Tommy Cooper's Death

Was it Mary Fieldhouse, his partner?

I wouldn't have thought so. His partner would have known that his collapse wasn't part of the act, and would have been aware that he had a bad back and wouldn't have attempted it as a spur-of-the-moment thing either. Her reaction to his collapse - a smile, absolutely no concern at all - suggests that she was just a random assistant who was told to help him into his coat and then get off again.

One detail that the new clip reveals is the hand that appears very briefly from behind the curtain just after Tommy slumps backwards. Obviously the backstage team realised that something was very wrong sooner than anyone else.

I guess so. If anything, it is the assistant's reaction which causes the audience to take the collapse as part of the act. You would think that the assistant would have rehearsed with Tommy beforehand.

The clip isn't 'graphic' but it is thoroughly unpleasant and definitely disturbing.

If anything, it raises the question to me, what does one do if you see this happen to somebody in real life? Is CPR the correct thing to administer following a heart attack?

Yes ( after you've gone through the procedure of dialling 999 first etc etc). And don't stop till the paramedic tells you to stop, then he or she will take over.

Try taking a first aid course.

With the exception of the curtain being closed, are we saying that the show carried on until the end as if nothing was wrong? And weren't the audience told off camera, once the show had finished and was off air, what had happened?

The show did indeed carry on as planned. The newspapers the following day reported that Tommy was confirmed dead at 8.40pm, by which time Live from Her Majesty's was going off-air, so the theatre audience would likely have been told off-camera and off-air what had happened. As I recall, the ITN News was on immediately after LFHM, at 8.45, and Tommy's death was the lead item.

A distressing clip, but it's old news. This clip has been on YT for nearly 9 months...and not only did the Daily Mail report this at the time, it investigated YT's reasons for not removing the video:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1179569/YouTube-storm-video-showing-Tommy-Coopers-death-stage.html

When the show returned after the break, Jimmy Tarbuck did a 3 minute stand up routine, before introducing the next act. It must've been difficult for him, and the following acts, to have got on with the show, aware of what had happened.

Obviously, they didn't know he was dead, as paramedics were trying to resuscitate him, but just knowing that he was very ill, and having that at the back of your mind, makes carrying on harder.

I also wonder how difficult a decision it was to carry on with the show. The paramedics could've requested the lights been turned on behind the curtain, or the curtain opened. That would've been distressing for the audience, so probably that's why it wasn't done. But trying to carry on with the noise behind the curtain, and emergency services on the scene, and acts aware of what had happened, makes you wonder if there was a possibility of that edition NOT returning after the ad break.

Again, to correct you, a clip of Tommy Cooper collapsing has been on YouTube for 9 months. This, longer clip the OP linked to, was added on 18-1-10.

I had a quick look at the video but quickly stopped it when I saw what was happening. Not very pleasant at all...

It's worth stressing that Cooper isn't actually dead in the clip. He was clearly dying, but finally stopped breathing about 5 minutes later.

Les Dennis has written about how his performance- later in that programme- took place at the front of the stage and was tightly shot. Urban myths say TV viewers could see a bulge in the curtain (that was Cooper's body), but that didn't seem to be the case.