Comedy magic legend Tommy Cooper has been brought back to life by actor Clive Mantle, who tells Viv Hardwick why he’s been waiting ten years for his chance at the role.

NINE years ago actor Clive Mantle travelled to Scarborough full of confidence about his Tommy Cooper impersonation which he’d carefully prepared for an audition in front of the intended director Sir Alan Ayckbourn, but it all fell apart like one of Cooper’s famous “magic tricks”.

As it was, Ayckbourn didn’t take charge of Jus’ Like That, which eventually ran five years ago with Simon Callow as director and actor Jerome Flynn as Cooper, and it’s taken until now for Mantle to finally land the role of his famous comedy hero.

“You have to be a Cooper fan to take on this role. Almost ten years ago I auditioned for Alan Ayckbourn on September 11, 201, and I didn’t get the part. I went up there with three minutes of Tommy Cooper prepared – the Margate speech – and Alan said ‘I don’t want to see you doing Tommy’s routine, anyone can do that’. And my eyebrows shot up to the roof and I thought ‘I bet they can’ and he asked me to read a bit of the dressing room scene, which I hadn’t prepared.

“As a result I didn’t get the part, but I was amazed he didn’t want to see me do Tommy Cooper. Everyone in the country does a passable impersonation of him, but it’s sustaining it for a length of time that matters. But I’m grateful that I’m now a bit older with a bit more experience behind me and ready to tackle the role,” he says.

Jus’ Like That offers Mantle the chance to do Cooper’s magic act in the first half but also features a second half section where he becomes a grouchy version of the man behind the myth who drank too much and struggled with the pressure of being Britain’s best-paid comedian.

“I think it’s vital to show as many sides of a person as you possibly can. He was undoubtedly a supreme entertainerand hopefully we get as much of that across in two hours.There’s also a 15-minute section at the start of the second half where he’s in his dressing room and Mary, his long-term stage manager, is literally rebuilding him and trying to get him back on stage for his next spot. But all he’s interested in is the drink, the cigars and reminiscing.

“He’s spent his life in dressing rooms like this and he’s at the end of his tether. During that scene you get to see his irrasible side and his impatient side because he took his temper out on the people he loved the most. They must have loved him an extraordinary amount to put up with the treatment he dolled out. We don’t shy away from it, but we don’t dwell on it,” explains Mantle.

“He was a difficult man towards the end.

He had flebitis, pleurisy, leg ulcers and was heavily reliant on drink. Any prescription medicine he could lay his hands on he took.

He had handfuls of salt tablets, headache tablets, stomach tablets or throat pills.

Eventually people like him become so untouchable in entertainment terms that no one says no to them. Even the people that are brave enough to speak up get dumped or pushed away because they are not complying to the star’s wishes. It’s a ridiculous situation and gets out of hand all too often.”

Mantle, 52, who is best known for his role of Little John in Robin of Sherwood and Dr Mike Barrett in Casualty and Holby City, has watched hours of footage of Cooper in action and has been rehearsing his magic skills with Geoffrey Durham since October last year.

“I think if you’re going to do something like this you have to sink every fibre of your being into it and try and make it as good as you can. I’m not going out there to be all right, I’m trying to be excellent. That’s the intention,” he says.

The actor has always loved magic tricks, particularly the close-up tricks done at the Magic Castle in Los Angeles and table magic at corporate events, but admits he’d never tried to do a trick in his life before.

“It takes quite a lot to get your head around. Then you have to get four out of five wrong and Cooper took such joy in slipping one in which worked. The audience love it when he gets one right. They are lovely moments,” he says.

Mantle has the advantage of being the same physical size as Cooper, and is actually an inch taller than the 6ft 4inch showman.

The one thing that he couldn’t do is perspire like the comedy giant. “The funny thing is that it’s a line I’ve cut from the show because Tommy used to sweat so profusely because of the condition he kept himself in and the way he abused himself. But one of his lines was when he dabbed himself with a handkerchief and said ‘I’m leaking’. I was doing that early in the run and people were going ‘no you’re not’, so short of spraying myself with glycerine I’ve temporarily cut that line until the weather gets a bit hotter,” Mantle says.

“I’ve never been under the same pressure as him. Morecambe and Wise got more money but they had to split it two ways. Tommy was the highest paid for a time and he had a genuine fear that he would go out there one day and people would stop laughing. He spent his life on stage or in these grotty dressing rooms. No wonder he resorted to the odd bottle of gin. If I did I certainly hope I wouldn’t buckle the same way,” he adds.

One of the best things about playing a comedy hero is that writer John Fisher offered Mantle the choice of putting in his favourite Cooper jokes.

“I had three or four set-pieces which were my favourite and, mercifully, they’re all in.

I’ve logged his head movements and hand movements just to try and recreate them as faithfully as I can, but then strip them away because at times it looked like Tommy had St Vitus dance. If I did that for two hours the audience would get fed up.”

■ Jus’ Like That, March 25-27, Durham Gala Theatre. Tickets: £15. Box Office: 0191-332- 4041 galadurham.co.uk April 1, Middlesbrough Theatre, £16. 01642- 815-181 middlesbrough.gov.uk/entertainment