Peter Cook

Peter Edward Cook (17 November 1937 – 9 January 1995) was an English actor, satirist, writer and comedian.

An extremely influential figure in modern British comedy, he is regarded as the leading light of the British satire boom of the 1960s. Cook was closely associated with anti-establishment comedy that emerged in Britain and the United States in the late 1950s.

Early life

Cook was born at his parents' house "Shearbridge", in Middle Warberry Road, Torquay, Devon. He was the only son and eldest of the three children of Alexander Edward (Alec) Cook (1906–1984), a colonial civil servant, and his wife Ethel Catherine Margaret, née Mayo (1908–1994). He was educated at Radley College and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he studied French and German. As a student, Cook initially intended to become a career diplomat like his father, but Britain "had run out of colonies", as he put it. Although politically largely apathetic, particularly in later life when he displayed a deep distrust of politicians of all hues, he did join the Cambridge University Liberal Club.

It was at Pembroke that Cook performed and wrote comedy sketches as a member of the Cambridge Footlights Club, of which he became president in 1960. His hero was fellow Footlights writer and Cambridge magazine writer David Nobbs.

Whilst still at university, Cook wrote for Kenneth Williams, providing several sketches for Williams' West End comedy revue Pieces of Eight, and much of the follow-up One Over the Eight, before finding prominence in his own right in a four-man group satirical stage show, Beyond the Fringe, with Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett and Dudley Moore.

The show became a great success in London after being first performed at the Edinburgh Festival and included Cook impersonating the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan. This was one of the first occasions satirical political mimicry had been attempted in live theatre and it shocked audiences. During one performance, Macmillan was in the theatre and Cook departed from his script and attacked him verbally.

Career

1960s

In 1961, Cook opened The Establishment, the club, at 18 Greek Street in Soho in central London, presenting fellow comedians in a nightclub setting, including American Lenny Bruce. Cook said it was a satirical venue modelled on "those wonderful Berlin cabarets...which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the Second World War"; as a members-only venue it was outside the censorship restrictions. Cook befriended and supported Australian comedian and actor Barry Humphries, who began his British solo career at the club. Humphries said in his autobiography, My Life As Me, that he found Cook's lack of interest in art and literature off-putting. Cook's chiselled looks and languid manner led Humphries to observe that whereas most people take after their father or mother, Cook seemed more like an aunt. Dudley Moore's jazz trio played in the basement of the club during the early 1960s.

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 straight away and Cook went to New York City for a year to perform in Beyond The Fringe on Broadway. When he returned, the pilot had been refashioned as That Was the Week That Was and had made a star of David Frost, something Cook resented. The 1960s satire boom was closing and Cook said "England was about to sink giggling into the sea". He complained that Frost's success was based on copying Cook's own stage persona and Cook dubbed him "the bubonic plagiarist". and that his only regret in life, recalled Alan Bennett at Cook's memorial service, had been saving Frost from drowning. This incident occurred in the summer of 1963, when the rivalry between the two men was at its height. Cook had realised that Frost's potential drowning would have looked deliberate if he had not been rescued.

Around this time, Cook provided financial backing for the satirical magazine Private Eye, supporting it through difficult periods, particularly in libel trials. Cook invested his own money and solicited investment from his friends. For a time, the magazine was produced from the premises of the Establishment Club. In 1963, Cook married Wendy Snowden; the couple had two daughters, Lucy and Daisy, but the marriage ended in 1970.

Cook expanded television comedy with Eleanor Bron, John Bird and John Fortune. His first regular television spot was on Granada Television's Braden Beat with Bernard Braden, where he featured his most enduring character: the static, dour and monotonal E. L. Wisty, whom Cook had conceived for Radley College's Marionette Society.

Cook's comedy partnership with Dudley Moore led to Not Only... But Also. This was intended by the BBC for Moore's music, but Moore invited Cook to write sketches and appear with him. Using few props, they created dry and absurd television that lasted for three series between 1965 and 1970. Cook played characters such as Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling and the two men created their Pete and Dud alter egos. Other sketches included "Superthunderstingcar", a parody of the Gerry Anderson marionette TV shows, and Cook's pastiche of 1960s trendy arts documentaries – satirised in a parodic TV segment on Greta Garbo.

When Cook learned a few years later that the videotapes of the series were to be wiped, a common practice at the time, he offered to buy the recordings from the BBC but was refused because of copyright issues. He suggested he could purchase new tapes so that the BBC would have no need to erase the originals, but this was also turned down. Of the original programmes, only eight of the twenty-two episodes still survive complete. A compilation of six half-hour programmes, The Best of What's Left of Not Only...But Also was shown on television and has been released on both VHS and DVD.

With The Wrong Box (1966) and Bedazzled (1967) Cook and Moore began to act in films together. Directed by Stanley Donen, the underlying story of Bedazzled is credited to Cook and Moore and its screenplay to Cook. A comic parody of Faust, it stars Cook as George Spigott (The Devil) who tempts Stanley Moon (Moore), a frustrated, short-order chef, with the promise of gaining his heart's desire – the unattainable beauty and waitress at his cafe, Margaret Spencer (Eleanor Bron) – in exchange for his soul, but repeatedly tricks him. The film features cameo appearances by Barry Humphries as Envy and Raquel Welch as Lust. Moore composed the soundtrack music and co-wrote (with Cook) the songs performed in the film. His jazz trio backed Cook on the theme, a parodic anti-love song, which Cook delivered in a monotonous deadpan voice and included his familiar put-down, "You fill me with inertia."

In 1968, Cook and Moore briefly switched to ATV for four one-hour programmes entitled Goodbye Again, based on the Pete and Dud characters. They ignored suggestions from the director and cast. Sketches were drawn out to fill the running time. With no interest in the show, Cook's increasing alcoholism led him to become reliant on cue cards and he ended up garbling the script, forcing Moore to ad-lib. The show was not a popular success, owing in part to the publication of the ITV listings magazine, TV Times, being suspended because of a strike. John Cleese was a cast member.

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. The film, The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer, was not a success, although the cast contained notable names.

Cook became a favourite of the chat show circuit but his own effort at hosting one for the BBC in 1971, Where Do I Sit?, was said by the critics to have been a disappointment. He was replaced after only two episodes by Michael Parkinson, the start of Parkinson's career as a chat show host. Parkinson later asked Cook what his ambitions were, Cook replied jocularly "[...] in fact, my ambition is to shut you up altogether you see!"

Cook and Moore fashioned sketches from Not Only....But Also and Goodbye Again with new material into the stage revue called Behind the Fridge. This show toured Australia in 1972 before transferring to New York City in 1973, re-titled as Good Evening. Cook frequently appeared on and off stage the worse for drink. Nonetheless, the show proved very popular and it won Tony and Grammy Awards. When it finished, Moore stayed in the U.S. to pursue his film acting ambitions in Hollywood. Cook returned to Britain and in 1973 he married the actress and model Judy Huxtable.

Later, the more risqué humour of Pete and Dud went farther on long-playing records as "Derek and Clive". The first recording was initiated by Cook to alleviate boredom during the Broadway run of Good Evening and used material conceived years before for the two characters but considered too outrageous. One of these audio recordings was also filmed and tensions between the duo are seen to rise. Chris Blackwell circulated bootleg copies to friends in the music business. The popularity of the recording convinced Cook to release it commercially, although Moore was initially reluctant, fearing that his rising fame as a Hollywood star would be undermined. Two further Derek and Clive albums were released, the last accompanied by a film.

Cook and Moore hosted Saturday Night Live on 24 January 1976 during the SNL first season. They did a number of their classic stage routines, including "One Legged Tarzan" and "Frog and Peach" among others, in addition to participating in some skits with the show's "not ready for prime-time" ensemble.

In 1978, Cook appeared on the British music series Revolver as the manager of a ballroom where emerging punk and new wave acts played. For some groups, these were their first appearances on television. Cook's acerbic commentary was an aspect of the programme.

In 1979, Cook recorded comedy-segments as B-sides to the Sparks 12-inch singles "Number One in Heaven" and "Tryouts for the Human Race". The main songwriter Ron Mael often started off a banal situation in his lyrics, and then went at surreal tangents in the style of Cook and S. J. Perelman.

Consequences album

Cook played multiple roles on the 1977 concept album Consequences, written and produced by former 10cc members Kevin Godley and Lol Creme. A mixture of spoken comedy and progressive rock with an environmental subtext, Consequences started as a single that Godley and Creme planned to make to demonstrate their invention, an electric guitar effect called the Gizmo, which they developed in 10cc. The project grew into a triple LP boxed set. The comedy sections were originally intended to be performed by a cast including Spike Milligan and Peter Ustinov, but Godley and Creme eventually settled on Cook once they realised he could perform most parts himself.

The storyline centres on the impending divorce of ineffectual Englishman Walter Stapleton (Cook) and his French wife Lulu (Judy Huxtable). While meeting their lawyers – the bibulous Mr Haig and overbearing Mr Pepperman (both played by Cook) – the encroaching global catastrophe interrupts proceedings with bizarre and mysterious happenings, which seem to centre on Mr Blint (Cook), a musician and composer living in the flat below Haig's office, to which it is connected by a large hole in the floor.

Although it has since developed a cult following due to Cook's presence, Consequences was released as punk was sweeping the UK and proved a resounding commercial failure, savaged by critics who found the music self-indulgent. The script and story have evident connections to Cook's own life – his then wife Judy Huxtable, plays Walter's wife. Cook's struggles with alcohol are mirrored in Haig's drinking, and there is a parallel between the fictional divorce of Walter and Lulu and Cook's own divorce from his first wife. The voice and accent Cook used for the character of Stapleton are similar to Cook's Beyond the Fringe colleague, Alan Bennett, and a book on Cook's comedy, How Very Interesting, speculates that the characters Cook plays in Consequences are caricatures of the four Beyond The Fringe cast members – the alcoholic Haig represents Cook, the tremulous Stapleton is Bennett, the parodically Jewish Pepperman is Miller, and the pianist Blint represents Moore.

Amnesty International performances

Cook appeared at the first three fund-raising galas staged by humourists John Cleese and Martin Lewis on behalf of Amnesty International. The benefits were dubbed The Secret Policeman's Balls though it wasn't until the third show in 1979 that the title was used. He performed on all three nights of the first show in April 1976, A Poke in the Eye (with a Sharp Stick), as an individual performer and as a member of the cast of Beyond The Fringe, which reunited for the first time since the 1960s. He also appeared in a Monty Python sketch, taking the place of Eric Idle. Cook was on the cast album of the show and in the film, Pleasure at Her Majesty's. He was in the second Amnesty gala in May 1977, An Evening Without Sir Bernard Miles. It was retitled The Mermaid Frolics for the cast album and TV special. Cook performed monologues and skits with Terry Jones.

In June 1979, Cook performed all four nights of The Secret Policeman's Ball – teaming with John Cleese. Cook performed a couple of solo pieces and a sketch with Eleanor Bron. He also led the ensemble in the finale – the "End of the World" sketch from Beyond The Fringe.

In response to a barb in The Daily Telegraph that the show was recycled material, Cook wrote a satire of the summing-up by Mr Justice Cantley in the trial of former Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe, a summary thought by some to show bias in favour of Thorpe. Cook performed it that same night (Friday 29 June – the third of the four nights) and the following night. The nine-minute opus, "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 brought out an album on Virgin Records entitled Here Comes the Judge: Live of the live performance together with three studio tracks that further lampooned the Thorpe trial.

Although unable to take part in the 1981 gala, Cook supplied the narration over the animated opening title sequence of the 1982 film of the show. With Lewis, he wrote and voiced radio commercials to advertise the film in the UK. He also hosted a spoof film awards ceremony that was part of the world première of the film in London in March 1982.

Following Cook's 1987 stage reunion with Moore for the annual U.S. 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.

1980s

In 1980, partly spurred by Moore's growing film star status, Cook moved to Hollywood and appeared as an uptight English butler to a wealthy American woman in a short-lived U.S. television sitcom The Two of Us, also making cameo appearances in a couple of undistinguished films. In 1980, Cook starred in the LWT special Peter Cook & Co. The show included comedy sketches, including a Tales of the Unexpected parody "Tales of the Much As We Expected". This involved Cook as Roald Dahl, explaining his name had been Ronald before he dropped the "n". The cast included John Cleese, Rowan Atkinson, Beryl Reid, Paula Wilcox and Terry Jones.

In 1983 Cook played the role of Richard III in the first episode of Blackadder, The Foretelling, which parodies Laurence Olivier's portrayal. He narrated the short film "Diplomatix" by Norwegian comedy trio Kirkvaag, Lystad and Mjøen, which won the "Special Prize of the City of Montreux" at the Montreux Comedy Festival in 1985.[12] In 1986 he partnered Joan Rivers on her UK talk show. He appeared as Mr Jolly in 1987 in The Comic Strip Presents' Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door, playing an assassin who covers the sound of his murders by playing Tom Jones records. That same year, Cook made a big splash on American shores when he appeared in The Princess Bride as the "Impressive Clergyman" who officiates the wedding ceremony between Buttercup and Prince Humperdinck. Also that year he spent time working with Martin Lewis on a political satire about the 1988 U.S. presidential elections for HBO, but the script went unproduced. Lewis suggested Cook team with Moore for the U.S. Comic Relief telethon for the homeless. The duo reunited and performed their "One Leg Too Few" sketch.

In 1988, Cook appeared as a contestant on the improvisation comedy show, Whose Line Is It Anyway? Cook was declared the winner, his prize being to read the credits in the style of a New York cab driver – a character he'd portrayed in Peter Cook & Co.

Cook occasionally called in to Clive Bull's night-time phone-in radio show on LBC in London. Using the name "Sven from Swiss Cottage", he mused on love, loneliness and herrings in a mock Norwegian accent. Jokes included Sven's attempts to find his estranged wife, in which he often claimed to be telephoning the show from all over the world, and his hatred of the Norwegian obsession with fish. While Bull was clearly aware that Sven was fictional he did not learn Sven's real identity until later.

Revival

In late 1989, Cook married for the third time, to Malaysian-born property developer Chiew Lin Chong in Torbay, Devon. She provided him with some stability in his personal life and he reduced his drinking, to the extent that for a time he was teetotal. He lived alone in a small 18th century house in Perrins Lane, Hampstead, once owned by H. G. Wells, while his wife kept her own property only 100 yards away.

Cook returned to the BBC as Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling for an appearance with Ludovic Kennedy in A Life in Pieces. The 12 interviews saw Sir Arthur recount his life based on the Twelve Days of Christmas. Unscripted interviews with Cook as Streeb-Greebling and satirist Chris Morris were recorded in late 1993 and broadcast as Why Bother? on BBC Radio 3. Morris described them:

It was a very different style of improvisation from what I'd been used to, working with people like Steve Coogan, Doon Mackichan and Rebecca Front, because those On the Hour and The Day Today things were about trying to establish a character within a situation, and Peter Cook was really doing 'knight's move' and 'double knight's move' thinking to construct jokes or ridiculous scenes flipping back on themselves, and it was amazing. I mean, I held out no great hopes that he wouldn't be a boozy old sack of lard with his hair falling out and scarcely able to get a sentence out, because he hadn't given much evidence that that wouldn't be the case. But, in fact, he stumbled in with a Safeways bag full of Kestrel lager and loads of fags and then proceeded to skip about mentally with the agility of a grasshopper. Really quite extraordinary.

On 17 December 1993, Cook appeared on Clive Anderson Talks Back as four characters – biscuit tester and alien abductee Norman House, football manager and motivational speaker Alan Latchley, judge Sir James Beauchamp and rock legend Eric Daley. The following day he appeared on BBC2 performing links for Arena's "Radio Night". He also appeared, on 26 December, in the 1993 Christmas special of One Foot in the Grave ("One Foot in the Algarve"), playing a muckraking tabloid photographer. Before the end of the next year his mother died, and a grief-stricken Cook returned to heavy drinking. He made his last TV appearance on the show Pebble Mill at One in November 1994.

Death

Cook died on 9 January 1995, aged 57, having suffered a gastrointestinal haemorrhage (a direct result of severe liver damage) in the intensive-care unit of the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, North London. Days earlier he had been taken in and announced, "I feel a bit poorly". He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, and his ashes were buried in an unmarked plot behind St. John's Church in Hampstead, not far from his house in Perrins Walk.

Dudley Moore attended Cook's memorial service in London in May 1995, and he and Martin Lewis presented a two-night memorial for Cook in Los Angeles the following November, to mark what would have been Cook's 58th birthday.

Legacy

Cook is widely acknowledged as a strong influence on the many British comedians who followed him from the amateur dramatic clubs of British universities to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and then to radio and television. On his death some critics choose to see Cook's life as tragic, insofar as the brilliance of his youth had not been sustained in his later years. However, Cook himself always maintained he had no ambitions at all for sustained success. He assessed happiness by his friendships and his enjoyment of life. Eric Idle and Stephen Fry said Cook had not wasted his talent but rather that the newspapers had tried to waste him.

Several friends honoured him with a dedication in the closing credits of Fierce Creatures (1997), a comedy film written by John Cleese about a zoo in peril of being closed. It starred Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline and Michael Palin. The dedication displays photos and the lifespan dates of Peter Cook and of British naturalist/humorist Gerald Durrell.

In 1999 the minor planet 20468 Petercook, in the main asteroid belt, was named after him.

Ten years after his death, Cook was ranked at number one in the Comedians' Comedian, a poll of 300 comics, comedy writers, producers and directors throughout the English-speaking world. Channel 4 broadcast Not Only But Always, a television film dramatising the relationship between Cook and Moore, with Rhys Ifans portraying Cook. At the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe a play, written by Chris Bartlett and Nick Awde, examined the relationship from Moore's view, Pete and Dud: Come Again, before transferring to London's West End at The Venue in 2006 and touring the UK the following year; Tom Goodman-Hill starred as Cook and Kevin Bishop as Moore in the West End.

At the 2007 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Goodbye – the (after)life of Cook & Moore by Jonathan Hansler and Clive Greenwood was presented at The Gilded Balloon. The play imagined the newly dead Moore meeting Cook in Limbo, also inhabited by other comic actors with whom they had worked, including Peter Sellers, Tony Hancock, Frankie Howerd and Kenneth Williams. In May 2009 the play was seen again in London's West End at the Leicester Square Theatre (formerly "The Venue" and home to Pete and Dud: Come Again) with Jonathan Hansler as Cook, Adam Bampton Smith as Moore and Clive Greenwood as everyone else.

A green plaque was unveiled by Westminster City Council and the Heritage Foundation at the site of the Establishment club on 15 February 2009.

Filmography

• The Wrong Box (1966): Morris Finsbury
• Alice in Wonderland (1966): Mad Hatter
• Bedazzled (1967): George Spiggott/The Devil
• A Dandy in Aspic (1968): Prentiss
• Monte Carlo or Bust! (released in the US as Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies) (1969): Maj. Digby Dawlish
• The Bed-Sitting Room (1969): Inspector
• The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970): Michael Rimmer
• The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972): Dominic
• Find the Lady (1976): Lewenhak
• The Hound of the Baskervilles (1978): Sherlock Holmes
• Derek and Clive Get the Horn (1979): Clive
• Yellowbeard (1983): Lord Percy Lambourn
• Supergirl (1984): Nigel
• Whoops Apocalypse (1986): Sir Mortimer Chris
• The Princess Bride (1987): The Impressive Clergyman
• Without A Clue (1988): Norman Greenhough
• Getting It Right (1989): Mr. Adrian
• Great Balls of Fire! (1989): First English Reporter
• Gone to Seed (1992) Wesley Willis
• Black Beauty (1994): Lord Wexmire

Amnesty

• Pleasure at Her Majesty's (1976)
• The Mermaid Frolics (1977)
• The Secret Policeman's Ball
• The Secret Policeman's Private Parts (1981)
• The Best of Amnesty: Featuring the Stars of Monty Python (1999)

Discography

UK chart singles:-

• "The Ballad of Spotty Muldoon" (1965)
• "Goodbye-ee" (1965) (both with Dudley Moore)

Albums:-

• Bridge On the River Wye (1962)
• Derek and Clive Live (with Dudley Moore)
• Derek and Clive Live Again (with Dudley Moore)