When I decided to review a book about Peter Cook this week I was faced with a dilemma, should it be ‘Something like Fire’ edited by his widow Lin Cook, or ‘Tragically I was an Only Twin’ edited by William Cook who is apparently not related to the great comic. Both books are wonderful tributes to Peter Cook who sadly died thirty years ago (9th January 1995) at the far too young age of just fifty seven. In the end I chose the second not because ‘Something Like Fire’ is the lesser book, it is a compendium of reminiscences and through that you learn a little more about what it was like to be with Peter Cook and it is of course extremely funny. But this book is a collection of his works, many transcribed from recordings as either there aren’t scripts existing anymore or in several cases there weren’t scripts in the first place, Peter’s genius lay in extemporisation. What this book definitely isn’t as a complete Peter Cook, that would be multiple volumes, but what is here is representative and whilst reading it I can hear Peter’s voice, especially in his guises of E L Whisty and Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling or memorably with Dudley Moore as Pete and Dud.

The performances between Cook and Moore worked mainly because they rarely had a script or rather there was the basis of one which Dudley Moore would learn but Peter Cook wouldn’t despite having dictated it into his ever present tape recorder, relying instead on headlines to keep the performance going in the right direction. Cook would invent a lot during the double act which gave spontaneity to the shows and would often lead to Moore struggling to keep a straight face as some new brilliant line would strike Cook as a better alternative to what he should have been saying. That Dudley Moore could continue regardless is a mark of his acting abilities but it also left William Cook with a dilemma whilst compiling this book as there would be several different versions of a lot of the sketches so he had to choose which one should be included. There is a lot more to Peter Cook than his work on stage or on television and his writing for newspapers and the satirical magazine Private Eye, which he ran for many years, is also featured in this collection.

Sadly Cook did most of his best work in the 1960’s and 70’s only occasionally appearing after then and then only when he wanted to but when he did it was invariably superb. The one legged Tarzan sketch seen in the link is a classic and was originally performed in 1964 but this is a version from one of the Secret Policeman’s Balls in the 1980’s to raise money for Amnesty International. The real tragedy of this book is it highlights how much of the early material no longer exists, a lot of the 1960’s performances for the BBC were wiped when the BBC decided to re-use the master tapes so only records and tapes still exist and almost all of those are no longer available to purchase so this book is invaluable in preserving the work one of the great comic geniuses. Sadly I never heard his alter-ego Sven the Norwegian who would call in to a late night local radio show and would be so strange whilst talking about the Norwegian obsession for fish which had driven him from his home country without the radio host, at least at first, having any idea he was actually talking to Peter Cook. I did see the wonderful Clive Anderson interviews from December 1993, also included here, where Clive apparently interviewed four different, and distinctly odd, people in one show all played by Peter including a biscuit quality controller who had been abducted by aliens, a judge who shot a defendant in court, a football manager and an ageing rock star. Peter Cook’s performance in these was entirely unscripted and this was probably his last great appearance.

For those inspired to approach Cook’s work after reading this blog I feel I should warn about the language used in Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s last collaboration, that of Derek and Clive. These sketches are deliberately littered with profanities and the two performers are often inebriated whilst coming out with this stream of consciousness. The coarseness of the language and the, at times, unpleasantness from Cook to Moore, who at the time (late 1970’s) was becoming successful in Hollywood just as Cook’s career was struggling sometimes makes these a difficult read but they are nevertheless very funny.