Thomas Henty

Thomas Henty (19 January 1956 – 13 August 1988) was an English actor, and the son of the magician and prop comedian Tommy Cooper.

Born Thomas John Cooper, he attended Sutton Court Primary School in Chiswick and Latymer Upper School, Hammersmith. He went on to appear alongside his famous father in an episode of the Thames Television variety series London Night Out in 1979, as well as in four episodes of the series Cooper's Half Hour in 1980, also for Thames. He also acted as occasional stage manager to his father, and was backstage when Cooper died in front of a live television audience at Her Majesty's Theatre on 15 April 1984.

In addition to his work with his father, Henty was an actor in his own right. His desire to make his own mark in the field was behind his decision to adopt his mother's maiden name. In an archive interview with the television personality Frank Bough, included in the ITV documentary The Unforgettable Tommy Cooper (2001), Henty explained that he did not want people in the acting profession to know that he was Cooper's son, presumably because he was fearful of claims of nepotism. Henty made appearances in episodes of the popular British television series Robin of Sherwood (1984) and Just Good Friends (1986), as well as the British film Bellman and True (1987).

His role in Bellman and True was his last. In 1988 Henty's marriage collapsed after seven years. Just six weeks later he died suddenly on 13 August 1988, aged just 32, of haemophilia, following complications caused by liver failure. Doctors had attempted to pump seventy pints of new blood into his body, but the blood failed to clot and after three days his mother took the decision to have his life support machine switched off, just four years after his well-known father Tommy Cooper died. He left a six-year-old son, Tam Henty (born in 1982).