Image credit: Pamela Raith
It's headline news that 'comedy on prescription' is being trialled as an alternative to medication for mental health issues.The Craic Health company that has secured funding for the initiative should be snapping up and handing out tickets for The Last Laugh - Paul Hendy's cracking comedy about an imagined meeting between Eric Morecambe, Tommy Cooper and Bob Monkhouse.
If laughter really is the best medicine, the show is the cure for many ills.
In Hendy's scenario, these three titans of comedy meet in a grotty dressing room backstage somewhere. Lee Newby's set is evocative of the touring circuit of yesteryear, with black-and-white pictures of the likes of Will Hay, Arthur Askey and Sid James on the wall and the most rudimentary of furnishings.
Knocking back hard spirits in his saggy underwear, Tommy is joined by Bob and Eric for a back-and-forth about what makes for a great gag, their opinions about other comics ("Never made me laugh" is Cooper's oft-repeated response), having funny bones versus a well-chiselled joke, and whether or not an absent Ernie Wise is Eric's straight foil or amusing in his own right.
We also get digs at Mike and Bernie Winters, what seemed to me like new jokes, and some of these guys' greatest hits, catchphrases and schtick across 80 minutes in a rat-a-tat play which, unlike Tommy's Y-fronts, never sags.
The actors are extraordinary. Damian Williams has Cooper's shoulder shrugs, magic tricks and "Just like that!" phrasing down pat.
Bob Golding fiddles with his specs and smokes his pipe exactly the way Morecambe did.
Simon Cartwright sports Monkhouse's fake tan (which I for one didn't know until now was to hide the skin condition vitiligo) and slathered-on sincerity.
Golding starred as Eric in the one-man show Morecambe and Williams played Cooper on tour in Being Tommy Cooper. They and Cartwright first appeared in The Last Laugh at the Edinburgh Fringe last year and they've gotten right under the skin of these funny men, going far beyond mere impersonations.
There are poignant moments and a bittersweet coda, but Hendy doesn't delve too deeply into the tears of these clowns. Thankfully, he's more interested in the tears of laughter they induce in an audience.
It's a generational thing to say that films aren't as revolutionary as they used to be, music isn't as melodic and comedians aren't as funny. The Last Laugh proves that, when it comes to comedians at least, my generation got very lucky.
The Last Laugh is at the Noël Coward Theatre, London, until 22 March and tours the UK from 10 June until 2 August, 2025.
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