archytele The Vault

Tommy Cooper

Acting Born Mar 19, 1921 Caerphilly, South Wales 24 credits

Biography

Born in Caerphilly, South Wales, at 19 Llwyn Onn Street, Trecenydd, Cooper was delivered by the woman who owned the house in which the family was lodging. His parents were Welsh-born army recruiting sergeant father Thomas H. (Tom) Cooper, and his English-born wife Gertrude (née Gertrude C. Wright) from Crediton, Devon. In light of the heavily polluted air and the offer of a job for his father, the family moved to Exeter, Devon, when Cooper was three and gained the West Country accent that was part of his act. The family lived in the back of Haven Banks, where Cooper attended Mount Radford School for Boys, and helped his parents run their ice cream van, which attended fairs on the weekend. At the age of eight an aunt bought Cooper a magic set and he spent hours perfecting the tricks. Magic ran in his family—his brother David (born 1930) opened a magic shop in the 1960s in Slough High Street (then Buckinghamshire now Berkshire) called D. & Z. Cooper's Magic Shop. On 15 April 1984, Cooper collapsed and soon after died from a heart attack in front of millions of television viewers, midway through his act on the London Weekend Television variety show Live From Her Majesty's, transmitted live from Her Majesty's Theatre. His stage persona required that his act intentionally went wrong for comic purposes, leading to some initial uncertainty about whether this collapse was real.

Ask the Vault

Ask anything about Tommy Cooper.

Known for

An Audience with...

as Self
Film

Hanky Panky

as Self

Cooper

as Self

Full filmography

  • An Audience with... (1978) as Self
  • The Bruce Forsyth Show (1959)
  • Parkinson at 50 (2021) as Self (archive footage)
  • The Royal Variety Performance 1977 (1977)
  • The Plank (1967) as Larger Workman
  • Cooperama (1966)
  • The Tommy Cooper Hour (1973) as Self
  • Cooper (1975) as Self
  • Life With Cooper (1966)
  • It's Your Move (1982) as Big Removal Man
  • And the Same to You (1960) as Horace Hawkins
  • It's Tommy Cooper (1970)
  • Just Like That! (1989) as Self (archival footage)
  • A Tribute to Tommy Cooper (1986) as Self
  • Cooper (or Life With Tommy) (1957)
  • Tommy Cooper - The Magic Touch (1993)
  • The Untold Tommy Cooper (2011) as Self (Archive Footage)
  • The Cool Mikado (1963) as Pooh-Bah, Private Detective
  • Tommy Cooper - A Feztival Of Fun With Tommy Cooper (2001) as Himself
  • An Audience with Joan Rivers (1984)
  • Cooper's Capers (1958)
  • Tommy Cooper at the BBC as Self (archive footage)
  • Cooper - Just Like That (1978)
  • Tommy Cooper: The Lost Tapes (2024) as Himself