I’ve just got the email full of “Tommy Cooper” jokes for the (approximately) millionth time. They are great jokes and Tommy Cooper was a comedy genius, but unfortunately the jokes weren’t written or performed by him.
They are actually written by another great British comic called Tim Vine. Whilst there are certain upsides in having your work confused with the work of someone like Cooper, I’m sure that Vine isn’t very happy about the confusion. This is great material and now he can’t perform it on stage as the majority of the audience will have seen the email and will think he’s stolen Cooper’s jokes.
It’s not the first time this has happened either. Do you remember the quote about Pac-Man that was doing the rounds a couple of years ago? It went like this:
“If Pacman had affected us as kids we’d be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music.”
That appeared credited to anyone from the chairman of Nintendo to Bill Gates. But actually it was written by Marcus Brigstocke. Brigstocke says that he still uses the joke because it’s a bloody good one, but there are always a number of people in the audience who think he’s stolen it from the internet.