The master of mistakes

In more than half a century of television viewing nothing has haunted me so much as what was transmitted on the evening of 15 April 1984. ‘Thanks, love,’ said Tommy Cooper, in mid-turn, to the dancer who had fastened his cloak. Then he clutched his chest and, as if in slow motion, collapsed on to the stage; the famous fez remained on his craggy head, a little awry. Cutting through the raucous laughter of the audience, who were under the impression that this was all part of the act, came the terrible sound, magnified by his radio microphone, of the great comedian’s last gasps of breath. The curtain fell and the programme switched to a commercial break with a caption bearing the unfortunate legend Live from Her Majesty’s.

Cooper had died in harness, like the veteran vaudevillian played by Bert Lahr in Always Leave Them Laughing, the 1949 film which gives John Fisher the subtitle for this definitive biography.