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From: mpage@jungle.achilles.net (Madeleine Page)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Death of Peter Cook
Date: 09 Jan 1995 14:47:17 GMT

Peter Cook died this morning. (For the very young, he was a British humourist. Co-writer of, appearer in 'Beyond the Fringe', a quite wonderful satirical revue in the early sixties).

Maybe a note about Cook fits here on afu. Because his take on the world was a deeply sceptical one, his humour had an edge. He never, for one moment, suffered fools at all, let alone gladly. He early on decided he wasn't going to wait for the meek to inherit the earth. At his best he took no one's word on anything at all. An inspirationally snarly man he was.

Difficult to describe the impact that 'Beyond the Fringe' had in London when it first opened. At that time, Noel Coward was seen as the height of daring, the funniest possible theatre. It was a world in which the Conservatives were telling an unemployed population 'you never had it so good'. A world of stifling conformity, of Tory conventions voting massively to maintain homosexuality as a criminal offence, to reintroduce flogging as part of the penal system, to retain the criminal status of attempted suicide. A world of unparallelled blandness, smugness, establishment self-satisfaction.

And then in about 1961 (or 1962?), 'Beyond the Fringe' opened. It was a helluva lot more than 'irreverent', it was revolutionary. It was the first time Brits had seen satire in god knows how long: probably hundreds of years. It was howlingly funny. And amazingly liberating. Hard to convey how startling an impact one night at a theatre could have.

The impact of that show was huge. It was BtF that led to things like Private Eye. To Pete'n'Dud. To The Secret Policeman's Other Ball. Eventually to Monty Python. Perhaps to SNL. Certainly it pointed the way to a whole cockeyed way of looking at the ridiculousness of post war Britain and its pretentions, to a radical questioning of accepted wisdom that was until BtF somehow unthinkable.

It's hard to believe Cook is dead. During his middle years it was difficult to think of the bloated raddled man he became as the same one who had started out in BtF. Hard to watch him do his schtick, be a prattling, reflexive product, rather than stay authentically alive. But I will always keep him in memory as the deliciously funny, incorrigibly young, elegantly sarcastic man he was in the early sixties when I first saw him. A man with an edge, a damn good mind and a wonderful wit.

I'm sure he won't rest in peace. Unfortunately, many people will rest in peace who shouldn't, now he is gone. Damn.

ObUL: I believe I saw a talk show where PC and ZaZa Gabor were both guests. She bridled at him and said something arch like, 'You haven't told me you like my dress, darlink'. He said something like 'Why would I? You're just a stupid over the hill tart with too much make up on. You're not worth talking t'. Did he tell her to fuck off? Did she flounce off the set, shrieking at the program host who was helpless with laughter? Anyone else remember anything about this?