in his memory was unveiled at Cooper's former home in Barrowgate Road, Chiswick, London.

Daughter Vicky born 1952, son Tom, an actor, born 1954.

He met his wife towards the end of the war on a troopship from Port Said where they'd being doing NAFFI shows for the troops.

His mother was English, and his father was born in Wales to an English family.

Leonard Rossiter, Arthur Lowe, Sidney James, Eric Morecambe and Tommy Cooper all died while performing in the theatre.