Tommy: Well, Miff, what do you think of my magic?
Miff: Your magic?
Tommy: Yes, you know, the way I make things disappear.
Miff: I haven’t seen anything disappear.
Tommy: You haven’t? (Tommy hands wrist watch over) Yours, I believe … (Then laughs head off)
Miff: Mr Cooper …
Tommy: (Still laughing) What’s that noise? (Looks around) Oh, it’s you. What now?
Miff: (Handing over a pair of socks) Yours, I believe … (Tommy pulls up trousers and displays bare legs. Registers consternation, then off)
It took Miff a while to adjust to the spotlight favouring Tommy and his few other clients at the expense of his own ego. In the early years of their partnership, he could never completely ignore an opportunity for his own self-promotion, as shown by this gratuitous attempt at humour from a standard Cooper press biography:
About a year ago, when coming from a rehearsal, he found a policeman waiting by his car. The following conversation ensued:
Tommy: Yes, officer.
Policeman: I shall have to book you for a parking offence.
Tommy: Book me? Oh, you’d better talk to Mr Ferrie, my agent.
His progress is indeed a tribute to Miff Ferrie, who brought Tommy into the business a little over three years ago and who has kept him working ever since.
As the years progressed and Cooper’s good fortune headed for the stratosphere, Miff was able to come to terms with his own feelings of inadequacy, although, with his background as a minor star, self-effacement would never come easily to him. In fairness, there was not a moment around the clock when this short, bespectacled Scot with the shrewd eyes behind their tinted lenses was not prepared to fight Tommy’s corner, but the relationship between them was never without its difficulties. Praise did not come as easily as reproach, while his comedy judgement proved little short of appalling, as epitomized by the time Miff sat stony-faced while Tommy demonstrated to him for the first time his classic routine with the cardboard box of ‘Hats’. After that it became a byword of the Cooper household – as well as the production crew of many a Tommy television series – that, in Gwen’s words, ‘If Miff thought it wasn’t funny, you can bet it was.’ She used to smile, conceding that when Tommy wanted to upset Miff, he’d call him George. As we shall see, there were times when things became far more serious, Tommy conducting what amounted to a war of psychological attrition against him, but Miff – ‘that little Scottish fellow sprouting red horns’, as Tommy would refer to him – stood steadfastly firm with typical native fortitude. For the magician it remained a case of ‘better the devil you know’. For all Ferrie assumed the notoriety of a monstre sacré as the power behind Cooper, and a short while later Bruce Forsyth too, he remained among his fellow agents one of the most respected players in the game.
This is the place to lay to rest once and for all the myth of the contract that existed between performer and agent. No arrangement in show business history has been more misrepresented. Tommy always claimed that Miff signed him unwillingly to a lifetime contract that guaranteed him a wage of twenty pounds a week for the first seven years, however many shows he performed. Gwen claimed she was livid when she heard he’d signed, guaranteeing Miff fifteen per cent – as distinct from the then standard ten – into the bargain. It became the most notorious agreement of its kind since the one that kept Sid Field out of the West End, a prisoner of the provinces, until he was nudging forty. However, even had the hearsay been true, it should be stressed that twenty pounds was a fair recompense at a time when the average supporting magic or comedy act was earning little more than ten pounds a week.
The original document as signed by T. F. Cooper over its pink and magenta sixpenny stamp on 28 November 1948, which is now in the possession of the author, is a totally honourable Sole Agency Agreement, as endorsed by the Council of the Agents’ Association Limited. There is nothing to stipulate that Tommy should not receive the total earnings he has achieved in any one week, minus the commission that is set at the agreed fifteen per cent. The arrangement covers an initial period of five, not seven years during which Miff is expected ‘to use all reasonable efforts to procure employment for me … and to guide and advise me with respect to my theatrical career and to act for me as Manager and Personal Representative in all matters concerning my professional interests whenever you are called upon to do so.’ It granted Miff exclusivity in the area of ‘Manager, Agent, and Personal Representative’.
Clause Six is a key one and certainly caused the greatest aggravation to Tommy over the years:
The period of this agreement may be extended by you (i.e. Miff) from year to year by your giving me one month’s notice in writing prior to the end of the said period or any extension of that period. Each extension and the determination of such extension shall be governed by the preceding Clause (5) except that the figure of earnings for such extended period shall be based on my earnings for the last year of the original period where only one extension takes place, or for the last extended period of one year immediately preceding the new extension, where more than one extension takes place.
As for Clause Five, there was no reason for Tommy to quibble. It was there to protect the performer as much as the agent, giving him the opportunity to walk away had Miff failed in his obligation to provide work in any four month period that failed in less technical language to reflect his average earnings in the previous twelve months. Here it is for the record:
Should I at any time during the term hereof fail to obtain a bona fide offer of employment (sufficient to produce for me during the time this agreement shall have run a sum not less than the equivalent of my average earnings taken over the twelve months immediately preceding the date of this agreement) from a responsible employer in a period in excess of four consecutive months, during all of which time I was ready, able and willing to accept such employment, either party hereto shall in such event have the right immediately to terminate this contract by a notice in writing to such effect sent to the other party by registered mail, provided, however, that such right shall be deemed waived by me, and any exercise thereof by me shall be ineffective if, after the expiration of any such four months period and prior to the time I attempt to exercise such right, I have received an offer of employment from a responsible employer.
Down through the years Miff religiously exercised his renewal option and the large stack of registered envelopes gathered in Cooper’s files are their own testimony not only to the hold Miff undeniably held over him, but to the successful way in which he managed Cooper’s career from a financial standpoint. From the moment Tommy signed with Miff his whole career represented a constant upward curve – helped not a little by the meteoric rise in fees triggered by the northern club boom – until the last few years when it became eroded by ill health. On this score the client never had reason to complain. Between the time of their first meeting and the end of the financial year in April 1948, Miff had secured Tommy work worth £223.00. The following twelve months, during which the agreement came into operation, saw him earning £738.00. By the time he reached April 1950 his earnings had more than doubled to £1,586.00, and by April 1951 almost doubled again to £2,987.00.
Tommy commenced his first week for Miff at the Windermere on 8 December 1947 and was held