Not only a genius. . . but also a gentleman

For years, Peter Cook had cultivated a rather shambolic, Bohemian appearance. But when we met just two months ago, he looked terrible. His hair was overgrown and standing up in curious tufts. He was also carrying far too much weight, to the point where his once loping gait had reduced to an inelegant shuffle.

We met in the shabby upstairs room of a Hampstead wine bar at 11am and when we parted three hours later, he had smoked an entire pack of cigarettes and drunk several triple vodkas with orange juice. He did not seem at all drunk. But when I mentioned his mother, who had died at the age of 86 only four months before, he began to weep.

Big shocking tears blurred his vision and then slid slowly down his face. 'Hit me for six,' he said, gulping for breath. 'Of course, losing your mother is normal, but . . .' For several minutes, he stared at me unblinkingly as I tried to calm him down and return his thoughts to happier memories. The pain in his eyes reminded me of a childs uncomprehending grief, but he listened almost beseechingly to my inadequate words of comfort.

Afterwards, he cancelled every interview that his PR Lisa Wood had set up with other writers and broadcasters. But he had liked my article. I was surprised at how deeply relieved and grateful that made me feel. Yesterday, I learned that it was the last interview he ever gave.

Most of Peter's friends felt protective of him. He retained a kind of childlike innocence, which made him lovable and helped nurture that extraordinary wit. But he also had a childlike vulnerability, as though he were a few skins short of the full complement.

He never asked for sympathy or gave in to self-pity. When his first marriage failed within five years, he was utterly devastated. For the first and only time in his life, he went into psychoanalysis for six months. 'I wanted to talk to someone who wasn't involved and who had no bias, so I could sort of talk about how unhappy I felt without being a burden on friends,' he said. 'Terribly English thing to do.'

His second marriage, to the actress Judy Huxtable, was also on the rocks within five years. But he had finally found an unexpected measure of contentment with his third wife, Lin Chong Cook, a Hampstead-based property consultant he had met in the unlikely setting of Stocks, the mansion owned by Playboy boss Victor Lowndes. Lin, who had once been Victor's PA, understood Peter's idiosyncrasies and gave him breathing space he so desperately needed. They maintained separate homes, but met at one or the other every night.

'I think most people who learn that we live 100 yards away from each other say: "What a good idea." The reason they don't all do it themselves is because it's expensive. There are a lot of 'oughts' in life, and living together is on of the 'oughts' I just don't go along with,' he said.

He spoke movingly of their continuing romance. 'Very simply: it's nice to have a person you love around you. God, this sounds boring,' he said, patently uncomfortable with sentiments that did not lend themselves to jokes. 'She's very good for me because she cares for me. But she's very different. I think I know about the English a little bit, and know I know a little bit more about the Chinese after 13 years with Lin. But not all that much. She's got far more get-up-and-go than I have. But touch wood without legs on, it works.'

Interestingly, when I asked him when he had been at his happiest, he talked about Dudley Moore and the years they spent making the seminal TV series Not Only . . . But Also. 'That was perfect. I don't know know how long it would have gone on but it just seemed by chance perfectly natural. I mean it was ideal.
I can't imagine a comedy relationship being better. I adore Dudley. I would have been very happy to continue.'

He was, he said, bereft when Dudley left to become a movie star in Hollywood. And it is certainly true that Peter never experienced the same degree of success again. But he didn't care all that much. He generally preferred indolence to hard work, he said. What he meant was that he lacked a killer drive and preferred to enjoy his friendships and his marriage and the joke-writing sessions he regularly turned up for at the offices of Private Eye. It would have been nice to do another Derek and Clive album with Dud, he said. But he was just as happy relegating Derek and Clive to a private joke, and having long, filthy (and no doubt achingly funny) conversations with Dud over the phone.

He also enjoyed ringing radio phone-ins and pretending to be different characters. One was Sven, a Norwegian fisherman with a troubled love life, whom he spun out for two tears on Clive Bull's LBC show. There was no obvious point to Sven, as none of the listeners knew he was really Peter Cook. But that, of course, was the point. Peter just enjoyed messing about. 'It gives me pleasure,' he said simply.

He no longer enjoyed performing although he was pleased with his appearance as four different eccentrics on Clive Anderson's chat show (repeated over Christmas) and proud of Peter Cook Talks Golf Balls, a similar exercise based around the game of golf. 'The most ordinary thing, like appearing on Clive James, fills me with panic,' he said. 'I don't much enjoy being on television. I'm doing it less and less. I'd rather be sarcastic to myself. I'd rather do it for a few people socially, but it would be a bit rude to take up a collection after dinner.'

His idea of bliss was being with friends who made him laugh. Not necessarily famous friends, either (and he knew them all); this was a man who invited his bank manager, the local video shop owner and chemist to parties where they could rub shoulders with the Rolling Stones and world-class golfers.

I have seldom met a less pretentious man. Yet he had every reason to be at least a little self-important. As a young man, he was a thrusting comedy tycoon with his own satirical clubs in London and New York. 'I was very, very ambitious. I liked to be sort of buzzing around and being an eager beaver. Quite intolerable I should think. I was showing off to a greater degree than I ever have since. Fortunately, it all went wrong. I think I ran out of ambition at 24,' he said.

At home, he lived in stunning disorder, with faxes and old papers criss-crossing the floor and all his vital documents Blu-tacked to the wall (Lin's home was much tidier, he said).

He talked, even shouted at his television set and played a lot of indifferent golf. In Hampstead High Street, he was often spotted ambling in his carpet slippers and flicking cigarette ash down his shirt front. Yet there was nothing pathetic about him. Rather, he was a true eccentric who still found much to make him laugh and little reason to plunge back into the professional rat race.

He found it amusing when a wag labelled him 'the last amateur'. Which, as he said, 'is a nice way of saying I'm lazy. And I am. Oh yes, very. I see nothing at all wrong with that'.

When we met, he was already ill. He had tried to give up alcohol several times and knew that his doctor wanted him to stop. But after his mother's death, he made no effort to curtail his excessive drinking. He was full of remorse at not being by her bedside when she died. He did not know what he would be doing next. Perhaps just take off somewhere, he said.

Corinna Honan