Tommy Cannon has spoken emotively about feeling ‘helpless’ and becoming ‘withdrawn’ following the death of his comedy partner Bobby Ball.

Writing in his soon-to-be published memoir, the comedian says that the loss hit him hard at the funeral, saying: ‘I couldn’t process it. I became withdrawn and went into a world of my own.’

‘I guess I tried to deal with it with a typical, stoical northern working-class attitude,’ he writes. ‘But I needed help. I resisted bereavement counselling for a long time and that was a mistake. I also felt desperately sad about the manner of Bob’s passing.

‘He must’ve really struggled in that hospital, being turned this way and that, and covered with what appeared to be hundreds of tubes. No one should have to go like that, unable to breathe and denied visitors, separated from all his loved ones and the people who cared so much about him.’

Ball died of Covid on October 28, 2020, aged 76. He had for a long time been suffering from  the lung condition COPD, which makes it difficult to breathe – although Cannon says he overcame that whenever they were on stage and he was ‘his usual energetic and buoyant self’

However, 87-year-old Cannon recalls he became concerned during one gig at the Viva Club in Blackpool, just days before he died, when he came on  wearing a face mask for the first time.

Writing in This Is Me – which is published next month – Cannon said: ‘It was a very strange evening. It was almost as though he wasn’t part of our double act, and I didn’t really know what was wrong.

‘We didn’t yet know that he had Covid. After the show, as I was helping him down the stairs to the

underground car park, it was clear that he wasn’t at all well. He got into his car and I decided to wait until he’d driven off. I needed to see him leave because I actually thought that he might not be well enough to get himself home.’

That turned out to be Ball’s last gig. A few days later, his breathing became laboured, and he was admitted to hospital. Although he was allowed visitors, he did make video calls. In one of them Cannon asked: ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

‘He gave me that cheeky grin that I’d grown to know and love so much, and said, "Yes, I’m fine",’ Cannon recalls.  

But it was to be the last time he saw the man he’d been working with for nearly 60 years.

• Tommy Cannon - This is Me is published by Scratching Shed Publishing on October 24, priced £12.99 from Amazon – or from uk.bookshop.org, below, which supports independent bookstores.