Read Online Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing by John Fisher - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Fisher
Ads: Link
called into the shop one day and told by Mrs Cooper that ‘Dad’ wanted to speak to him. He was shown into the living quarters at the back and Mr Cooper asked if he would call in each day on his lunch break to take a betting slip down to the betting shop in nearby Park Road: ‘I always remember he had wads of notes in his waistcoat, trousers and shirt, as he did not believe in banks.’ Their nephew, Bernard Diggins remembers a narrow passage shut off from the road running down the side of the shop: ‘He grew his own tobacco and had strung up a line on the wall on which he was hanging the large tobacco leaves to dry.’ Thomas died on 2 December 1963, his death certificate listing his occupation as ‘night watchman (retired)’. This reminded his daughter-in-law that he did spend a spell at the nearby Atherley cinema, and may even have been a projectionist there. It would help to explain the notes sprouting out of his pockets, while the tobacco leaves provided their own poignant footnote to his death, which, as we have seen, was due to bronchial troubles.
Tommy’s mother survived her husband by over twenty years. By the early Seventies the dressmaking had become too much for her and she shifted the emphasis of her stock to costume jewellery, although to anyone looking inside it was still the same ramshackle repository it had always been. According to neighbour Marian Rashleigh, necklaces and brooches were now hung in the windows ‘like net curtains, but I don’t remember them ever being cleaned or changed for more modern pieces. I can’t remember when the shop was vacated, but by then cobwebs adorned the necklaces.’ In fact it was vacated twice. When Gertrude became seriously ill in her mid-eighties Zena began to clear the stock. Both Tommy and David had offered their mother a home, but she valued her independence and they found themselves putting it all back to give her something to do! As her niece, Betty says, ‘She was still in the shop at 88 years. It was time she closed up. But she was an obstinate old woman.’ She died of a heart attack in the Royal South Hants Hospital on 13 February 1984 two weeks before reaching her ninety-first birthday and just two months before her elder son.
According to his daughter, Tommy’s relationship with his parents was fragile. His father complained that he never visited his Mum as much as he should, and when he did go there always seemed to be a blazing row because they’d argue about why he didn’t go more often. Their worlds had not unnaturally drifted apart. They had no proper grasp of the erratic working hours and travelling that show business entailed. However, while the Shirley haberdashery was an unlikely environment in which to picture Tommy, another local resident, Sonia Blandford has an affectionate memory of him there:
One day I was sent after school to collect a present that had been ordered as a gift for my Auntie. I was surprised to see
‘Closed’ on the door. I knew I was expected and found the nerve to bang on the door. It was opened by Tommy himself. You can imagine how overwhelmed I felt. While his mum found the item Tommy entertained me by producing lengths of material from my sleeve and eggs from my ear! Although he was a TV favourite of mine, I was terrified of him. He was a giant of a man and his overwhelming personality was too much for a small child such as myself to feel able to cope with comfortably. I think he sensed this and chatted to me about the animals I kept as pets and what I was doing at school until his mum rescued us both from the discomfort of the other. My memories of them both are very fond. He was very kind and although not comfortable with a small girl to entertain who was clearly scared of him found something to talk about that would reassure.
Tommy may well have been embarrassed himself, but whatever decisions he had made about his professional approach to magic in the works canteen, it is encouraging to know that
Tommy’s mother survived her husband by over twenty years. By the early Seventies the dressmaking had become too much for her and she shifted the emphasis of her stock to costume jewellery, although to anyone looking inside it was still the same ramshackle repository it had always been. According to neighbour Marian Rashleigh, necklaces and brooches were now hung in the windows ‘like net curtains, but I don’t remember them ever being cleaned or changed for more modern pieces. I can’t remember when the shop was vacated, but by then cobwebs adorned the necklaces.’ In fact it was vacated twice. When Gertrude became seriously ill in her mid-eighties Zena began to clear the stock. Both Tommy and David had offered their mother a home, but she valued her independence and they found themselves putting it all back to give her something to do! As her niece, Betty says, ‘She was still in the shop at 88 years. It was time she closed up. But she was an obstinate old woman.’ She died of a heart attack in the Royal South Hants Hospital on 13 February 1984 two weeks before reaching her ninety-first birthday and just two months before her elder son.
According to his daughter, Tommy’s relationship with his parents was fragile. His father complained that he never visited his Mum as much as he should, and when he did go there always seemed to be a blazing row because they’d argue about why he didn’t go more often. Their worlds had not unnaturally drifted apart. They had no proper grasp of the erratic working hours and travelling that show business entailed. However, while the Shirley haberdashery was an unlikely environment in which to picture Tommy, another local resident, Sonia Blandford has an affectionate memory of him there:
One day I was sent after school to collect a present that had been ordered as a gift for my Auntie. I was surprised to see
‘Closed’ on the door. I knew I was expected and found the nerve to bang on the door. It was opened by Tommy himself. You can imagine how overwhelmed I felt. While his mum found the item Tommy entertained me by producing lengths of material from my sleeve and eggs from my ear! Although he was a TV favourite of mine, I was terrified of him. He was a giant of a man and his overwhelming personality was too much for a small child such as myself to feel able to cope with comfortably. I think he sensed this and chatted to me about the animals I kept as pets and what I was doing at school until his mum rescued us both from the discomfort of the other. My memories of them both are very fond. He was very kind and although not comfortable with a small girl to entertain who was clearly scared of him found something to talk about that would reassure.
Tommy may well have been embarrassed himself, but whatever decisions he had made about his professional approach to magic in the works canteen, it is encouraging to know that
Similar Books
