Biography Of Peter Cook

by Harry Thompson

  Peter did at least come away from the project having cemented his friendships with his three colleagues. ‘I’ll always remember him playing cricket in Regent’s Park with my then three-year-old son and an entire family of passing Pakistanis,’ says John Lloyd. ‘And going to the Limelight Club with him, half-cut, in the middle of the night, where nobody except the doorman recognised him, where he was, nonetheless, instantly surrounded by gorgeous bimbos drawn to his unshielded charm.’10 Lloyd remembers Peter as a man capable of enormous merriment, as distinct from happiness. ‘He was also a gracious person, which sounds ridiculous to say about somebody who was often six stone overweight and somewhat lumbering and frequently didn’t wash his hair; but there was a grace about him.’ Externally, Peter’s looks may have changed, but the grace he was now displaying was very much the rediscovered grace of the young Peter Cook. Peter Fincham remembers lunching with him in Hampstead, ‘when a bloke came up who was almost the classic sort of bore who confronts a celebrity – a would-be comedy writer who’d sent some scripts to the BBC, that hadn’t been sent back. Peter dealt with it so completely gracefully and without betraying any impatience or condescension whatsoever; he was utterly charming to this man.’ It was with equal charm that Peter tried to persuade Fincham to buy some of his daughter’s paintings – Daisy had taken up a new career as an artist – which he said were typical of her ‘expensive period’.

  The divorce settlement of 1991 left Peter in further need of money, but the disappointment of A Life in Pieces and his continuing ‘broken-heartedness’ – as John Lloyd put it – over his divorce made work a difficult proposition. It was to be a year before he undertook another job, putting in a ‘muddy’ performance on Have I Got News for You (after smuggling a carrier bag of booze into his dressing room) and doing the voice-over for the TV version of the Viz cartoon strip Roger Mellie. As he arrived at the TV studio for the Viz job, a producer greeted him insincerely with the words: ‘Peter, you’re looking great! You’ve lost weight, haven’t you?’ – to which he replied: ‘Yes. Another few stone and I’ll be a sixties cult figure again.’

  Patiently, Lin began to build him up again, weaning him off alcohol and getting him back to work. In 1992 Jonathan Ross bumped into him in a bar drinking a ‘Lite’ beer. He had secured a major role in the ITV comedy drama series Gone to Seed, starring Jim Broadbent, Warren Clarke and Alison Steadman as triplets who feud over the running of a garden centre in the London docklands. Peter played Wesley Willis, an unscrupulous property tycoon who plans to turn the place into a helicopter pad, for which performance he received extremely respectable notices.

  That spring Peter and Lin were among a large, celebrity-heavy party treated to a Nile cruise by John Cleese and his third wife-to-be Alyce-Faye Eichelberger, following the success of A Fish Called Wanda. Peter was on top form, and dazzled the likes of Eric Idle, William Goldman and Stephen Fry with his powers of invention. Standing by the swimming pool of the Royal Simbel Hotel he devised ‘The Royal and Not Noticeably Ancient Game of Abu Simbel’, which consisted of two teams bowling beach balls through the loop of the pool handrail, as regulated by an encyclopaedic array of jargon-heavy rules. Before long he had cajoled the entire hotel, staff included, into taking part in a tournament. The men’s team was captained by another member of the Cleese party, Mrs Thatcher’s former adviser and confidant Sir Charles Powell, while the women’s team was captained by his wife Carla (Peter was undoubtedly mellowing with age, as these were the types he would have mocked gleefully during his Beyond the Fringe days). His invention was such a success that on his return to England, despite a bout of dysentery, he attempted to interest various games-makers in marketing it.

  As Peter’s spirits continued to recover, 1993 saw him undertake a battery of work. First was an appearance as the recently deceased Robert Maxwell in The Bore of the Year Awards, written and produced by Ian Hislop and the author of this book; in search of a noble Maxwellian gesture, he stood on the deck of his yacht and forced a servant to commit suicide. This was followed by a second appearance on Have I Got News for You. Then, after a holiday by Loch Lomond with Lin and Nina, he flew to Portugal to take part in One Foot in the Algarve, a Christmas special of the Richard Wilson sitcom One Foot in the Grave; he appeared as Martin Trout, an accident-prone freelance photographer who trails Victor Meldrew in the belief that he is carrying a valuable roll of film. The Algarve trip was chiefly remarkable for an incident in which Lin overheard a tourist passing an adverse comment about her husband’s work. Later, when she saw the man in the village square, she walked across and punched him. Eleanor Bron subsequently remarked that ‘it was lovely to see Peter’s delight and pride that anyone could leap to his defence in this way.’11 Nobody had ever defended Peter before, probably because nobody had ever thought he needed defending. Peter spent the rest of the summer with Eleanor Bron, filming a cameo appearance in the cinema version of Black Beauty, a telling choice given the videotape mix-up with Derek and Clive Get the Horn all those years previously. He turned in a decent performance as Lord Wexmire, to Eleanor Bron’s Lady Wexmire, the first time they had been cast together since Bedazzled. The pair spent a great deal of time in Bron’s trailer talking in the personae of two extravagant foreigners, and promised ch other that one day they would turn the conversations into a two-person stage show.

  In August 1993 Peter filled a double-page spread in the Evening Standard with a hoax article claiming that the Ryder Cup might be attracted to Hampstead – a sort of delayed April Fool. The accompanying photograph of the ‘Hampstead Heath Ryder Cup Committee’ showed himself, his golfing pals Lawrence Levy and Howard Baws, and Rainbow George. The piece claimed that the entire Heath could be covered in a giant perspex dome within which any weather condition could be simulated. The centre of Hampstead village would become a huge car park – ‘as cars would be unable to move in any direction’.12 So pleased were the Standard with this piece that they commissioned a further page a fortnight later, on England’s chances in the forthcoming football international against Poland. Peter showed that he had lost none of the mastery of jingoistic tabloidese that he had parodied so expertly in 1960:

  The game will be won or lost or drawn in midfield, but ironically the goals (all-important under FIFA’s crazy system) will almost inevitably be scored at the extremities of the pitch. England will be forced to kick the ball towards the ludicrously placed opposition goalmouth and then, if they fail to score, run hundreds of yards in the opposite direction to defend their own net. Believe me, the Poles are ruthless and cunning enough to exploit this state of affairs.13

  Peter’s own physical fitness had recovered to the point where he actually won a pro-celebrity golf tournament that year, in South Carolina.

  In the autumn, Peter recorded Radio Night, a BBC2-themed evening transmitted later in the year, in which he played the part of ‘Radio’. He also chose his favourite comedy clips of all time for Junkin’s Jokers, a BBC radio show: all of them were childhood choices, the most modern being excerpts from Pieces of Eight and Bridge over the River Wye, with one exception – a solitary piece from the first Derek and Clive LP. This was by way of a shameless plug, for the autumn of 1993 also finally saw the unopposed video release of the film Derek and Clive Get the Horn. It was a project about which Peter had become ruefully nostalgic; the law having relaxed somewhat since the late 1970s, he was re-releasing it partly because he needed the money, and partly because it was not in his nature to leave loose ends untied. He admitted that he had been ‘quite shocked’ to view it again after fifteen years, and that it was indeed ‘horrible. But on the other hand, you can’t re-edit it to fit with fashion. It’s like all those Bogart films where he’s smoking,’ he told an unimpressed reporter from the New Musical Express. ‘This video is rubbish.’14 concluded the paper tartly.

  Polygram, who were marketing the video, put Peter in touch with Public Eye, the PR company they had appointed to handle the release, and fixed up a lunch meeting between him and the woma
n who owned the company. ‘Hello Red Fluffy Jumper,’ said Peter when she walked in; it was Ciara Parkes. ‘Peter and I had a long, funny lunch talking about old times,’ she recalls. Their friendshp was instantly rekindled: they developed a private joke based around hidden satanic messages, and Peter devised a secret satanic sign which he would make to Ciara during the round of TV and press interviews she arranged. He also came up with some novel PR ideas for her, such as Rizla papers with a ‘Derek and Clive’ slogan typed on them (by Lin). One reason Ciara had been hired was that by chance, she had recently done some work with Dudley Moore. ‘So my job was basically to get Dudley involved,’ she says, ‘which was very difficult. But we managed it finally.’ Dudley’s film career no longer presented an obstacle, as it was all but over; but Derek and Clive Get the Horn still held unpleasant associations for him.

  Perversely, a bonus reason for re-releasing the film was that it gave Peter the chance to work with Dudley again. ‘There’s no one better than him to have by your side,’15 he told the press. Dudley recalls that, once again, ‘Peter wanted me to come back and do some more revue-type material with him. I think he was quite keen for that but I didn’t want to do it.’16 Dudley was, however, reluctantly willing to oblige his old friend to the extent of allowing the release of the Derek and Clive video, and of adding his weight to the PR effort. Peter was overjoyed. Daisy’s then boyfriend Simon Hardy remembers that ‘The liveliest and most invigorated I ever saw Peter was at that time. Daisy and I met him for lunch and he seemed a different man. He was drinking very little and gone was that air of melancholy and ennui. He was buzzing. He was in the midst of a succession of press and television interviews, making plans for his post-launch party, and, most important of all, he was working with Dudley again. He had great plans to get a piano put in his garden so Dudley could play.’

  The launch party was held on the top floor of the Cobden Working Men’s Club in Kensal Road, now a permanent media hangout. ‘We spent days going round before we found the place,’ says Ciara. ‘“This is it”, we thought. “This is Peter”.’ A huge cavalcade of celebrities was invited, including Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller, the Rolling Stones, the Monty Python team, Paul Merton and Ian Hislop, Rory McGrath, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones, Julian Clary, Alan Bates, Ian Dury, Dave Stewart, Sam Torrance, David Gower and his fellow England cricket captain Chris Cowdrey, Roger Law, Mariella Frostrup, and – naturally – Kenny Lynch. ‘Lin did the guest list,’ explains Ciara. ‘She was very involved – she wanted to be a part of it. There were so many top-flight celebrities there. Their coming was a big tribute to Lin.’ Peter rang his sister Sarah in a state of high excitement to invite her and a guest. She asked her daughter Aletta, by now a student at Newcastle University who caught the train down. On the morning of the party, however, Lin discovered that Peter had invited his young niece, and telephoned Sarah to rescind Aletta’s invitation. ‘Is this your wish, or Peter’s wish?’ asked Sarah. Lin put the phone down. Sarah and her daughter spent the evening at a comedy evening at the Riverside Studies instead.

  ‘It was one of the best parties ever,’ says Ciara. ‘The Stones turned up in a handbuilt white 1930s coach. The paparazzi went mad. Every comedian in the world was there virtually.’ According to Griff Rhys Jones, there was ‘a whole room of comics all performing at each other.’ Two huge bouncers brought by the Rolling Stones stood at the door el non-celebrities, but even so, the party was so packed that Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller never even got to see their host. Peter was in his element, surrounded by his adoring colleagues. At one point he announced, ‘Oh fuck this, let’s go down the pub,’ and led a stream of admirers down the stairs into the members-only bar of the working men’s club. Not wanting to be left out of the chance to drink in the bar of a genuine working men’s club, the entire throng of celebrities poured after him. A clutch of bemused pensioners enjoying a quiet drink were amazed to see the doors fly open and a huge crowd pour through. ‘Suddenly Peter and the Stones and everybody else just burst through the door,’ recalls Ciara, ‘singing, dancing, Dave Stewart was there, and he was singing, and some of the Python lot too.’ Mel Smith believes that ‘Peter loved showbusiness – he was a real tart, really. He didn’t take it seriously, but he was always very much at home with the idea of all those famous people – I think he loved it all, actually.’

  When the party at the Cobden Club ended, Peter held another party immediately afterwards at Perrin’s Walk. Lucy and Daisy, who had also found themselves excluded from the Cobden party, were reunited with their father. ‘We felt rather sad,’ confesses Lucy. ‘Daisy talked to Bill Wyman and said, “Would you like a drink?” and he just thought she was the maid.’ Simon Hardy, however, reckons that ‘The party was great – I remember turning round and seeing Ronnie Wood of the Stones ensconced on a sofa with his legs open, scratching his scrotum, while next to him sat Sir Charles Powell, Mrs Thatcher’s former foreign policy adviser.’ Trying to light some outdoor candles in the garden, Peter managed to set fire to his trousers by mistake, and had to jump into the fishpond to extinguish himself. The party was still in its drunken death throes at breakfast time, Peter racing up and down Perrin’s Walk after Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, brandishing a video camera.

  It had all been a huge success, at least in terms of achieving its stated PR aims. The press coverage was enormous, and ‘sales went mad’, as Ciara put it. ‘It was probably the happiest I ever saw Peter,’ says Rainbow George. ‘He’d have been quite happy to die that evening.’17 George was still at the Perrin’s Walk party at 9 a.m., a fact that Peter pointed out to him at the time. ‘That’s rock ’n’ roll man,’ said George aimlessly, a statement which elicited a tart response. George was becoming annoying; suddenly he seemed an irritating embodiment of a depressing period of Peter’s past life.

  Peter was on a roll again. At a Private Eye party he fell into a discussion with Clive Anderson, and came up with the idea of a special edition of Anderson’s chat show in which all the guests would be fictional characters played by him. Anderson, who knew Peter as an entertaining if evasive guest, thought that the conversation had just been party talk; but by the following morning Peter had managed to find out his home telephone number and had made contact, bubbling with enthusiasm and throwing around ideas for possible characters. His original plan was to make two half-hour programmes, punctuated by topical jokes; the end result was simpler, a single Christmas edition of Clive Anderson Talks Back populated by just four characters. Both Peter and Clive Anderson were keen to make the shows genuinely improvised, avoiding the semi-preparation that characterises most TV comedy panel games, but in the event ths proved impossible – Anderson needed to be aware of the characters’ fictional backgrounds to be able to interview them. So, after a few initial meetings, a researcher was assigned to each character as if they were real chat show guests, to talk to them in advance and to come up with a suggested set of questions and a structure for the interview.

  First up was Norman House, a Wistyesque biscuit quality controller who believes he has been abducted by aliens: ‘I felt at the same time strangely calm and horribly terrified.’ His wife Wendy has taken various incomprehensively blurred pictures of the event, which, he says, have made him appreciate just how insignificant the aliens are. Second, and by far the best, was football manager Alan Latchley, an emphatic, emotional and inarticulate bundle of beautifully observed clichés: ‘Football is about nothing unless it’s about something’; ‘Football is all about motivation, motivation, motivation – the three Ms’; ‘I can look myself in the mirror in the morning and say, “There is a man”.’ Third (and very much Arthur Streeb-Greebling to the first character’s E. L. Wisty) was overenthusiastic judge Sir James Beauchamp, who has been suspended for shooting a defendant in court. Finally came rockstar Eric Daley, formerly of the Corduroys and now a member of supergroup Ye Gods, recently emerged from alcoholism treatment at the Henry Ford clinic: ‘It’s a much tougher regime than the Betty Ford clinic. You have to build a c
ar before you can get out.’ Daley obviously owed something both to the rock stars of Peter’s acquaintance, and to his own experiences: ‘I love the country,’ he remarked. ‘We were lucky enough to find a place in the country very near town.’

  Peter looked better, fitter and slimmer than he had done for some time, although his cigarette-throated tones constrained his former vocal versatility. There was an air of successful collaboration and improvisation about the show that had been absent from A Life in Pieces. The critics loved Peter’s performance: ‘Brilliantly fleshed out’, remarked the Mail excitedly; ‘A classic’, said Today. Peter’s friends were even more enthusiastic. ‘Absolutely brilliant,’ said Richard Ingrams. ‘Just like the old Peter Cook. He was absolutely on the ball, his timing was excellent and he was clearly off the booze.’ Jonathan Miller found it ‘remarkably inventive. Every piece of his invention was there in untarnished abundance.’ John Bird regarded it as an improvement on the old Peter Cook: ‘There was something new here – an insight and even a sympathy in the way in which he approached his characters. The comedy had become more humane.’18 It had indeed been a good show, but these assessments were not without an element of hyperbole, brought on by the sheer relief of seeing Peter back to what looked like good health and his best form. This time, though, Peter had achieved success through furious concentration: his characters’ po-faced stares were real po-faced stares, never threatening to collapse into relaxed laughter as they used to in his heyday. Be that as it may, his friends now willed him to take this success and run with it, and not to sink back into illness and depression once more. ‘Peter was set on a new course onwards and upwards,’19 suggests John Cleese, who described the Clive Anderson Talks Back episode as the start of a renaissance cruelly interrupted by his divorce settlement, among other personal tragedies. This re-ordering of history was wishful thinking indeed, as Cleese desperately wishppiness and success on his old friend.