November 3-7

The Last Laugh – imagining dressing-room conversations between Tommy Cooper, Eric Morecambe and Bob Monkhouse – heads to Chichester

Written and directed by Paul Hendy, the show will be at the Festival Theatre from Tuesday to Saturday, November 3-7, a piece which came about, as Paul says, quite simply because he had the actors he needed to embody the comedy greats he had always admired – Morecambe, Cooper and Monkhouse.

“It started as a short film which I wrote and directed with these three actors. I've always been fascinated and obsessed with comedy ever since I was young in particular Morecambe & Wise and Tommy Cooper and I always had it in mind that I wanted to do something about them some time, but I didn't know what. But then I had these actors. And these three actors are these people. They really are and I brought them together like a supergroup!

“So I had these actors and I wrote the short film which we made and it did the film festival circuit and it did very well. It won best film in Manchester and best film at the Los Angeles independent film festival. That was 2017 and since then I was thinking that there was a play in there. It’s set in a dressing room and it's the three of them talking about life and death and comedy and what is funny and why do comedians want to make people laugh. During Covid I turned it into a play, and last year I took it to the Edinburgh Fringe. It was a great success. It sold out and the reaction was incredible. There was just something about putting these three comedians together.”

Whether they were actually all three together in real life at any point is unclear though it would seem likely. Paul has certainly seen photos of two of the three together, Tommy with Eric, Bob with Eric and Tommy with Bob: “So I was just thinking about these characters and imagining what they would talk about. They're in a dressing room waiting for a show to start and I just imagined what they would say. I have read every biography of all of them and it came quite easily.”

Part of the fascination is that obviously they are such different comedians: “Tommy was a naturally funny man. He couldn't help but make people laugh sometimes even when he was being serious. People would laugh when he wasn't trying to be funny and sometimes I think that was difficult for him. I think Tommy struggled a bit with that. Eric was naturally a very funny man but he needed writers by his own admission. Bob by his own admission was not a naturally funny man but he was a fantastic joke writer. He had massive files of jokes and he was constantly honing jokes and trying to get the best jokes that he possibly could. Bob had to work really hard to be funny. Tommy just was funny, and in the middle was Eric who needed a script and needed writers.

“There is an ethereal feel to the piece but I don't want to give too much away. They suffered ill health, certainly Tommy and Eric. Eric died young. He was only 58. I am 58 now. And Tommy was 63. People forget that Tommy and Eric died within six weeks of each other. Tommy died live on stage on TV in front of 18 million people and people thought that he was just being funny. It's quite frightening when you see the clip. He just collapses and people thought it was part of his act. Eric collapsed on stage in Tewkesbury and died later. And so health is part of the conversation, their lifestyle which was not necessarily that healthy, constantly on the road and smoking and eating and drinking and so on. It's a nostalgic piece. It's poignant and it is funny. It seemed to really touch people when we did it in Edinburgh.”