The Death of Tommy Cooper

Yesterday, I came across a video on YouTube of the death of the British magician and comedian Tommy Cooper.  (I’m neither going to link directly to the video or embed it due to the subject matter.  If anyone wants to view it, it is easy enough to find.  There are several versions of it, all essentially the same, it appears, on YouTube. )  Cooper died while performing on a live TV show called “Live from Her Majesty’s,” and perhaps it was a fitting end and perhaps not.  Morbid curiosity was only a small part of why I watched it.  The more compelling reason is that I am 50 now, and he died at 63, a point that is not that far away for me in time.

The odd thing about Tommy Cooper’s death was that people kept laughing at him while he was dying.  Cooper’s act was to effect being an incompetent magician (which he wasn’t).  He would tell jokes while putting off the inevitable failure of the trick he was performing and there would be mistakes and interruptions.  So, when he faltered a bit and fell to a sitting position on the floor, the members of the audience thought it was just part of the act.  And they laughed.  And as he sat slumped and breathing laboriously, they laughed.  And when he fell back dead on the floor, they laughed again.  Because each discreet action was believable as part of his act and each happened, quite amazingly, with the same timing that he used in pacing his gags.

I wonder how it felt for him to die with laughter in his ears.  I would like to think that it was pleasant.  He had spent his career making people laugh, and what more fitting way to go?  But as he sat slumped dying, did he not most likely think, “I’m dying, you bastards!  Don’t fucking laugh!  Call me a doctor.  Help me!”?

It is a mysterious thing, this passage from life that we call death.  I think that what is compelling about that video is that while most of us are familiar with the before and the after, it is rare for us to see the transition.

Still the important thing about Tommy Cooper, from our perspective, is not that he died, but that he lived.  He was, I think, a wonderful comedian who makes me laugh quite a bit.  So that’s why I decided to embed a clip of him quite alive and quite funny.  Enjoy.

Homage

It’s been a long time since I’ve really watched Morecambe and Wise.  After the unexpected success of The Benny Hill Show here in the States around 1980, other British sketch shows started popping up on PBS and some of the independent stations.    Dave Allen at Large popped up on Channel 38 in Boston, and Morecambe and Wise was shown on some station that I no longer, unfortunately, remember.  I don’t think Morecambe and Wise ran very long, though, despite it being an extremely funny show.  It more or less fell off the radar screen for me until the rise of YouTube.

And then, this past weekend, my wife informed that PG Tips had a new commercial that I should watch, which turned out to be a tribute to a famous Morecambe and Wise sketch.  Here’s the original:

And here’s the commercial for PG Tips, in which Johnny Vegas shows himself to be something of a nifty dancer:

And now I must put myself to the task of finding more Morecambe and Wise.  Here’s to Eric and Ern.  You left it a better place than what you found.

The Joke’s on You

As I’ve noted before, I keep tabs on the A Prairie Home Companion website the way that a boy keep tabs on the girl who broke his heart, and a Post to the Host there has gotten me thinking about practical jokes.  Apparently, on a recent show, Garrison Keillor revealed that Buddy Holly hadn’t died in that plane crash on the winter of 1959 and that he was now a minister with the Church of Christ working the lower westside of Manhattan.  One listener, confused, posted to the host and asked for clarification.  Mr Keillor thereupon took the opportunity to expand on his story, and even threw in that Holly now went by the name of the Reverend Charles Holley, with an “e,” which is the way his family spelled his true, nonstage name.  Now, a cursory Google search revealed that the named church, the Manhattan Church of Christ,  was not on W. 12th Street, but rather on on E. 80th Street, and that there was no Charles Holley ministering there.  So, the whole thing is a spoof.

And that’s fine, except that it makes me uncomfortable in the way that almost all practical jokes make me uncomfortable.  There is something fundamentally cruel and heartless about practical jokes.  The basic premise of these attempts at humor is to make one person look like a jerk for the amusement of others.  And while such an activity is certainly legal and Constitutional in the most trivial possible sense of the word, is it, in fact, civil?  Is this a way for a well known radio performer, humorist, and novelist to be acting?  And does this suckering of a listener–and most of his loyal listeners are nothing short of adoring–betray a well hidden contempt for the very people who make him a success?  Doesn’t Mr Keillor make a very nice living from the attentions of people like our unfortunate Thad and other hapless listeners like Carla, who posted a comment begging for clarification?

Personally, I’m not big on playing people for suckers, especially people who (and they are few in number) would look up to me and who would support my projects and celebrate my creativity.  As I was rereading Of Mice and Men over the weekend, I was struck by a passage in which George tells Slim why he stopped playing practical jokes on Lennie.  He says,

Tell you what made me stop that.  One day a bunch of guys was standin’ around up on the Sacramento River.  I was feelin’ pretty smart.  I turns to Lennie and says, “Jump in.”  An’ he jumps.  Couldn’t swim a stroke.  He damn near drowned before we could get him.  An’ he was so damn nice to me for pullin’ him out.  Clean forgot I told him to jump in.  Well, I ain’t done nothin’ like that no more.

That, of course, is a small parable on compassion.  When we see people as suckers, we see them as objects.  We shield ourselves from their humanity so that we can feel a tiny bit superior and so that we can “have a little fun.”  And yet, you can never tell where your “little bit of fun” ends and someone else drowning begins.  It doesn’t hurt to err on the side of compassion, especially when a person occupies a higher, more powerful social position.  And perhaps it is a good trait in an artist to see in his readers and listeners fully formed human beings rather mere suckers.

A Moment with Dara

Here’s a clip of an Irish comedian named Dara O’Briain (pronounced o-bree-in) who I think is one of the best stand ups I’ve seen in recent years.