Will the comic's iconic headgear make its £3,250 reserve?

Tommy Cooper’s fez has been put up for auction in a new Channel 4 series.

The iconic headgear was owned by former swimming coach turned commentator Hamilton Bland – who also voiced Peter Kay’s ‘top bombing’ advert for John Smith’s bitter.

He put a £3,250 reserve price on the fez, which goes under the hammer in the first episode of The Greatest Auction, which airs on  Tuesday night.

Bland told presenter AJ Odudu: ‘We’ve traced the history from him giving it to an outfitter in Blackpool in exchange for a suit. The outfitter kept it, left it in his will to his wife, who sent us a letter with it, and so on. So it's got immaculate provenance.’

‘I love Tommy Cooper, he was an absolute legend. And there's nothing that depicts him more than the thing we're looking at now.’

Those hoping to secure the fez include David Hardcastle, bidding on behalf of London’s Museum Of Comedy, a private collector called Zak and antique dealer George Douglas.

Hardcastle said: ‘I went to an auction years ago, and I bought some terrible things. They were not worth what I paid for them and I realised that I shouldn't ever go to another auction in my life.

‘Yet here I am with somebody else's money. What could go wrong?’

Odudu said: ‘I think the real value in this is in years to come. It's an investment. I can see in years to come that's it’ll be worth – who knows? - £20,000 to £30,000. I mean, it's Tommy Cooper’s. You are  never gonna get another one. H e's passed on, so it’s history now. And as it gets old, it's going to go more towards being an antique.’

Cooper famously adopted the fez as his trademark on an impulse. Moments before going on stage during a wartime gig in Cairo, he discovered he'd forgotten the pith helmet he usually wore and borrowed the headgear from a passing waiter.

A fez from Cooper’s estate was sold at auction in 2010 for £4,750, while the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Find out how much this one fetched by tuning in to Channel 4 at 8pm next Tuesday. Also going under the hammer are jar of pickled pig foetuses  and a potential Banksy artwork.

Published: 5 May 2023