A tip-off from a friend helped Essex-born actor Damian Williams, former presenter of Are You Smarter Than A 10-Year-Old?, secure the part of playing one of his all-time comedy heroes. The 42-year-old talks to Amie Mulderrig about  Being Tommy Cooper ahead of his performance at the Harlow Playhouse.

 

Tell me all about Being Tommy Cooper, what’s the play about?
Basically it charts Tommy’s life, it’s all about him and how he was, both as a performer and as a person.
It also looks at when he was in Vegas, in 1954, where he didn’t do too well actually, and what his relationship was like with his manager Miff Ferrie.
It’s a brilliant play because people are obsessed with him in this country. It’s very truthful – you get the whole story.
You also get all the routines, but we do go right into the dark side of him – the drink, his temper, his relationship with his wife. It’s an intimate portrayal. You see everything. It’s a well written play, you get the comedy, the tragedy, the drama and the emotion.

Have you always been a fan of Tommy Cooper?
I’ve always been a fan of his, ever since I was a kid. To be honest, I’ve always enjoyed that old style comedy – from Morecambe and Wise to Les Dawson to Tommy Cooper. 

 

How did you tackle the role?
Because I’ve always been a fan of his anyway I do know a lot of his routines, but the difficulty in being Tommy Cooper is mastering the scenes when Tommy isn’t performing, when he’s being himself. He was always on; playing up to the camera and never gave anything of himself away.
There is one documentary called The Untold Tommy Cooper where they are talking to him and you can see he is tired. They say ’this must be exhausting’, and there is one line where he says ’yes, it is’ where he is not being Tommy Cooper. So I have this one sentence to work out what he’s like when he’s not being Tommy Cooper. Because whenever he was on telly, in interviews or performing he was always being Tommy the magician and entertainer.
He’s a hard act to follow, there will never be another Tommy Cooper.


Did you discover anything new about him that you didn’t know before?
I knew about the drink stuff, but I never knew about his temper, that he had hit his wife at one point, their stormy relationship, so it was a real eye-opener for me. Most people have this impression that Tommy was this jovial character, but there was a dark side to him too.

Is it easy to switch Tommy Cooper off?
The voice is the hardest bit, as soon as you start talking in his accent you can’t stop. But I can’t complain, it’s a really good party trick having all of his gags in your head and you can reel them out.

 

Tommy Cooper famously collapsed from a heart attack on live television in front of millions of viewers on variety show Live from her Majesty’s. You visited the same theatre on the anniversary of his death – what was that like?
We went along for a photo shoot to mark 29 years since Tommy’s death. It was quite creepy, particularly when we were shown exactly where he had died. I was dressed up in all his gear, I started getting phantom chest pains and I suppose I could’ve scared someone if they didn’t know I was going to be there.

What’s your favourite Tommy Cooper joke?
I like the visual ones, but I can’t do that. I can’t tell you the other one either because it’s a family newspaper. There’s the one where he went into a restaurant and said: ’Look, this chicken I got here is cold. ’The waiter replied, ’It should be, it’s been dead two weeks.’

Harlow Playhouse, Playhouse Square, Harlow, on Friday, May 17. Details: www.playhouseharlow.com or 01279 431945