I'm numb with grief for Pete

Peter Cook was selfish - and I admired that. He was a thoroughly hedonistic guy. But it wasn't selfishness in the way we all think of that word. It was selfish because he did what he wanted.

He was happy appearing on Hampstead High Street in slippers to get the papers in the morning. He didn't mind how he was interpreted.

His death has been a horrendous shock and I'm very upset. I'm not in tears. I think I expected something like this.

Peter hadn't been well and his wife Lin called me on Friday to tell me he'd been taken to hospital for an operation on his liver. I had grave feelings about that.

"I feel rather numb - I suppose that's the only way to describe it. And yet, in spite of the shock, I can't say it's a big surprise. I thought this might happen at some point."

I last saw him when I last went to England - but he always stayed in touch on the phone.

We talked about several months ago. I remember calling him last April and saying I was depressed about things.

Peter wanted me to come back and do some revue type material with him.

I think he was quite keen for that but I didn't want to do it.

The truth is I wouldn't be here in Hollywood today if I'd never met him. Pete was a creative genius, the driving force behind our partnership.

He had 17 ideas to my one. Mine were very suburban and tame, but his were always extraordinary flights of fancy.

I've heard it said that Pete's career went downhill from the moment we parted, but as he used to say: "Why should I do other stuff?

"Why should I be this great parodist? Why can't I open the odd golf club or seminar and be left alone?"

He lived a very full life. He ate too much, drank too much, smoked too much and did everything else too much. I tend to be more conservative. But it meant that he had a great, extraordinary life.

When we first met, however, he was fiercely ambitious. It was around 1960 when we met doing a stage show called Beyond The Fringe at the Edinburgh Festival.

He was very urbane and sophisticated and witty, and his humour dwarfed mine. In many ways he was a comic genius underestimated by everyone, just like Spike Milligan.

If he had a fault, it was that Pete was relentless in making everyone laugh. He had a verbal wit that was second to none, but sometimes he over-did it.

I remember him at parties that we used to have after recording our show Not Only But Also, and he made sure people were laughing.

That was one of his qualities. But he kept on bludgeoning people with his wit. There was a certain relentless quality to him, which was not a good thing.

But he could always make me laugh, and make me look funny. Alan Bennett has said that together Pete and I were tremendously funny in Beyond the Fringe, but if a joke was funny it would be Pete's.

I couldn't contribute a damn thing except for musical skits and a couple of lines. Pete was always producing a barrage of great wit.

And it's thanks to Pete that he let me have my neck and go further, because I was restless after Beyond The Fringe, where I just did musical parodies. We came together at a time when we were both very ambitious, and loved what we were doing.

But Pete, with his great intellect, was able to talk about anything, and so Dud and Pete - the two were Cockney characters - were allowed to take on such massive subjects as religion and sex, on which we could pompously pontificate - things that we had no idea about.

Pete was the real know-it-all, just like his character. He did know almost everything.

He wasn't in the habit of regaling you with his knowledge, but there were times when you couldn't understand some of the the things he said.

But you could always understand his jokes and he was very generous in sharing them around. Pete was very prolific, and really didn't mind about the ownership of it, or who said the line but I came up with so few lines that the one time I invented and he said it, I thought: 'Son of a gun'.

It was a sketch set in heaven, and Pete said: 'Bloody hell, we're in heaven!"

But Pete could write the funniest jokes.

Although we went our separate ways, we always stayed in touch through the years and remained close.

His death still hasn't really hit me. It's funny, and it's very odd. I still can't believe that he's gone.

I'm still in a state of shock, I haven't slept, and somehow my life will be emptier with his absence. I still remember him as my best friend and collaborator. He led the field in creative comedy.

I only hope he will be remembered in death as the comic genius he really was, although he was never fully appreciated while he was alive.

Dudley Moore