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So that’s it then. One primetime screening by ITV of ‘Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This,’ and we have the memory of a great and sadly late, comedian reduced to little more than an insufferable drunk and wife beater.

His surviving daughter Vicky remains unhappy with the production – “He used to have blazing rows with his manager Miff Ferrie. One time he slammed a chair on the floor and the legs broke off. But he’d take out his rage on things, not people.And the next day he’d have a good sense of humour about it. I remember him saying afterwards: ‘Oh, that’s a shame. That was my favourite chair!’ He was a big drinker too but I don’t know if you could call him an alcoholic.There’s a fine line between drinking too much and being alcohol-dependant. He didn’t wake up at 7am and start drinking, but he would let his hair down after a performance.”

Time therefore, to re-examine the Cooper legacy – a challenge indeed for I loved the man. Merely dismissing his humour as inane, almost child-like, as many do, is to miss the point completely. He may well have been mean with money, and capable of ingratitude towards friends and colleagues, but Cooper remains the very epitome of that showbusiness cliché a ‘born entertainer.’

[Programme for Cooper’s June ’65 UK tour with Freddie & the Dreamers.]

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