Actors - Peter Cook

Home > Listing Index > Actors > Peter Cook

	Actors - Peter Cook

Peter Edward Cook (17 November, 1937–9 January, 1995) was an English satirist, writer and comedian who is widely regarded as the leading figure in the British satire boom of the 1960s.

He is closely associated with an anti-establishment style of comedy that emerged in the late 1950s during the depths of the Cold War, and is cited by many subsequent comedians as their main comic influence.

Biography

Early career

Cook was born in Torquay, Devon. He was himself 'establishment' educated, at Radley and Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge, where he read French and German. It was at Pembroke that he performed and wrote comedy sketches as a member of the prestigious Cambridge Footlights Club (of which he became President in 1960).

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.

With his star firmly in the ascendant, he opened The Establishment Club at 18, Greek Street in Soho which gave him the opportunity to present fellow comedians in a nightclub setting, including the controversial American Lenny Bruce. 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.

Not Only... 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 said that his only regret in life had been once saving Frost from drowning (an actual event).

He married the socially connected Wendy Snowden in 1963, with whom he had two daughters. The marriage ended in divorce in 1970, reportedly due in part to Cook's having affairs.

Along with others such as Eleanor Bron, John Bird, and John Fortune, he broadened the scope of television comedy and pushed out the hitherto restricted boundaries of the BBC.

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... But Also. Using few props, and with musical interludes performed by Moore, they created a new style of dry, absurdist television which found a place in the mainstream. Here Cook showcased characters like 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.

Although the show is now recognised as one of the classics of TV comedy, the BBC had erased most of the videotapes of the series. This was common UK television practice at the time, when agreements with actors' and musicians' unions meant that only a certain number of repeats within a limited timescale were permitted, and the VHS or DVD home sales market was decades away. As videotape was considered expensive and took up valuable storage space, tapes would often be wiped and re-used. (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 out, including much of Peter Cook's early work.)

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Peter Cook ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Peter Cook; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay