Peter (Edward) Cook

Biography

Early career

Cook was born at Shearbridge, Middle Warberry Road, Torquay, Devon, the only son and eldest of the three children of Alexander Edward (Alec) Cook (d.

While still at university, Cook wrote professionally for Kenneth Williams, for whom he created the famous "Not an Asp" sketch, before finding fame in his own right as a star of the hugely successful satirical stage show, Beyond the Fringe, together with Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett and Dudley Moore. The show included Cook impersonating Prime Minister Harold Macmillan: this was one of the first occasions that this had been done and during one performance, Macmillan himself was in the audience. Cook befriended Australian comedian and actor Barry Humphries, who began his British career at the club, and Dudley Moore's acclaimed jazz trio (which included Australian-born drummer Chris Karan) played there regularly for many years during the 1960s. But Also and other '60s television

In 1962, the BBC commissioned a pilot for a television series of satirical sketches based on The Establishment Club, but it was not picked up straightaway and Cook and the other regulars went to New York for a year. When he returned, Cook discovered that the pilot had been refashioned as That Was The Week That Was and had made a star out of David Frost. The 1960s satire boom was coming to a close and Cook quipped that Britain would "sink into the sea under the weight of its own giggling". He later complained that David Frost's success was largely based on him copying Cook's screen persona and quipped that his only regret in life had been once saving Frost from drowning (an actual event). The marriage ended in divorce in 1970, reportedly due in part to Cook having affairs.

Peter Cook's first regular television spot was on Granada Television's Braden Beat with Bernard Braden, where he featured perhaps his most enduring comic character: the static, dour, and monotonal E.L. Wisty, whom Cook had conceived while still at Radley College.

His comedy partnership with Dudley Moore led to the popular and critically feted television show Not Only... Here Cook showcased his characters, such as Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling and the pair's Pete and Dud. Other memorable sketches include "Superthunderstingcar", a send-up of the popular Gerry Anderson marionette TV shows and Cook's pastiche of 1960s-era trendy arts documentaries — satirised in a spoof TV segment on film legend Greta Garbo. (This policy was eventually seen as foolish and ceased in the 1970s — but not before a lot of British television from the 1960s had been wiped permanently, including much of Peter Cook's early work.)

When Cook learned the series was to be destroyed, he offered to buy the tapes from the BBC but was refused due to copyright issues.

In 1968 Cook and Moore switched to Lew Grade's ATV to produce a series of four one-hour programmes entitled Goodbye Again, based on the "Pete and Dud" characters. Cook would also rely on cue cards and ended up garbling parts of the script, forcing Moore to ad-lib.

Both Peter Cook and Dudley Moore acted in films, e.g., The Wrong Box (1966). Directed by Stanley Donen, the film's story is credited to Cook and Moore jointly, and its screenplay to Cook alone. A comic parody of the Faust story, it starred Cook as George Spigott (The Devil) who tempts a frustrated, short-order chef called Stanley Moon (Moore) with the promise of gaining his heart's desire — the love of the unattainable beauty Margaret Spencer (Eleanor Bron) — in exchange for his soul, but repeatedly tricks him in a variety of ways. Moore's jazz trio backed Cook on the theme, a parodic anti-love song, which Cook delivers in a monotonous, deadpan voice, and which includes his now classic putdown, "You fill me with inertia".

1970s

In 1970, Cook took over a project initiated by David Frost for a satirical film about an opinion pollster who rises to become President of Great Britain. Under Cook's guidance, the character became modelled on Frost himself.

Peter Cook also provided financial backing for the satirical magazine Private Eye, supporting the publication through a number of difficult periods, particularly when the magazine was punished financially in the wake of a number of high-profile libel trials. Cook both invested his own money and solicited for investment from his showbusiness friends and colleagues.

Towards the end of the 1960s, Cook's developing alcoholism placed a strain on his personal and professional relationships. In front of audiences during the extended stage runs, Cook frequently appeared drunk and incapable, to the consternation of Dudley Moore. In 1973, Cook married the actress Judy Huxtable, but this also ended in divorce. The first such recording was initiated by Cook to alleviate the boredom of a long Broadway run of Good Evening, and used material that was conceived years before for the two characters but was then considered far too outrageous. The popularity of the bootleg recording convinced Cook that it would be profitable to release it commercially, although Moore was initially reluctant to agree to this, fearing that his recently achieved fame as a Hollywood movie star would be undermined by the tape's outrageous content.

Performances for Amnesty International

Cook made noteworthy appearances at the first three of the fund-raising galas staged by John Cleese and Martin Lewis on behalf of Amnesty International. Cook appeared doing monologues and also in skits with other comedic performers. Cook was prominently featured on the cast album of the show (which bore the same title) and in the film of the event, which was titled Pleasure At Her Majesty's. This was the first time that Cook worked with producer Martin Lewis, with whom he would work again in the 1970s and 1980s. (It was retitled The Mermaid Frolics for the cast album and TV special.)

In June 1979, Cook performed at The Secret Policeman's Ball - memorably teaming for a skit with John Cleese. Cleese was quoted as saying that he was thrilled to be working with someone he admired so much, and can be seen nearly corpsing at Cook during much of the "Interesting Facts" sketch, which opened both the stage show and the resulting film.

As a response to this critique, that day Cook wrote a savage satire of the summing-up by the Judge (Mr Justice Cantley) in the just-concluded trial of former Liberal Party leader, Jeremy Thorpe — a summary that had attracted almost universal condemnation for its blatant bias in favour of Thorpe. Cook performed it for the first time that same night and reprised it the following night (Friday 29th and Saturday 30th June). The nine-minute piece - subsequently titled Entirely A Matter For You - is considered by many fans and critics to be one of the finest works of Cook's career. Cook and show producer Martin Lewis rushed out a 12" mini-album on Virgin Records titled Here Comes The Judge - Live of the live performance together with three specially-recorded studio tracks that further lampooned the Thorpe trial.

Cook was working in the USA at the time of the 1981 Amnesty show The Secret Policeman's Other Ball and was thus unable to take part. Producer Lewis persuaded Cook to partake in aspects of the film of the show. Cook supplied the narration used over the opening title sequence of the 1982 film.

Following Cook's successful 1987 stage reunion with Dudley Moore for the annual US benefit for the homeless, Comic Relief (not related to the UK Comic Relief benefits), Cook repeated the reunion for a British audience by performing with Moore at the 1989 Amnesty benefit The Secret Policeman's Biggest Ball. The crowd's positive reaction to seeing Cook and Moore reunited was evident in each of their appearances together during the show.

Consequences

There is a cult following among some Cook fans for a little-remembered project that he was involved with in the 1970s. The comedy sections of the album were originally intended to be performed by an all-star cast including Spike Milligan and Peter Ustinov, but after meeting Peter Cook, Godley and Creme realised that he could perform most of the parts himself.

The storyline centres on the impending divorce of ineffectual Englishman Walter Stapleton (Cook) and his French wife Lulu (Judy Huxtable). While meeting with their respective lawyers — the bibulous Mr Haig and overbearing Mr Pepperman (both played by Cook) — the proceedings are interrupted by a series of bizarre and mysterious happenings that are somehow connected with Mr Blint (Cook), a musician and composer living in the apartment below Haig's office, and which is connected to it by a large hole in the floor. Interestingly, the script and storyline contain many elements that appear to parallel Cook's own life: his second wife, actress Judy Huxtable, plays Walter's wife, Lulu; the voice and accent Cook used for the character of Walter are remarkably similar to that of Cook's former Beyond the Fringe colleague, Alan Bennett.

Cook's own alcoholism is mirrored in Haig's constant drinking, and there is a clear parallel between the fictional divorce of Walter and Lulu and Cook's own messy divorce from his first wife, Wendy.

Hollywood

In 1980, spurred by his former partner Dudley Moore's growing film star status, Cook moved briefly to Hollywood and appeared as an uptight English butler in a short-lived US television sitcom "The Two of Us", also making cameo appearances in a couple of undistinguished films.

In 1983, Cook made a memorable appearance as King Richard III in "The Foretelling", the first episode of Blackadder. The show was a blend of Shakespeare, history, and total comic nonsense and Cook's dry intensity complemented it as he played the king both before and after death.

In 1987, Cook appeared as Mr Jolly in The Comic Strip's Mr Jolly Lives Next Door, playing a dishevelled and aggressive assassin who covers the sound of his murders by playing Tom Jones records at full volume. (The script remained unproduced.) During a trip to Los Angeles to work on it, Lewis suggested that Cook team up with Dudley Moore for the US "Comic Relief" telethon for the homeless. Contrary to popular misconception and media speculation, close friends recall that Cook and Moore maintained contact through the years and though there was always sparring between them, the bond was unbroken. Moore attended Cook's memorial service in London in May 1995 and he and Lewis teamed up to present a two-night memorial for Cook in Los Angeles the following November, scheduled to mark the anniversary of Cook's birth.

Cook was an avid media follower, reading nearly all the British daily newspapers and following TV and radio programmes with vigour. Following Cook's death, some recordings were issued of him chatting with his Hampstead neighbour and fellow Clive Bull regular, the London eccentric Rainbow George Weiss, mostly about George's political plans for Peter within his Vote for Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket party, which Cook tolerated with amused disdain. In the last few years of his life, Cook had a lower public profile but maintained a robust social life.

Revival

In 1989 Cook married the Malaysian-born property developer Lin Chong. Cook speculated that their domestic arrangement would be much more popular if more people could afford it.

Cook returned as Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling for an appearance with Ludovic Kennedy in A Life in Pieces. Another set of interviews with Cook as Streeb-Greebling and satirist Chris Morris were recorded in autumn of 1993 and broadcast as Why Bother on BBC Radio 3, less than a year before Cook's death. In a later interview (), Morris described them as follows:

In December 1993, Cook appeared with Clive Anderson showcasing four completely new characters. Many hoped this marked the beginning of a revival for Cook, but before the end of the next year his mother died, and his own death, 13 months later at the age of 57 was officially reported as resulting from internal haemorrhaging. Eric Idle commented that Cook had not wasted his talent but that the papers had tried to waste him.

Legacy

Cook's significance to modern British comedy is regarded as immense: he is acknowledged as the main influence on a long stream of comedians who have followed him from the amateur dramatic clubs of British universities to the Edinburgh festival, and thence to the radio and television studios of the BBC.

Many people feel that, like Spike Milligan, Cook broke so much new ground during the 1960 to 1965 period that later comics had relatively little left to break themselves. Some have seen Cook's life as tragic, in so far as the brilliance he exhibited in his youth did not fully lead to the recognition many thought he deserved. In his lifetime, Cook himself was constantly aware that some thought that he had not achieved or continued his early potential. Instead, Cook assessed his own happiness by the quality of his personal friendships and his overall enjoyment of life. For Cook, making people laugh was not a job, but a reason to live.

Ten years after his death, in January 2005, Peter Cook was ranked number one in a list entitled The Comedian's Comedian, a poll of more than 300 comics, comedy writers, producers, and directors throughout the Anglosphere and shown on Channel 4 in the UK. Coincidentally, the same week that programme was shown, Channel 4 broadcast Not Only But Always, a well-received television movie dramatising the relationship between Cook and Moore, with Welsh actor Rhys Ifans portraying Cook. English actor Tom Goodman-Hill played Cook.

A bar at the Melbourne Town Hall, frequently visited by comedians and fans during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, is named the Peter Cook Bar.

Craig Ferguson was mentored early in his career by Cook. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (2003). Peter Cook Appreciation Society (2006). How Very Interesting!: Peter Cook's Universe And All That Surrounds It. Wendy Cook (2006). Something Like Fire: Peter Cook Remembered.

Filmography

Amnesty

UK chart singles:-