When he wasn’t hanging out in his seaside retreat in Eastbourne, Tommy Cooper lived in this house in Chiswick from 1955 until he died in 1984 while performing live on TV at Her Majesty’s Theatre, aged just 63.

London home at No. 51 Barrowgate Road in Chiswick
Taking a quick look back at his life, he moved to Exeter aged three when his Dad changed jobs, hence the West Country accent. He received a magic set from his auntie for his eighth birthday, and spent many hours perfecting the tricks. Funny when you think that later in life he probably spent as much time learning and practising how not to do them.
In 1940 he was called up as a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, serving for seven years. He joined Montgomery’s Desert Rats in Egypt, and became a member of a Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes, (NAAFI), entertainment party, developing an act around his magic tricks, interspersed with comedy. One evening in Cairo, during a sketch in which he was supposed to be in a costume that required a pith helmet, having forgotten the prop Cooper reached out and borrowed a fez from a passing waiter. It got huge laughs, and from that point he wore a fez when performing, the prop later being described as "an icon of 20th Century comedy".
In his personal life he enjoyed a robust relationship with his wife, was partial to a cigarette and liked a drink. One of his favourite locals was The Old Queens Head, (now The Smokehouse Bar and Restaurant), on Sutton Lane in Chiswick, conveniently just a hundred yards or so from his front door.
Now, I’m fortunate in having some relatively obscure stuff I can share.
For a few years in the early eighties I rented a room in a five-bedroom flat with four friends in Chiswick. No. 73 Barrowgate Road as it happens. Unbeknown to us at the time, eleven doors down lived, (when not on the coast), a rather well known TV personality.
Our famous neighbour was rarely seen by any of us, though I do have one enduring memory of him. I was returning to the flat in the small hours one morning when I spotted what looked like a figure slumped on his back in the dark, straddling a low, brick front garden wall next to the pavement. He was sleeping / out for the count. It was dark, but helped by the street light I could see it was clearly Tommy Cooper. He was tall, (6’ 4”), and a big man, even lying down.
The wall wasn’t the one outside his own house, and you’ll notice from the photograph of said house that even someone as tall as him wouldn’t have managed to straddle it, so now the mind inevitably starts to wander. My guess is that on getting home that night from the pub he’d found himself locked out. Possibly by an irate wife. He may have briefly considered climbing or sleeping on his own wall, but dismissed the idea in favour of something less challenging and dangerous. Who knows? I don’t recall which house it was, but the wall he settled on was only two or three feet high and located between his house and our flat. The weather was mild and dry; he was massive, apparently comfortable and clearly away with the fairies; so I left him to it.
To close I was going to cut-and-paste a few of his jokes here, but for me much of the magic, (pardon the pun), was visual - in delivery and demeanour - so instead I offer this short clip (under a minute): https://youtu.be/S9d8jDlyg_o


Red arrow: No. 51
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