Andy Parsons on Peter Cook: the pure filth that inspired my career
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Version 0 of 1. I had just finished university and had no idea what to do next. By day, I was working as a gofer for an architect’s firm – and spending a lot of my spare time naively sending off letters and scripts to addresses grabbed out of various how-to-get-on-in-acting/producing/writing guides, written almost certainly by people who hadn’t got on in acting or producing and this was the only writing they had ever done. The thing that kept me sane was a tape a friend had given me – Derek & Clive, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s booze-fuelled mixture of classical education and pure filth. I was in the mood for some unremitting swearing and I loved it. In the 70s, police forces had wanted the duo to be prosecuted for obscenity but their material was dismissed by the director of public prosecutions as “fourth-form lavatory humour”. Cook grew up in Torquay, like me, and was a supporter of Torquay United, regularly turning up at Plainmoor – or as it is now called the Launa Windows Stadium in the Vanarama Conference sponsored by MB Insolvency. He was a major shareholder in Private Eye, loved long lunches and hung out with the Beatles. Comedy may not be the new rock’n’roll. But Peter Cook was. One of the first sketches I ever saw involved Cook and Jonathan Miller in Beyond the Fringe’s Aftermyth of the War. I thought it was great then, and I still do. When reflecting on the transfer of Beyond the Fringe from the Edinburgh festival to the West End and Broadway, Cook said: “I may have done some other things as good but I am sure none better. I haven’t matured, progressed, grown, become deeper, wiser or funnier. But then, I never thought I would.” One of the first paid writing jobs I got was contributing to Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones’s head-to-head sketches. Looking back at old Pete’n’Dud sketches [the prime-time version of Derek & Clive] you realise what a debt to them there is. The art gallery sketch sticks in the mind – it’s a sort of a head-to-head done as a side-by-side on a museum love-seat. It is 10 minutes long – the chances of seeing a 10-minute sketch on a traditional sketch show now would be nonexistent – yet the slow build is part of the enjoyment. At Amnesty’s Secret Policeman’s Ball in 1979, Cook performed an eight-minute monologue entitled Entirely a Matter for You, which criticised the summing-up in a recent trial. It was supposedly written on the afternoon of the performance, in response to a newspaper review that suggested he was recycling old material. At eight minutes, it was a brave thing to do and his targets are impressively skewered. Cook made his name with monologues criticising authority. His impression of the then prime minister, Harold Macmillan, created such a stir that Macmillan turned up himself to see what the fuss was all about. He immediately regretted it when Cook started adlibbing in the character of the PM about how, when he had a spare evening, he liked nothing better than to wander into a theatre and sit there “with a stupid great grin spread all over my silly old face”. How times have changed. As PM, David Cameron would never have turned up at a comedy gig. He would have been more likely to attempt eating a triple-decker bacon sandwich while riding a zipwire – or to turn up to a leaders’ debate on TV. • Andy Parsons tours the UK with his show Live and Unleashed – But Naturally Cautious until 23 May. Then at the Soho theatre, London, 26 May-6 June. Details: andyparsons.co.uk |