How Cook went beyond the fringe - to a scathing whinge

Brilliant wit left behind by the others

For all his scalpel-edged wit, his ability to run biting and brilliant circuits around anyone foolish enough to take him on, Peter Cook festered deeply with a sense of unfulfilment.

Somehow, somewhere and for some ill-defined reason, Cook's career never took off with the same shimmering brilliance as those of his contemporaries. Many were, despite their success, dull by comparison - less sharp witted, less observant, less angry at the world - and more easily prepared to adjust their performing styles into blandness.

Sadly, the last 10 years of his life were lived in an alcoholic haze and during a recent morning interview he consumed two "screwdrivers" (vodka and orange juice), each containing a triple-shot of vodka and smoked almost a packet of cigarettes.

He had been part of the most brilliant quartet of young, Oxbridge humorists and performers who shocked and shook the Sixties with a fierce originality that rendered the funnymen of earlier decades into semi-articulate clowns.

Cook was of a generation - and he was the innovator in so many ways - that grabbed smug Britain by its lapels and made it look at itself critically through the teasing foil of satire.

Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett had come from oxford, Cook and Jonathan Miller from Cambridge - and their sharp revue, Beyond The Fringe, was to change entirely the face and texture of British humour.

But it was the devilish mind of Peter Cook that lay behind much of the shows brilliance, for he had an unerring ability to spot potential for a humorous target. When, in the course of the show, he outrageously imitated Harold Macmillan, even the then PM himself - a wily old performer, too - loved it. Cook had caught his Edwardian mannerisms, and his serpentine, crafty ways, too.

When the quartet broke up, each was to diversify his talent into other areas that would bring three of them international fame. Moore, with whom Cook had a special rapport, became a star after films such as 10 and Arthur (although his career has been foundering lately). Bennett became a success as a playwright and Miller, already a distinguished research doctor, developed as one of opera's most innovative directors.

But Cook stayed lodged in a career limbo; he failed to achieve the-wide success-enjoyed by-the other three and it bit deeply into his creative soul.

"I am not jealous," he once told me, as we sat drinking non-alcoholic white wine (it was one of his rare dry periods), in Hollywood's Chateau Marmont Hotel. "I wish them all well - the snivelling little swines."

It was delivered in those familiar nasal, mocking tones and his face took on all the dark menace of a fun-poking Satan. Behind all the jesting was the awful reality that Cook - for all his genius - had something in his character that prevented him gaining the world's attention as a performer, something which he craved so desperately.

Like many rare and brilliant people, he was very easily bored, largely because his mind was racing fiercely ahead of other people's and he tended to know what they would say long before their (to him) unoriginal words, opinions and attempts at humour tumbled from their lips.

To say he never suffered fools gladly would be an understatement, and although he was genial and jokey for much of the time, Cook could turn and wound savagely.
I interviewed him several times, and even appeared on various chat shows with him. The most hilarious, to me, was when - having clearly taken a tot or two - he outraged Meryl Streep by doing a perfect send-up of her, in the hospitality room before we went on. Ms Streep, an actress who takes herself rather seriously, could not put up with his brilliant and mocking parody. He was so clever that he somehow transformed his entire face into her snooty, somewhat dyspeptic, expression and she demanded he was removed from the show.

But, as the weather changes, Cook apologised and was easily able, with supreme charm, to persuade Ms Streep that he was one of her deepest admirers and his parody was merely an act of worshipping at her shrine. In the end, she was holding his hand.

He had a brief resurgence of his career when CBS hired him to play the part of a disdainful English butler in a dreadful sitcom. He was supposed to look after a divorced mother and her allegedly cute Californian brood. But the lines given to him by sick-brained scriptwriters, who had no understanding of his wit, sounded awful and his pained expression at having to say them was clear, for anyone who knew him, to see.

He was making the desperately bad show in Hollywood at the same time as Dudley Moore's stardom was at its height.

The Sex Thimble (as he was then known), was the hottest number in town and drooling producers were all over him. The two men had somehow fallen out and it took some effort to bring them back together for an interview. Persuasion won and we all went off to the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Within minutes, the two men were friends again and quickly recreated their "Dud and Pete" routine, but this time in Hollywood.

There were improvised lines such as: "I had that Raquel Whelks knocking at my window last night Dud, just offering herself... so I said, 'Get away you brazen hussy, I've got Lana Turner in here'."

They sparked off one another like bare wires of talent. But it was evident that Cook was the catalyst of all the inspiration, all the deadly wit. It was as though he saw instant humour in every aspect of life, mobilised it, and sent it into some mocking battle.

But the sadness and embarrassment were always there. For instance, as we walked into the Polo Lounge that hilarious day, various producers, agents and Hollywood figures (including Charlton Heston, I recall), rose to greet Dudley Moore. They shook his hand warmly, embraced him, wanted to be recognised by him, and bask in his glow.

No one knew who Cook was, and he was all but shouldered aside in the sickening rush to surround Moore who, to his credit, introduced his old friend all around.

But the pain and anguish of non-recognition in Peter Cook's eyes is hard to forget. Later that evening, when we had both drunk quite a lot, he still maintained he was unfazed by it all.

"Don't give a toss, old matey," he said. "Why should I care if that pathetic little shit has made it! All power to his extremely minute elbow."

In recent years, he lost his dramatic dark looks, put on weight but still shone brilliant on chat shows. Yet there was a sadness in his eyes, the shadow of an unfulfilled talent which gnawed away at his soul.

Paul Callan