RIP Tommy.

There was something viscerally appealing about Tommy Cooper. He embodied, for me at least, my two basic questions, ‘who am I?’ and ‘where am I?’ and an answer, ‘It’s OK.’ At first sight they’re questions I know the answer to or at least I know an answer to, but they’re always still there on the tip of my tongue like the hovering name of a forgotten friend. At least that’s what he portrayed. I’m intrigued that the merest imagination of him, his ‘not like that, like that’, raises a smile from some deep pool, like lifting the sword of our Arthurian legend; the success, the only success of personhood. He was “To be or not to be”, our Hamlet tipping between courage and disaster with a little laugh and continuing. And there with him in the midst of his outrageous fortune we see all that we can ask of ourselves, to continue with a little laugh, to be. Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler wrote the lines, “It’s amazing. In the wink of an eye you finally see the light. It’s amazing when the moment arrives you know you’ll be alright.” The sword that will protect you always is clear of the rock to become newly owned. This is knowledge that can only be known in retrospect and, it must be said, can be forgotten too. So thank you Tommy, it is given to few to be able to die in public. So lets all remember, “Ashes to ashes, for richer for poorer, may the force be with you, because you're worth it.” RIP.