Song for Tommy Cooper @ The Green Man Festival
Spacedog are packing our bags for the Green Man Festival this weekend (19 – 21 August in the Brecon Beacons). And we’ll be adding a new number to our set: a torch song for flawed genius Tommy Cooper. Here’s a sneak preview of the lyrics before the song has its first public outing on the Solar Stage of Einstein’s Garden, Friday 19 April:
Tommy Cooper
Glass bottle, bottle glass
Tommy Tommy
Tommy Tommy
Tommy Tommy
I heard you left me jus’ like that.
Thought it was part of the act.
So they were laughing
as you were dying on the stage
lying entertainingly before the curtain.
The world uncertain
if this was just another joke
before you dusted off the cloak
that’s draped across your final take
as they cut to a commercial break.
Glass bottle, bottle glass
Tommy Tommy
Glass bottle, bottle glass
Tommy Tommy
If time and space could swerve and let me
climb inside my TV set
I’d find a way to step
beyond the test card,
minding capacitors and cathode rays,
and slide into the jet black blink between the picture frames.
There you’d be, smiling, top of your game.
Your miser’s bucket brim full of gold again.
With the dentist who told you to ‘say aah’ because his dog had died.
and the horse you backed at 10 to 1 that came in at ten past five.
You’d conjure with folds of silk, spinning words and delicious uncertainties
as you hunch your shoulders, laughing at your own absurdity.
But this is no magic box.
We both know your appearance is an illusion
Inside this contrivance of flickers in the room
Electrons hit metal and ‘spoon, jar, jar, spoon!’
you materialise, the great prestidigitator – playing the fool.
Embers of pixellated, electronic dust
ephemeral as a scarf of disappearing polkadots.
I can no more reach you from this distance
than a doll can speak truths without a ventriloquist.
Answer me this: Would we even like each other?
Or would we fight when the show is over
As you sidle to the bar and pour another whisky,
hiding your troubles, wondering if you’re still beloved?
Glass bottle, bottle glass
Tommy Tommy
Glass bottle, bottle glass
Tommy Tommy
Someone with an empty heart found the show
that pre-empted your last moments
and tempted me to watch it as a YouTube upload.
Don’t think I’ll ever click the link.
I’d rather sip this drink
wear a fez
and remember you at your best.
Glass bottle, bottle glass
Tommy Tommy
Glass bottle, bottle glass
Tommy Tommy
