Live at Her Majesty's - 15th April 1984

As several of us with an interest in television presentation will be only too aware, this was the show in which Tommy Cooper sadly passed away. I am aware there have been a few threads on this subject in the past.

This link has rare footage from part 2 of this show. It is not from immediately after the break but contains Howard Keel singing in front of the curtain due to the attempts that were ongoing to save Tommy. It is rare footage of a much talked about event in terms of television presentation which is why I thought this would be of interest to some.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l_WWVs3GW8

The footage of him dying is also on YouTube - not to be shared here though. It's very sad and grim.

I can't imagine how stressed the crew behind the scenes must have been that night.

Certainly if that happened now, the show would immediately fall off air.

As someone who was made to watch the footage of him dying by a friend I've never been able to look at any footage of him the same again.

According to Jimmy Tarbuck he asked Howard Keel if he would sing at the front of the stage and he answered: ‘I’ll sing up the f****** aisle if Tommy wants,’ source

I accidentally clicked on to the Her Majesty's clip on Youtube a few years ago thinking it was just a general video of Tommy Cooper.

It was only until the incident begun to happen when I realised what the video was. I only wish I could unwatch it. It's such a tragic and traumatising video and is one of two videos I've ever seen on the Internet in my life that I really wish I hadn't watched.

Certain posts and comments removed for hopefully obvious reasons.

Not wanting to go into too much detail, but as they went to the break after Tommy collapsed, I think the audience were puzzled as to what was going on, and the suddenness of the situation meant that, apart from LWT, who were networking it, other ITV regions had several seconds of black screen until they could run the adverts.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/john-fleming/i-was-there-in-the-theatr_b_1548640.html

An interesting article which recounts (third hand) the experiences of Jimmy Tarbuck and Les Dennis, among others, who had to perform for laughs while they could hear the efforts being made to save Tommy's life behind the curtain they were stood in front of. LWT initially said he died in the ambulance on the way to hospital, rather than on stage.

Yes I was interested to see the footage from after the break as at the start you can see that there is something going on behind the curtains in the centre.

It would be interesting to see Jimmy Tarbuck's impromptu routine that he had to perform. He was told to go out and fill in time for a few minutes and apparently did a great job.

I think there's a tiniest excerpt of that on his edition of Piers Morgan's Life Stories.