Satire's brightest star - Part 1

Peter Cook was an anomaly in the world of comedy. He was a romantic figure. Both men and women had enormous crushes on him. Like most true artists of comedy, he was obsessive in his hatreds. He would pursue a joke or the idea for a joke relentlessly until it yielded another and another.

He was a bracing influence for sanity in the sloppy sixties and his Private Eye and its satellites were extensions of his wit and of his scorn. He was a moralist yet he reserved a special derision for those who made edifying distinctions between destructive and constructive humour. For Peter, it was funny or it wasn't.

Peter's generosity was unusual in a profession notoriously self-seeking and fraught with petty jealousies. The spectacular renaissance of Frankie Howerd was due solely to his fervent advocacy and financial encouragement. My own early (unsuccessful) cabaret efforts in London were sponsored by him, and David Frost's first appearances in the West End were under Peter Cook's aegis. He was the deus ex machina of the so-called satire movement of the sixties and can now be credited with having re-invented British comedy.

Cook, a master of improvisation even when drunk, elevated scatology to a lyrical plane. In his later years, he seemed to be careless of his gifts and indifferent to his health: even to life itself. He became inaccessible to those who loved him and sought to help him with his alcoholism.

Barry Humphries