Had Tommy Cooper's magic tricks actually worked, he may have simply faded from memory as have countless other magicians before and after him. Fortunately for us, however, good old Tommy was so competently bad that he is fondly remembered as the 'World's Worst Magician' by his peers.
When he was 17 and an apprentice shipwright in Essex, his hometown, he judged his talents as a magician to be good enough to allow him to appear in a public concert held by his firm. Totally intent on giving a serious display of mind-boggling prestidigitation, Tommy waited patiently behind the curtains for his moment of glory and fame to arrive.
The curtains opened, Tommy moved to center stage and..... promptly forgot everything he was going to do!
He just stood there for a long while, opening his mouth only to close it again. The audience was spellbound, to say the least (which was more than Tommy was saying), intent on watching for what might suddenly appear in his mouth besides his pearly whites. 'Better get on with it,' Cooper told himself. And he did.
Murphy may have had Tommy in mind when he wrote his famous law. Everything that could go wrong... did! Every trick failed... disastrously. But Tommy stuck to it, determined to prove his abilities to the world. As a grand finale, Tommy reserved his best illusion: the old 'upside-down-milk-bottle-where-the-milk-doesn't-pour-out' trick. Struggling to revive the audience's faith in him, Tommy carefully filled a bottle with milk. The audience, meanwhile, was totally entranced. They just couldn't wait to see what Tommy would do with this one.
"You have a bottle full of milk," he told the eager, wide-eyed crowd, "and you put paper over the top. You turn the bottle upside down, and take the paper away. The milk stays in."
With intense anticipation, the audience watched as Tommy carefully turned the bottle upside down, (pausing for a moment in an effort to increase the suspense, just as he had learned about in Magic 101) and then quickly yanked the paper away.......
Drenched in milk, Tommy suddenly decided that this would be a good moment to develop stage fright and stood there furiously moving his mouth. Nothing came out. Then he began to tremble uncontrollably. Perspiration soaked the clothing the milk had missed. Turning toward the wings, Tommy walked his convulsing body off stage to the massed cheer of a standing ovation.
Tommy Cooper's dreams of his name being entered into the history books were assured. He would be remembered for a long, long time.
