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Legendary Comic Pat Cooper In Hartford On Oct. 8

03.10.11

That comic rhythm was in full force in a phone interview in advance of his performance Oct. 8, at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford. In fact, it's been in full force all Cooper's life.

"My father used to say, 'you have an attitude.' I'd say, I don't have an attitude, I'm alive!" he says. "My father used to call me a 'cute article.' That was his cliché. It means I'm an idiot."

Cooper, who has been knocking 'em dead since the '50s, has been riding a wave of increased visibility in the last few years. In 2004, Comedy Central placed Cooper at No. 69 on its list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians of all time. He has been a popular figure at celebrity roasts, and next month, Cooper's memoir, "How Dare You Say How Dare Me! An Autobiography of a Life in Comedy," will be published. He wrote the book (Square One Publishers, $24.95, 262 pp.) with Rich Herschlag and Steve Garrin, and the foreword is by Jerry Lewis.

Cooper's book is an entertaining counterpunch to a book published in 2009 by Michael Caputo, one of Cooper's two children by his first wife. Caputo's book called out Cooper — born Pasquale Caputo in Brooklyn in 1929 — as an absentee father.

Source: Hartford Courant