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Tommy Cannon

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Tommy Derbyshire was a factory welder in Oldham, Lancashire when he met Robert Harper, and together decided to form the double act Cannon and Ball. They started as singers working the pubs and clubs before switching to comedy because the money was better. From a 1974 appearance in Opportunity Knocks they rose to be a staple of primetime Saturday night TV in the 1980s, with their self-titled LWT show running for nine series, leading to the 1982 film The Boys in Blue together in 1982, in which they played policemen. They enjoyed the trappings – and the stresses - of success in their heyday, living the high life with Rolls-Royces and second homes (Cannon even bought Rochdale football club), but also falling out to the point they were barely on speaking terms. And after their TV series was cancelled in 1992, they were faced with huge tax bills. In 2017 Cannon, declared bankruptcy. That changed when Ball became a Christian in 1986 and put his wild days behind him, and the pair eventually had a rapprochement. Cannon found God eight years later and together, they published a book called Christianity for Beginners

'No one should have to go the way Bobby did'

Tommy Cannon explores his grief in new memoirs

Tommy Cannon has spoken emotively about feeling ‘helpless’ and becoming ‘withdrawn’ following the death of his comedy partner Bobby Ball.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 I became withdrawn and went into a world of my own.’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’

Cannon now

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.

Published: 24 Sep 2025