Tommy Cooper

After leaving the army Tommy Cooper took up show business in 1947 and so started his long career of comedy derived around visual humour, magic tricks that didn't work and his trademark red fez, a prop that started from his days in the army. The BBC described him as an "Unattractive young man with an extremely unfortunate appearance" in an audition for new talent. While making a series of 28 shows for ITV over a period of eight years, he suffered his first heart attack which forced him to give up his love for cigars.

He was suggested for the role of One-Round in The Ladykillers (1955), but stage commitments prevented him from auditioning.

He was offered the role of the Fakir in Carry On... Up the Khyber (1968), but was unavailable.

In 1969 he was voted ITV's Personality of the Year.

In 1977 Tommy had a heart attack whilst in Rome, and after lung trouble he had to forgo his affection for cigars.

In August 2004 twenty years after his death, he was voted the funniest Briton of all time in a poll conducted by the Reader's Digest magazine.

In a 2005 poll The Comedians' Comedian, Cooper was voted the sixth greatest comedy act ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.

A statue of Cooper was unveiled in his birthplace of Caerphilly, Wales, in 2008 by fellow Welsh entertainer Sir Anthony Hopkins, who is patron of the Tommy Cooper Society. The statue, which cost £45,000, was sculpted by James Done. In 2009 for Red Nose Day, a charity Red Nose was put on the statue, but the nose was stolen.

In May 2016, a blue plaque in his memory was unveiled at Cooper's former home in Barrowgate Road, Chiswick, London.