Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing by John Fisher Page A

premeditated and it paid instant dividends, adding even further inches to his height. In the company of the Guards he would have become less self-conscious about his size anyhow. As he stood there, this gangling giant of good humour, he had no idea that before long his new headwear would, as a badge of recognition, rival the bowler and trilby to which comics as diverse as Chaplin, George Robey, Max Miller and Tommy Trinder held allegiance. In addition, Arthur Askey had his forage cap and Bud Flanagan his battered straw hat. Cooper would now forever be associated with the fez. The kind he wore was originally burgundy coloured and much taller. Some time around the Sixties Tommy came to favour a brighter, more compact version. In her years with Tommy, one of Mary Kay’s unofficial duties was to serve as Mistress of the Fez. In a letter to me she wrote: ‘The shorter ones were his favourites and the colour of the early ones was too dark. I must have made a dozen nice bright fezzes over the years, but they weren’t easy to make and if you notice some are taller on one side than the other! I always secured the tassel into the top of the fez so that it didn’t fling about when he bent down. Also the felt had to be a nice, pinky red.’
    Different versions of how it all came about have beenrecorded. In some early interviews he let slip that he got the idea when he was in Port Said: ‘I bought one for ten piastres – about two bob then – and when I came home and needed a new one I had to pay thirty-five shillings.’ Down the years more than a few reminiscing servicemen have claimed that they gave him theirs. None of this is necessarily untrue. He would eventually have bought his own and acquired others, while Port Said may have been the scene of his decision to run with the idea as a permanent fixture. What surprises so many is that he was far from the first magician to wear one, a detail of which he would have been well aware.
    A conversation on this very theme at The Magic Circle one evening resulted in an impromptu competition to see who could come up with the most names to have beaten Cooper to the fez. In fact there was a time when it became an unofficial part of the uniform for every other small time magician and children’s party entertainer. There were also more than a few acts with fezzes prominent on the variety circuits of the Thirties and Forties, although Tommy would not necessarily have known of them all. Among those who could have given his fez a run for its money from those early days was Eddie Songest – ‘With a Couple of Tricks and Colossal Nerve’– who used to boast that his was ‘a trophy won in a competition in which he consumed twenty-five boxes of Turkish delight in the world record time of thirty-seven and five eighths of a second’. Tommy would certainly have been familiar with Sirdani, with his ‘Don’t be fright!’ catchphrase and a stage identity that was a strange hybrid of Arab and Jewish. He made a name for himself on radio during the war explaining simple magic tricks and puzzles as a regular feature on the programme, Navy Mixture ; every publicity photo I have seen of him reveals the squat purple flowerpot hat. Len Gazeka from the Midlands had an unusual gimmick to go with his fez. He would enterwith his magic carpet under his arm, which he then proceeded to unroll on stage. Whenever he stood on the rug the tricks worked; whenever he failed to do so he found himself in Cooper territory. Possibly predating them all was Ben Said who had played at Maskelyne’s as a comedy magician in the early Twenties. He had known better days as an illusionist in the grand manner, under the name of Amasis. In the files of Tommy’s manager, Miff Ferrie was a poignant letter from Said from the Fifties with a brochure attached asking for work. ‘There is only one Funjuror’, the publicity proclaims. Miff must have noted the fez in the photograph. Ali (of Ali and Yolanda), Alex Bowsher, Johnny