The man who reinvented British satire

PETER COOK, who has died aged 57, was the greatest comic genius of his generation, possessed of seemingly inexhaustible powers of fantasy and invention.

"Laughter becomes extreme," Beerbohm once observed, "only if it is consecutive." It was Cook's ability to draw out his wit extemporarily into sustained monologues, driven forward by their own crazy inner logic, that separated him from mere jokesmiths.

As a young man his appeal was enhanced by his good looks and languid charm; though he would have scoffed at the notion, he was a figure of real glamour. Beyond the Fringe, which opened at the Fortune Theatre in 1961, presented satire far sharper than anything that had been seen in post-war London. Alan Bennett was responsible for a wonderful spoof-sermon, Jonathan Miller specialised in whimsical diversions and Dudley Moore provided the songs - but it was Cook who inspired most of the classic pieces.

His impersonation of Harold Macmillan, rehearsing political platitudes with disastrously mistimed gestures, may have done as much as the Profumo affair to undermine the Prime Minister.

'I've got nothing against your right leg - the trouble is, neither have you' In the course of the revue's five-year run in the West End and on Broadway, Cook developed other memorable sketches: the miner who wanted to be a judge but did not have the Latin; the interviewer who responded to an African politician's reiterated cries of "Black Equals White" with a drawled "I think I see what you mean"; the religious fanatic on the mountain top, enthusiastically awaiting the end of the world; the one-legged man auditioning for the role of Tarzan, only to be told, "I've got nothing against your right leg - the trouble is, neither have you."

"There was never a satire movement, only the Cook empire," a contemporary recalled. That empire began to expand in 1961 when Cook, flush with the success of Beyond the Fringe, founded the Establishment Club with Nicholas Luard. He described it as a "satirical venue" after the fashion of "those wonderful Berlin cabarets which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the Second World War". Graham Greene and Somerset Maugham were among the first members.

Cook opened a similar club in New York, as well as an off-Broadway theatre and a nightclub in Los Angeles. While in America he came under the influence of Lenny Bruce, whom he invited to come and outrage audiences at the Establishment. 'I lost interest in business as soon as I went out of business'

During Bruce's four-week run Cook fought off attacks from members of the audience and kept the comedian supplied with his favourite delicacy, cream buns. Cook's finances were undermined when he was persuaded to invest in Scene, a new magazine. "We were naive enough to do everything under the same company," he recalled, "so when Scene came down, it brought down the Establishment. "I lost interest in business as soon as I went out of business." He did retain one investment. In 1962 he had bought the majority shareholding in Private Eye, for which he had invented the distinctive cover, with speech bubbles. Now, as Lord Gnome, he injected into the magazine what Willie Rushton, the founder, called his "very good bad taste".

Richard Ingrams, the editor, considered Cook "too sex-oriented: he sees wage restraint in terms of masturbation." Ingrams also objected to the way in which Cook mixed pornography and religion, and to his penchant for things American. Nevertheless Cook's regular visits to Private Eye's offices - which continued for the rest of his life - were occasions for unloosing a flow of fantasy that kept the staff in stitches and provided material for many an issue. Thanks to Private Eye Cook found himself in and out of the courts One of his protégés was Barry Humphries, the then-unknown Australian comedian who formulated the Barry Mackenzie cartoon about an Australian innocent abroad. It was drawn by Nicholas Garland.

Initially Cook's holding in Pressdram brought him little more than the odd case of champagne at Christmas. Private Eye's habit of becoming involved in expensive lawsuits meant that it was often on the brink of financial collapse, and Cook found himself in and out of the courts with such figures as Lord Russell of Liverpool, Sir James Goldsmith and Robert Maxwell.

At the end of 1964 the Beyond the Fringe cast went their separate ways. For a slot on Bernard Braden's television programme Cook invented E L Wisty, a sedentary megalomaniac who sat on a park bench in a shabby raincoat and droned on about his plans for world domination.

He also dreamed of being royal: "Even if it's the most boring thing in the world, people still say, 'Isn't it interesting that a royal person is doing something so boring?' "

In 1965 Cook teamed up with Dudley Moore for Not Only. . . But Also on BBC2, which ran for four series, ending in 1971. Dud and Pete would sit eating their sandwiches, philosophising about the meaning of life and art, and concocting erotic fantasies in which they were plagued by the attentions of glamorous film stars.

Cook's extemporising often had Moore dissolving into giggles. One of their most celebrated sketches was set in an art gallery, with Pete discoursing learnedly on how the bottoms follow you around the room. Pete and Dud were not their only creations; the series also featured Sir Arthur Streeve Greeblings, Hiram J Pipesucker, who trained ravens to fly underwater, and an Order of Leaping Nuns.

One sketch concerned the attempt of a supercilious British interviewer to elucidate the meaning of a Blues singer's song Mama's Got a Brand New Bag. "I'm going to be groovin' that bag," sang Moore. "He's going to take that highly-coloured bag and have grooves put in it," Cook interposed. "All night long," continued Moore. "It's a long process," Cook explained.

Pete and Dud lived on in Behind the Fridge, whose title was supposedly invented by an Italian waiter in New York unable to pronounce the name of the first show. Launched in Australia in 1971, the revue attracted a barrage of complaints because of its objectionable remarks and undue emphasis on sex. Cook was banned from live Australian television for saying "bum". On their return to England Cook and Moore played at the Cambridge Theatre for nine months.

Their stage partnership ended with Good Evening, which was a huge success on Broadway in 1973. Its 438 performances set a record for a two-man production. Not everyone was happy, however; Christian groups objected to jokes about the Holy Spirit making advances to the Virgin Mary.

Derek and Clive would never use one expletive when 10 would do Still more hostility was provoked by Cook and Moore's characters Derek and Clive, who were born on the tour of Good Evening. Described as "Pete and Dud on speed", they would never use one expletive where 10 would do.

Encouraged by their success in New York's uninhibited Bottom Line club, Derek and Clive spent a few hours ad-libbing in the recording studio. Their drunken ravings proved so funny that bootleg copies appeared. Such rock groups as the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin used them to ward off boredom on long-distance flights.

It was three years before the album was released in England, by Island Records, and even then with WARNING stamped across the cover. By now Moore was enjoying a burgeoning Hollywood career. A film version of Derek and Clive had to be suppressed in case it jeopardised Moore's new, clean-cut image.
"Perhaps if I had been born with a club foot and a height problem," Cook reflected, "I might have been as desperate as Dudley to become a star."

Peter Edward Cook was born on Nov 17 1937. His father was a colonial officer in Nigeria, and - to avoid malaria - the boy was brought up in Torquay by a grandmother.

Cook had planned to follow his father into the colonial or diplomatic service, but at Radley he discovered a talent for mimicking masters, which he would revive with great effect in his portrayal of the Mad Hatter in Jonathan Miller's film of Alice in Wonderland.

"One of the ways of avoiding being beaten by the system is to laugh at it," he later explained. Cook's main achievements at school were on the soccer field, and there was talk of his taking up the sport professionally. He remained a life-long supporter of Tottenham Hotspur, and was once beaten up by Manchester United fans.

Cook missed National Service due to an allergy to feathers, and took up a scholarship to read Modern History at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Among his contemporaries were Michael Howard, Leon Brittan and Kenneth Clarke. "It's a bit distressing when you find them running the country," he remarked recently. "They were all so self-important at 20 that you would have thought they'd have grown out of it."

He soon joined the Footlights, and established himself, in John Cleese's words, as "the funniest and most original of us all". Said Cleese he was 'the funniest and most original of us all'

While still an undergraduate he wrote most of the sketches for the revue Pieces of Eight, with Kenneth Williams and Fenella Fielding. This was followed by One Over the Eight, which opened at the Duke of York's in 1961. Meanwhile John Bassett, who was looking for a revue for the Edinburgh Festival, had Cook introduced to Dudley Moore, who had been an organ scholar at Oxford. Such was the genesis of Beyond the Fringe. "It was ideal," Cook said of his comic relationship with Moore, after Moore had gone to Hollywood. "I doubt if I will ever do anything better," he added, a prediction that would be all too well fulfilled.

Cook's film career had been largely confined to cameo roles in mediocre movies: The Wrong Box (1965, with Ralph Richardson), A Dandy in Aspic (1968), Monte Carlo or Bust (1969), The Bed-Sitting Room (1969). The later Yellowbeard (1983) and Mr Jolly Lives Next Door (1987) represented no improvement.

Cook wrote the screenplay of Bedazzled (1967), in which he starred as Mephistopheles opposite the Faustian Wimpy Bar cook, Dudley Moore; The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970), about an efficiency expert who becomes Prime Minister; and the Sherlock Holmes spoof The Hound of the Baskervilles (1977). None of these did justice to his talent.

The most dramatic moment in his film career occurred off-screen, during the making of The Bed-Sitting Room: Cook injured his leg when he fell 100ft inside a motor car suspended from a balloon.

Occasionally, though, his genius shone through, as in Whoops Apocalypse (1987), where he played Sir Mortimer Chris, a British Prime Minister who believed unemployment was caused by pixies.

On television Cook took on a series of embarrassing roles. In 1973 he presented Where Do I Sit?, which critics voted the worst BBC Show of the Year. In one dreadful episode Cook asked the studio audience if anyone objected to a sketch about God and, finding someone who did, viciously abused him. The show closed after three programmes.

Even sadder was his appearance as a sidekick to Joan Rivers on her show Can We Talk? in which he was reduced to making such asides as, "What a fabulous frock, Joan".

Cook never minded compromising his artistic integrity. Two pilots for the American television series The Two of Us, in which he played a butler, brought him $60,000. After 20 lucrative weeks, though, he could stand it no longer and returned to his Hampstead home. He preferred playing golf and watching Brazilian soap operas to working - though when he recently appeared on the Clive Anderson show as four different characters he showed he had lost none of his talent for improvisation. He preferred playing golf and watching Brazilian soap operas to working.

He also produced a video, Peter Cook Talks Golf Balls, in which he is seen as an overbearing American commentator, a whisky-sozzled Scottish caddie, a retired major and a mad German psychiatrist.

It was hardly a worthy end for the man who had, almost singlehandedly, re-invented satire in Britain. One critic described him as a melancholy, lonely figure "doomed to sail on like the Flying Dutchman ... still hoisting his tattered satirist's flag".

Cook - cynical, ironic and unrepentantly idle - refused to repine. "I suppose I might have some regrets," he told an interviewer, "but I can't remember what they are."

Peter Cook married Wendy Snowden in 1963 (dissolved 1971); they had two daughters. He married Judy Huxtable in 1973 (also dissolved). He married thirdly, in 1989, Lin Chong.