On April 15, 1984, Welsh comedian Tommy Cooper took the stage at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London to perform his world-famous magic act on the TV variety show Live from Her Majesty’s.

Halfway through his set, with a reported 12 million people watching, Cooper fell to the floor and slumped backward into the curtain behind him. The audience laughed hysterically as a hand reached out through the curtain and appeared to drag him backstage. For nearly a minute, the laughter continued until the show cut to commercial.

According to the show’s host, Jimmy Tarbuck, everyone behind the scenes assumed that Cooper had simply slipped a pratfall into his act, which he’d been known to do without telling anybody. While standing in the wings, producer Dave Bell asked Cooper’s son about the supposed gag and was informed that Cooper had a bad back, making it difficult for him to pull off a stunt like that.

Once they realized that he wasn’t joking around, attempts were made to get him off the stage. Unfortunately, due to Cooper’s massive size (he stood roughly six-foot-three), they had trouble moving him.

The Show Must Go On?

The live broadcast continued after returning from the commercial break, with subsequent performers having limited space to do their act as a result of where Cooper collapsed. Directly behind them, out of view of the audience, desperate efforts were made to revive Cooper. However, because Donny Osmond was preparing to go on with a group of 24 dancers, they had no choice but to get Cooper out of the way.

The comedian was then taken out on a stretcher and brought to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. He was 63 years old.

The cause of death was later revealed to have been a massive heart attack. Nobody at the theatre knew that Cooper died until the nightly news bulletin came through at the conclusion of the show. Tarbuck had even been told that the funnyman was OK so that he’d be able to get through the rest of the broadcast.

Footage of the incident, of course, has found its way onto the internet by now, but out of respect for Cooper’s family, we’ve decided not to include it here; should you feel the need to watch it for yourself, it isn’t hard to find, sad to say.