Biography Of Peter Cook

by Harry Thompson

  Around the same time Peter was finally saved from his enforced comedic exile by Bernard Braden, the Canadian humorist and broadcaster, whose weekly ATV show On the Braden Beat was drawing a substantial audience on Saturday nights. Braden had been an admirer of Peter’s material since the Footlights show put on for the Duke of Bedford at Woburn, and did not like seeing talent languish. He offered Peter four trial weekly slots to appear as the miner character from Beyond the Fringe. The name Mr Grole having fallen into disuse during the Fringe years, Peter rechristened him E. L. Wisty. The character was an instant hit with the viewers, and quickly captured the national imagination; his nasal drone was soon being imitated in pubs and offices across Britain just as it had been at Radley and Cambridge. The trial period was extended into a permanent, open-ended commission.

  Wisty was tailor-made for television, perched motionless on a park bench, dressed in shabby raincoat and sombre black hat, transfixing the camera with a glazed stare as he held forth with surreal ignorance. Every Wednesday evening, the night before recording, Peter would spend five hours conversing with his tape recorder in the Wisty persona, before filleting and condensing the results:

  It there’s one thing I can’t bear, it’s when hundreds of old men come creeping in through the window in the middle of the night and throw all manner of garbage all over me. I can’t bear that. I think that’s unbearable. Ghastly old men, with great pails of garbage, throwing it all over me.

  Wisty and his imaginary friend Spotty Muldoon announced the formation of the World Domination League:

  How we aim to go about it is as follows. We shall move about into people’s rooms and say, ‘Excuse me, we are the World Domination League – may we dominate you?’ Then, if they say ‘Get out’, of course we give up.

  In 1965 Peter turned the World Domination League into a small cottage industry, producing WDL postcards and leaflets from the Private Eye offices. The leaflets announced ‘the ten aims of the league’:

  1.

  Total domination of the world by 1964.

  2.

  Domination of the astral spheres quite soon too.

  3.

  The finding of lovely ladies for Spotty Muldoon within the foreseeable future.

  4.

  GETTING A NUCLEAR ARM to deter with. 5. The bodily removal from this planet of C. P. Snow and Alan Freeman and their replacement with fine TREES.

  6.

  Stopping the GOVERNMENT peering up the pipes at us and listening to ALL WE SAY.

  7.

  Training BEES for uses against Foreign Powers and so on. 8. Elimination of spindly insects and encouragement of lovely little newts who dance about and are happy.

  9.

  E. L. Wisty for GOD.

  Peter himself described Wisty as follows: ‘He is a completely lost creature, he never works, never moves, has no background and suspects everybody is peering at him and trying to get his secrets out of him. He is very keen on cosmic subjects – God, death, bees, that sort of thing. Otherwise he remains something of an enigma.’1 Asked by journalists where the inspiration for the character had sprung from, Peter was keen to distance Wisty from his origins as a real person: ‘I’ve never met the man. He came out of me. I’d feel a lot easier if I’d met him and imitated him, as a matter of fact.’2 This untruthful reticence undoubtedly owed something to consideration for the real Mr Boylett’s feelings, but it also acknowledged the extent to which Wisty was gradually drawing ever closer to Peter himself. ‘I drift very easily into becoming E. L. Wisty’ he admitted. ‘I’ve always felt very closely identified with that sort of personality. I’m terrified I shall become some kind of Wisty figure.’3 In many respects Wisty represented the crashing bore Peter feared within himself: many of the character’s concerns – bees, newts and so on – originally belonged to its author. Peter was an easily bored man and was always strenuously careful not to bore anyone else. One way to assuage the fear of being boring was to turn his potentially dull obsessions into parodies of themselves. Even Wisty’s failed domination of the world had parodic echoes of Peter’s collapsed satire empire.

  E. L. Wisty was signed up, almost immediately, in a lucrative deal to advertise Watneys Ales on Radio and TV. The thirteen ads were so popular that the soundtrack was eventually released as a single. They were based on a premise – revolutionary at the time – that would now be called ‘deconstructionist’. Wisty would discuss the nature of advertising, some of the tricks of the trade, and his chances of landing the Watneys contract, given the huge fee that he was demanding. He himself had been compelled to go out and buy some of the beer, he explained, after seeing himself talking about it on television. Other appeals to the viewer were more straightforward, if that word could ever be used to describe Wisty’s leaps of the imagination: serve your husband Watney’s Brown for breakfast, he suggested, and ‘your marriage will last for a million years’; drink it, he explained, and your subconscious mind ‘will be visited by lovely ladies in diaphanous nighties, coming into your room and dancing about’; make sure there’s some in the house, he implored, or the men from Watneys will come round, ‘steal five pounds, and stamp on your glasses’.

  Shortly after his initial success as E. L. Wisty, Peter received a deputation led by Dudley Moore, inviting him to be the principal guest on the one-off Dudley Moore Show. Moore may have been the TV star-elect, but a combination of insecurity about going it alone, and the certain knowledge that Peter would be an invaluable asset, led him to cling to his old colleague. The other guests booked were Diahann Carroll, Sheila Steafel, and Norman Rossington, who had appeared in the Beaes film A Hard Day’s Night. Rossington contacted John Lennon on behalf of the production team; the Beatle agreed to appear as soon as he heard that Peter and Dudley would be performing together, because, he said, ‘I dig what they’re doing.’ The large number of important guests inspired Moore to suggest a change of title, to Not Only . . . But Also – as in Not Only Dudley Moore But Also John Lennon, Peter Cook, Norman Rossington, Sheila Steafel and Diahann Carroll.

  The project was very much the brainchild of Joe McGrath, a jolly Glaswegian producer/director in the Light Entertainment department. Moore was an old friend of his, and in pre-Beyond the Fringe days had guested on his graduation programme, when McGrath had been a trainee at ABC Television. In between times, McGrath had pioneered the extensive use of film in TV comedy with Michael Bentine’s It’s a Square World. His BBC contract was coming to an end, and he wanted to move on into the cinema: Not Only . . . But Also was to be his showreel, a compendium of comedy, music and poetry with a strong filmed element to show what he could do. The most successful creative endeavours, it seems, are all too often born of a mixture of brilliance and accidental circumstance.

  Both Peter and Dudley Moore were determined to shy away from the dirty word of 1964, ‘satire’. They agreed that there should be no topical or political content at all, and did their best to flinch as visibly as possible if any journalist so much as raised the possibility. Besides, avoiding the news of the day made the chance of a repeat transmission more likely. Peter told the Sun that they would ‘never mention anyone over fifty, in case they die’.4 Joe McGrath was in fact slated to write the bulk of the show himself, along with his colleague Bob Fuest, but happily agreed that Peter should write two sketches with Dudley and appear in them both. Elsewhere, John Lennon appeared in adaptations of two of his poems, Good Dog Nigel and Deaf Ted, Danoota and Me, filmed in a style parodic of Jonathan Miller’s Monitor; there was a parody of the Swingle Sisters with Dudley, Norman Rossington and Sheila Steafel; and there were two numbers from Diahann Carroll, plus one from the Dudley Moore trio. McGrath and Fuest also devised an ingenious title sequence in which Dudley, in full black tie and tails, went through a car wash seated at a grand piano.

  Peter naturally wanted to base his small contribution on the two principal comic characters which had sustained him for many years. One was the pompous aristocratic halfwit, now christened Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebli
ng, who was interviewed by Dudley about his life’s work, teaching ravens to fly underwater:

  Interviewer:

  Sir Arthur, is it difficult to get ravens to fly underwater?

  Sir Arthur:

  Well I think the word ‘difficult’ is an awfully good one here.

  Sir Arthur spoke of his mother, Lady Beryl, a woman so powerful ‘she can break a swan’s wing with a blow of her nose’, and also demonstrated that it is possible to hammer a deliberate misunderstanding into the ground without compromising either humour or deftness of touch:

  Interviewer:

  Sir Arthur, where did you strat your work?

  Sir Arthur:

  I think it can be said of me that I have never ever stratted my work. That is one thing I have never done. I can lay my hand on my heart, or indeed anyone else’s heart, and say ‘I have never stratted my work, never stratted at all.’ I think what you probably wanted to know is where I started my work. You’ve completely misread the question.

  Interviewer:

  (chastened) I’m sorry.

  Peter’s other comic mainstay was, of course, E. L. Wisty; but Wisty presented a major problem, in that he was already appearing on the other channel. Peter decided as a consequence to adapt Wisty somewhat and create an older, more downmarket version, called ‘Pete’. ‘As far as I’m concerned,’ he said, ‘“Pete” was just a slightly more active extension of E. L. Wisty. He discussed the same lofty subjects.’5 For years, one of Peter’s private jokes, when ending a private telephone conversation, had been to shout ‘GOODBYE! FOREVER!’ down the mouthpiece and suddenly slam the phone down. Then, turning to the astonished room, he would calmly announce ‘That was that bloody Sophia Loren again.’ Peternow adapted this joke into a monologue for his new character. Another problem presented itself: a monologue did not allow any room for a contribution from the star of the show, something that convention demanded. So Peter divided the lines in two, and created a clone of the first character, an acolyte with a splash of Dudley about him, just as the original contained a hint of its author. Thus were Pete and Dud, TV’s most successful comic characters of the sixties, if not of all time, brought into being.

  In rehearsal, in the freezing billiard room of a deserted boys’ club on the Goldhawk Road, the Pete and Dud dialogue simply wouldn’t fire. It ran too short – under three minutes in tot– and none of the production team found it funny. Essentially a long list of film starlets drawn from Lyme Regis matinees of the 1950s, all of whom had been hurling themselves unrequitedly at Pete and Dud, the sketch lacked one or two vital ingredients. ‘It fell flat right through rehearsal,’ says Dud, ‘until we put in the physical descriptions – then everyone laughed.’6 Then, adds Pete, ‘When we came to choose costumes – it just sort of happened. They arrived fully formed.’7

  Attired in cloth caps, old raincoats and scarves, and seated in the barest suggestion of a pub, Pete and Dud were the hit of the show. They completely upset McGrath’s calculations by going on for twelve minutes, throughout which the audience roared, Dud couldn’t stop corpsing and Pete – Peter Cook of the famous stonefaced stare – for once in his career was equally unable to maintain a straight face. The sketch began with Pete recounting how he had been pestered with late night calls by Betty Grable, then moved on to the appearance in Dud’s kitchen of Anna Magnani in a see-through blouse. Desperately trying to improvise a witty put-down, Dud barked: ‘Get out of here, you Italian . . . thing!’ at which point the pair of them completely lost their composure. Recovering, Pete told of a nocturnal tap! tap! tap! at his window pane. It was bloody Greta Garbo, hanging on to the windowsill in a see-through shortie nightie, he spluttered, as they both broke into laughter again. ‘I had to smash her down with a broomstick,’ he explained. Dud recounted smelling a funny smell, repeating the word ‘funny’ over and over again, thus originating himself a catchphrase. He had climbed into bed, he explained, when he had felt a hand on his cheek. ‘Which cheek was that Dud?’ said Pete, in a line that he had deliberately kept from Dud in rehearsal and saved for the night. Both of them began to break up again, Dud’s remark that ‘It was the left upper’ not helping a bit. It was bloody Jane Russell, revealed Dud, stark naked in his bed. ‘Get out of here you hussy!’ he shouted. ‘As far as I’m concerned it’s all over!’

  All round the studio people were rocking with laughter, from delighted audience members to the cynical technicians who had already seen it several times. In content, presentation, and in what only the most pompous churl could have condemned as its lack of professionalism, it was like nothing any of them had seen before. Up in the gallery stood Tom Sloan, the Head of Light Entertainment, and Michael Peacock, the newly-appointed Controller of BBC2. Sloan, the only man in the studio who wasn’t laughing, was deeply unhappy with what he’d seen. There were no dancing girls, no glitz, no gags, no punchlines; the whole thing smacked to him of a lack of professionalism. ‘If this is Light Entertainment, I’m in the wrong business,’ he remarked aloud. Peacock paused and said quietly, ‘I think, Tom, you’re in the wrong business.’ Peacock turned to McGrath. ‘I want six of these,’ he said. After the show Peter, Dudley and Joe McGrath stood and hugged each other with delight. They all went for a celebratory Chinese meal with John Lennon, who ended the evening sitting on the restaurant table.

  The following morning the trio went to see Peacock in his office at Television Centre. The Controller wanted a series, and he wanted Peter in every one. Henceforth it would become Not Only Dudley Moore and Peter Cook But Also their guests. Peter had got his BBC TV show at lasor the nign the curved corridor outside, the three exchanged nods and smiles. ‘No running in the corridors, boys!’ admonished Peter, then set off jubilantly at top speed round the bend. It would be unfair to leave Tom Sloan, incidentally, without recounting an earlier tale of his management style. After a particularly error-strewn live show in the 1950s, Peter Sellers had marched over to the caption machine, laughing, had ripped the credits off the roller and had torn them up on air. ‘It’s all Tom Sloan’s fault, him and his bloody lineament,’ he had shouted into the camera. After the show a furious Sloan had marched down and confronted Sellers face to face. ‘You’ll never work again,’ he had spluttered, with a quite stunning degree of inaccuracy.

  The one-off Not Only . . . But Also was set for transmission on 9 January 1965, with the other six following at fortnightly intervals. Joe McGrath and Bob Fuest conceded the bulk of the writing to the two stars, although their contribution to the script remained substantial. Peter was bursting with ideas – ‘He had seventeen to my one,’ said Dudley.8 Eventually the two protagonists’ names were switched round in the programme’s title, to become Not Only Peter Cook and Dudley Moore But Also their guests. The natural order of things had been reasserted. ‘I rearranged them in alphabetical order to avoid upsetting him,’ explains Dudley sheepishly.9

  One hard and fast rule that Peter was quite unable to overturn was the ban on him singing any songs. A mad keen fan of Elvis and the Beach Boys, he was always coming up with reasons for crowbarring a pop impression into this or that sketch, but to no avail. According to Dudley Moore: ‘He always wished he’d been a pop star – he was constantly preoccupied with certain themes in the pop world, and he had this terrible impression of Elvis Presley – but he had no musicality in him, none. He used to play the piano like an idiot, he had no sense of rhythm, no sense of music, but he did nurture that feeling.’ Joe McGrath remembers that ‘Peter actually thought he was a pop star, but he was tone deaf, he just couldn’t sing, he couldn’t hold two notes. Dudley used to say “Just sing Happy Birthday”, and he couldn’t, he was just one of those guys. It’s amazing really, because his other talents were so wonderful.’

  Peter’s only chance to sing was when he joined in, toothy twenties parody style, on the show’s signature tune Goodbyee. The number had been improvised in one go shortly before the first recording. Joe McGrath recalls: ‘I suggested doing something like The Boyfriend. I said “We should say g
oodbye.” So Dudley just sat down and sang “Goodbye . . .” and that was it.’ All the fatatas dotted through the song were originally intended to be filled in with proper lyrics later. The pirouettes undertaken by each guest during the number arose from a spontaneous little dance performed in the first show by John Lennon. ‘Peter loved singing that song,’ says McGrath. ‘If you watch him you can see the manic gleam in his eye, and these terribly upper class movements as he tries to find the rhythm. Dudley used to say “You ain’t got it, you know.” But Peter would be swinging the mike and the Dudley Moore trio would have to duck.’

  The Not Only . . . But Also studio recordings are forever ed in the memory of everyone who was there as utterly joyous occasions. ‘It was incredible,’ says John Wells. ‘They were like pop concerts. It was the most popular show on television. You got the impression that Peter was absolutely on a real winning streak; all the sketches were funny, everything he improvised, the audience carried him along.’ Joe McGrath remembers them as ‘an incredibly happy experience. When you came into the studio to do the technical rehearsal, the crew would say, “This is what we wait for every week, just to come down and see what you’ve done.” The atmosphere was marvellous. We had to keep Dudley away from the piano during the afternoon, or rehearsals would just stop. He’d start to play, everybody would gather round, and Peter would sort of mince around, jiving in a terrible Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling way.’ The Peter Cook bandwagon was rolling again, and he was loving every minute of it. ‘This is just like university,’ he told McGrath, ‘only the grants are bigger.’