Sacred Cow : Peter Cook

He was just a bit *too* narcissistic, which sometimes puts me off the personality, while admiring the comedy

Crunchy Frog: Dudley Moore.

-- The Wanderers' Wandering Daughter (noodle_vagu...), December 20th, 2005.

Quite.

I was watching "Derek and Clive Get The Horn" at the same time as re-reading Harry Thompson's biography for the 14th time (on the toilet obviously) and found it odd that Thompson clearly didn't approve of D&C. D&CGTH is IMHO as funny as it gets and I may well be over-romanticising the whole thing but I don't get the sense that Moore was quite as pissed off as Thompson made out.

They turned taking the piss into an art-form. We're living in their world as much as Thatcher's.

And Dud's piano playing!

I've read and re-read the scripts reproduced in William Cook's book but seeing and hearing him and Dudley effortlessly jamming/performing is a reminder of how comparatively shit and uninspired British comedy is today (with the obvious exception of Peepshow).

BBC4. NOW!

OK, John Cleese's Nile cruise is boring, nice if you were there.

Maybe get it from BBC iPlayer later?

Its an hour long. First 30 mins are fine. Skip the next 15, maybe the last ten are great too?

apparently on a chat show he told Zsa Zsa Gabor that she was "one of the no-talent events of the 20th century." Clip? Authoritative account?

From Harry Thompson's Cook bio

From the beginning of 1968, Peter became a regular and much requested guest on The Eamonn Andrews Show, the principal TV chat show of the time. One of his earliest appearances, recorded on 8 January, set the tone for the rest of the series: Andrews spoke to each of the guests in turn, soliciting bogus showbiz compliments for the Hollywood star Zsa Zsa Gabor, who sat alongside him blushing, batting her eyelashes and stroking the small dog that sat in her lap. ‘Who do you think is the real Zsa Zsa?’ gushed the Irishman. The other guests obliged with suitably fulsome remarks before Peter, reclining languidly, fag in hand, replied that the real Zsa Zsa was almost certainly a vain, untalented non-event. The fur flew, literally in the dog’s case, Zsa Zsa pointing out that Peter was the rudest young man she had ever met, who would well to get his hair cut. ‘It doesn’t matter, because I’m a raving poof anyway,’ retorted Peter to a round of audience applause. The row continued for weeks afterward by telegram, and Peter later predicted that when he finally expired the newspaper headlines would read ‘Zsa Zsa man dies.’ The show’s producers were delighted, and made his a semi-regular booking as a consequence.

The Man