Abigoliah: I am violently hungover with rosé wine leaking out my pores. Guys, welcome back to the new podcast All British Comedy Explained. I’m Abigoliah Schamaun.
Tom: And I’m Tom Salinsky. Yes, it might be worth pointing out that we were playing poker until quite late last night, but now fortified by last night’s cold pizza. Yes, we’re ready to provide you with another podcast.
Abigoliah: Even though we are grown adults, we stay up too late eating pizza. And then we had pizza for cold pizza for lunch.
Tom: Yes, we’re reliving our student lifestyle.
Abigoliah: Yeah, we’re living the dream, guys. The podcasters dream. So what are we gonna watch today, Tom?
Tom: All right. So today we’re going further back in time. We’re going pre Python. And this is going to be not only but also now as I think you said in our episode zero, that’s kind of a meaningless title, but it was a vehicle for Peter Cook and Dudley Moore who were huge stars for decades.
Abigoliah: In what year are we talking?
Tom: So this was 1965. It’s the year Malcolm X was shot. It’s the year of the first ever spacewalk by cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. It’s the year that My Fair Lady was cleaning up at the Academy Awards and on American television, the first peanuts special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, was shown on CBS.
Abigoliah: I mean, that’s a classic. That makes me very happy to know.
Tom: But Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, do you know those names?
Abigoliah: I know the names, but I don’t really know who they are.
Tom: Can you picture them?
Tom: Well, only because.
Abigoliah: I want to be, like.
Tom: On.
Abigoliah: Social media. Yeah, yeah, in my head I go I was about to say one is fat, one is thin, and I’m like, wait a minute, that’s a different comedy duo.
Tom: One is taller, one is short, but I couldn’t describe it.
Abigoliah: It’s always that one. There’s a fat, thin or taller or short. You can’t just be too good looking or too average looking people doing comedy.
Tom: Maybe the exception is the Chuckle Brothers.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: So all right, let me tell you about not only but also now, in order to talk about this show, we first have to talk about a different show Beyond the Fringe. Now, does that name mean anything to you?
Abigoliah: It is it a show where people who had good friend shows in Edinburgh would then go on and do, like, showcases on television?
Tom: Great guess, but no.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: So you are right. It is referring to the Edinburgh Fringe. So do you know how the Edinburgh Fringe came to be?
Abigoliah: The council wanted money from people down south, and then the Scottish realized how they could extort the English for all the troubles that they’ve brought them in years gone by.
Tom: Well, it’s called a fringe festival because it was on the fringes of another festival.
Abigoliah: The Edinburgh Festival.
Tom: Exactly. So the Edinburgh International Festival started in 1947 and like a half a dozen theatre companies, turned up uninvited and started doing their own thing at the same time. And so that happened again the next year. And after a while, this unofficial fringe festival was getting more press attention than its big brother, especially when it came to late night comedy shows. Okay, so around 1960, the director of the international festival decides he wants to try and beat the fringe at their own game.
Abigoliah: And he never did.
Tom: Well, he kind of did okay. He began looking for exciting new comedy talent in order that the the real festival, the the grown up festival could have something exciting that would be a real rival to the upstart Fringe Festival.
Abigoliah: Sorry. And this is in the 40s.
Tom: So this is now in the 60s.
Abigoliah: Okay. We’re in the 60s.
Tom: So at this time Peter Cook is president of the Footlights Club at Cambridge, because of course he is. While he’s still a student, he is writing sketch material for West End shows. So there’s a guy called Kenneth Williams. Does that name ring a bell?
Abigoliah: No.
Tom: Have you ever seen a Carry On film?
Abigoliah: No, but I’ve heard tell of Carry On films.
Tom: We might have to do Carry On at some point. There was a Carry On television series, but maybe as, like a one off special. I’ll sit you down and make you watch a Carry On film. But Kenneth Williams, among other things, was one of the stars of the Carry On films. And he did this, these West End revues. And 18 year old Peter Cook was writing sketch material for him.
Abigoliah: This is back when anyone could get a job in comedy.
Tom: Especially if you went to Oxford or Cambridge. Yeah. So he was recruited and joining him was his fellow Footlights star Jonathan Miller, and from Oxford, Alan Bennett and Dudley Moore.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: And they’re all in their early 20s.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: And this guy offers them £100 a week to write and perform a new revue, which would run throughout the Edinburgh Festival.
Abigoliah: Some things never change. That is still what I make as a stand up comedian.
Tom: £100 in 1960 is about £2,000 today.
Abigoliah: I do not make that much. Don’t discount inflation. I’m just making £100 a week.
Tom: So everybody was super happy with this except Peter Cook. His agent got involved and said £100 a week is fine for these nonentities, but for an artist of Peter Cook’s stature, it is insulting.
Abigoliah: Because he was already writing for the West End.
Tom: So Peter Cook got £110 a week.
Abigoliah: I mean, wow, wee!
Tom: And then his agent took 10%.
Abigoliah: So he got £100 a week.
Tom: So he got £99 a week and everyone else got £100.
Abigoliah: That’s amazing.
Tom: Now, this show, Beyond the Fringe was an absolute sensation. It attacked the military. It attacked the royal family. It attacked William Shakespeare.
Abigoliah: So real quick, is this happening? This is happening on television. This isn’t radio.
Tom: A stage show at the Edinburgh Festival.
Abigoliah: Did I – do they do an episode about this on The Crown?
Tom: They definitely do.
Abigoliah: I saw that. I thought they were talking about the footlights of of Stephen Fry’s footlights. These are the Dudley Moore Footlights?
Tom: Yes.
Abigoliah: Okay. Yeah, I know, I know.
Tom: There’s a famous story that is dramatized in The Crown, where Peter Cook is impersonating Harold Macmillan. And, by the way, impersonating the Prime minister of the day was brand new.
Abigoliah: No one was doing this.
Tom: Nobody was doing this. Nobody would dare. Not only did Peter Cook impersonate Harold Macmillan, when Harold Macmillan got wind of this.
Abigoliah: He went to the show.
Tom: Went to the show.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: And Peter Cook clocked him and began improvising and walked down to the the footlights, walked down to the front of the stage and, still impersonating Macmillan, said something to the effect of many people ask me, what do I do when I discover there are four young people down at the Fortune Theatre taking me off on a nightly basis? Well, what I do is I buy a ticket and I sit in the middle of the fourth row with a great big smile on my stupid face, pretending it isn’t happening.
Abigoliah: Which we know from watching The Crown. That was actually really devastating for the poor Prime Minister Macmillan, because he was having problems in his marriage, and his wife had a side piece and he didn’t feel loved. And he just went, he went for some comedy. He just wanted to enjoy himself. Poor guy. Not poor guy.
Tom: So this is sensational. And this show runs Forever. They take it to New York. It still runs to the West End with a different cast. It runs for about six years, all told in different parts of the world.
Abigoliah: So did they. I assume they eventually had to update certain sketches. Was it all timely things?
Tom: Not all of it was. Some was like sort of social satire. Some of it was just silliness. Peter Cook did the his most famous sketch which he’d written for Kenneth Williams, which will come to Dudley Moore played the piano. And yeah, the stuff would come in and go out as the need arose. But Peter Cook was the chief writer, and his chemistry with Dudley Moore was very clear to see. So after they finished doing all this and Dudley Moore’s offered his own television comedy special in 1964, he turns to Peter Cook for help. So the original pitch from the BBC had been a show called not only Dudley Moore, but also his special guest of the week.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: So they made a pilot and that was the special guest was Peter Cook. But the pilot went so well that when it went to series, they decided to shift the emphasis. So it became not only Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, but also their guest of the week and guest, including people like Peter Sellers. John Lennon was the guest on one of the episodes.
Abigoliah: Are we gonna watch these people?
Tom: I’m afraid not. So there were seven episodes made in 1965, a second series of 7 in 1966, followed by a Christmas special and then a gap because they were touring, notably in Australia, where they also made some specials, and then as a final colour series in 1970. And yeah, they featured music from Dudley Moore sketches, which parodied popular TV shows old movies, social trends of the day, or just Peter Cook style whimsy. But the most popular were the so-called Dagenham Dialogues, which would feature Cooke and Moore as Pete and Dud. Okay, two working class types who would sit and philosophize about various topics which they barely understood.
Abigoliah: And just to back up real quick, they aren’t really working class guys. No. So these are these are poshos pretending to be working class.
Tom: One of the things about their comedy is a lot of it is class based, because it’s Britain in the 60s. But they are equally eager to skewer that kind of working class. Ideas above your station and what you would call poshos. The very first thing we’re going to see when we start watching is them absolutely skewering like concert performers.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: So they they’ve kind of got it in for everybody. But there’s something rather sweet about these Pete and Dud dialogues where they’re just, like, trying to understand and.
Abigoliah: It’s like when you talk to me about British comedy, I’m like, yeah, yeah, I get it.
Tom: Yeah, well.
Abigoliah: Dudley Cook and Peter Moore. I get it, yeah.
Tom: So Peter Cook’s Pete character always thinks he knows what he’s talking about. And Dudley Moore’s character is usually more at a loss. But of course, Peter Cook’s character never knows what he’s talking about either. So am I Pete? I wouldn’t know. How could I tell? But one thing I want you to notice about this, particularly the first of these you’re going to see is it’s shot in front of the audience, and they’ve prepared a loose script, but they really are improvising. So they kind of have the shape of it, but they don’t have all of the dialogue. They haven’t really rehearsed it. And Peter Cook in particular had a habit of keeping a particularly good line back from Dudley Moore. And in the first of these that we’re going to see, there’s a really clear example which I want you to look out for.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Now, as well as all the studio stuff, there was some stuff which was a bit more elaborate shows that often feature very ambitious opening sequences, which would seem to be just irrelevant stuff, but then it would reveal the name of the program carved into the side of a hill, being shot from a helicopter, or strung between the parts of the bridge of Tower Bridge.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: So there was some kind of more ambitious stuff there, but what people remember is the sketches, which are just Peter Cook and Dudley Moore talking very often as these Pete and dud characters. So as I said last week there was this compilation series that was put out and then a re-edited version of that on DVD. But the episodes are at least half music. And while Dudley Moore is a terrific jazz pianist, I didn’t really see the point of making you watch ten minutes of 1960s music. Thank you. So I’ve boiled it down to 60 minutes of, I think, some really terrific sketches. So definitely from a bygone era. I think this stuff holds up and I really hope you’re gonna like it.
Abigoliah: Okay, this is the first time you have this. Like this means something to me. I know, I know you like The Young Ones and Monty Python as well. But this is the one where you’re like, God, I really want you to like this.
Tom: This one feels like it’s on a tightrope. I kind of with Python. As we said on the Python episode, all the best stuff is the stuff that got recycled and I was deliberately showing you some more obscure stuff, and it’s quite a common reaction, I think. Oh yeah, well, I love Holy Grail and Life of Brian, but this is like a bad first draft version. Yeah. So I wasn’t super shocked that you didn’t go, oh my God, this is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen. I’d have been really surprised if you hadn’t liked The Young Ones. And with this one, I just don’t know.
Abigoliah: I’m excited. Here’s the thing. We’re talking a 65. And as we discussed in episode zero, like I grew up watching Mary Tyler Moore and the Dick Van Dyke Show and I Love Lucy. Sitcoms from the bygone era. Those American sitcoms from days gone by. I really love. Now, this is going to be something completely different, but I can vibe with that sort of, you know. So is it going to all be black and white?
Tom: Then there’s a little bit of color so maddeningly the 1970s series, which was all in color. None of that still exists, really. So all the tapes were wiped, but some of it had been shot on film to be edited in later. And some of that film exists.
Abigoliah: It just it surprises me how little they cared about what they were filming back then, because films cared, you know what I mean?
Tom: Like some did. Don’t forget a lot of really early films from the the silent era and the early sound era were made on incredibly flammable film stock, and an endless numbers of films from that period have just been burnt.
Abigoliah: But by the 60s…
Tom: Know, the negatives of Singin’ in the Rain don’t exist anymore. They were destroyed in a fire.
Abigoliah: Oh, really?
Tom: Yeah, we have prints, obviously, and we have some, you know, they’ve been cleaned up beautifully, but the negative doesn’t exist anymore.
Abigoliah: Okay, well, maybe I shouldn’t go off and talk about the history of film with you specifically, who also has a podcast about film and, believe it or not, might know more about that as well than I do.
Tom: So early days of television, 1950s. There are no video recorders, so basically it’s all live. So if you do a play, which is what they called them films, there were plays you could, you could, you could play in some footage you shot on film earlier to do an exterior scene, but then the actors just have to do it live in front of the. There’s literally a story about an actor dying halfway through a live broadcast, and the producer having to run around backstage and try and do rewrites and give lines to other actors in order to get to the end of the story.
Abigoliah: Because the show must go on.
Tom: The show must go on. So what would you do if you broadcast an episode or a play? That was really good and people wanted to see it again?
Abigoliah: You would save that and…
Tom: How? You’d rehire the actors.
Abigoliah: No way.
Tom: Do it again. And then somebody figured out, oh, we can actually do is while this is going out, live to the nation, we can point a film camera at a television set and we can capture it that way. And then we have a copy. We can show again. And then the actors union equity went well. Hang on a minute. That means that you are paying these actors once and you are getting infinitely many performances from them, or we don’t think that’s fair.
Abigoliah: That’s how residuals came to be. Which no longer exists. Thank you. Streaming.
Tom: But the deal that the actors union struck with the BBC was you get to show an episode once you get to repeat it once, and then if you want to show it again, you have to pay more money.
Abigoliah: So no one ever wanted to pay more money, so the babes would show it twice.
Tom: So once you’ve shown it twice, you have something sitting on your shelf which is worthless because you can’t show it again.
Abigoliah: And it’s so early in TV world that no one’s thinking archival footage. This will mean something someday. These.
Tom: It was ephemeral, okay? It wasn’t intended to last. So when they needed to reuse the tapes, they would just wipe them.
Abigoliah: Wow.
Tom: So a lot of the times we only have these old shows because 60 millimeter black and white film recordings were made for overseas sale.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Quatermass, the seminal science fiction serial, which was the first time science fiction drama had been done on TV. An Australian broadcaster was interested in it, so they telerecorded the first two episodes and then the Australian broadcaster went, no thanks. And so we have the first two episodes and we don’t have the last four. They went out live once and they were never recorded in any form. They weren’t even wiped. They were just never recorded.
Abigoliah: So this has never occurred to me. But at the dawn of television. Television was still being treated like live performance. Yes, like like a play. You go out and you do it every night. But once that play closes, you didn’t see that play.
Tom: That’s right.
Abigoliah: Wow. This is fascinating. So real quick not only but also we’re going to watch 60 minutes of it today. How long were the episodes that went out? 30 minutes.
Tom: So I just picked and chosen and I had in mind. Normally we watch two episodes. Normally they’re about 30 minutes. So I was like aiming for anything between like 40 and 70 minutes. And it just came out beautifully at 59 minutes.
Abigoliah: So originally they had three series of seven episodes. Yes, 21 episodes.
Tom: And a Christmas special and a pilot.
Abigoliah: Yeah. So and then a couple of other stuff. So man 21 and they destroyed it, and then they destroyed most.
Tom: A few shows. If we keep doing this, we’ll get to a few shows that do have hundreds of episodes. In fact, the next show we’re going to watch has hundreds of episodes.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: But for now, it’s just 60 minutes of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.
Abigoliah: Well, let’s let’s go see this, I hope. I like it as much as you want me to like it.
* * * * *
Tom: All right. Welcome back. You seem to be having a good time for most.
Abigoliah: “Alan a dale. Alan a dale, Alan a dale.” I’m gonna have to find that on YouTube and just listen to it all the time.
Tom: No, that was the one I thought was the biggest risk.
Abigoliah: Really?
Tom: Such a pointless sketch. It just. The point of it is it goes nowhere. It never arrives anywhere useful or interesting. It just sings the same refrain over and over again. But for me, it’s the details that make it work. It’s Joe Melia, who is the actor playing Alan a Dale. He just sort of see the hope gradually draining out of his eyes.
Abigoliah: The fact he can’t whistle. They march forward, Dudley Moore’s hat, hits the camera just.
Tom: Oh my God, it’s funny.
Abigoliah: Yeah, the the meaninglessness of that sketch and it’s freaking catchy, you know what I mean? I just I really was just like, where is this? As I want the whole musical?
Tom: Yeah. I mean, quite how long the whole musical would sustain, assuming that the whole musical is continuing to warn us that the story of Alan Dale is coming soon for an hour and a half. But, I mean, better than some of the things you see in the West End these days. So maybe it’s worth saying that with Monty Python and the young ones, they kind of feel like mine. Like, Monty Python was one of the first things that I saw when I was getting into comedy. And I grew up with the young ones, and this is a little bit before my time. So I sort of watched these shows or what’s left of them for the first time, as I was becoming more of a kind of student of comedy in a more serious way. So I don’t know them nearly so well, but a couple of the sketches have just become so famous, and the most famous by far is one leg too few. That’s kind of Peter Cook’s parrot sketch, because he wrote it for Kenneth Williams when he was 18. He did it in, I think it’s in. It’s in Beyond the Fringe. I cheated a little bit here because that’s actually from the Australian specials that they did.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: So that’s why the hairstyles look different.
Abigoliah: I was going to say, I think.
Tom: Also the, the only clip I was able to find doesn’t quite have the end of the sketch. It has, like the first two thirds of the sketch.
Abigoliah: Oh, there’s more to it.
Tom: There’s a little bit more to it that everyone remembers. I’ve got nothing against your right leg. The trouble is, neither have you. Yeah, and that kind of nothing after that is any is funnier. But a lot of the other versions are either them as old men doing it at charity concerts, or it’s the Beyond the Fringe recording, which the quality is so poor. So when I found that clip of the first three quarters in pretty decent quality, I thought, I’ll use that one.
Abigoliah: One thing which really has nothing to do with their comedy. But in that one, I thought Dudley Moore looked like Pippin from from Lord of the rings. Maybe it was because we were just talking about Lord of the rings before we went on with that hairstyle. I was like, oh, he looks like.
Tom: And he does pull the same faces as Nathan Lane, which is so weird.
Abigoliah: When he was in drag. And they both were for the Greta Garbo mockumentary. I really was like, That’s Nathan Lane that looks. He looks so much like Nathan Lane. I would describe watching not only, but also like just taking a warm bath. Like it was just so silly and enjoyable. And in our first sketch where they broke, which was the first Peter, Pete and Pete and Dud watching them break and other people do have been known to do it, but there’s something about watching them break made me feel like I was watching it live. It made me it.
Tom: You spot the line that Peter Cook had come up with and not used in rehearsals?
Abigoliah: No, I couldn’t figure out.
Tom: “Which cheek was that Dud?”
Abigoliah: Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense.
Tom: Yeah. It has this vitality. This freshness. You’re asking before whether outtakes for the young ones. And there may have been. In fact, I think there are some outtakes from season two on the DVD, and there was some stuff they just had to go back and do again, or some of the pre-filming they would have multiple goes at. You couldn’t retake any of that. You start filming and when the sketch is over, you stop, and that’s what you’ve got.
Abigoliah: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I really I really enjoyed it. One thing I wrote down was Rowan Atkinson heavily influenced by them.
Tom: Oh. Interesting question. So Well, so there were these big. I really I’ve touched on this. I haven’t really gone into it. So there were these big charity concerts in the late 70s and 80s, organised by John Cleese in conjunction with amnesty. They eventually became known as The Secret Policeman’s Ball. There were a few early ones which went under a different title, and one of the earliest ones, which I might have been pleasure from Her Majesty’s was kind of billed as oh, this is the coming together of the Beyond the Fringe team and the Monty Python team, separated by about ten years. So Monty Python’s 1969 and Beyond the Fringe starting in 61. So just just less than ten years. So, for example, Peter Cook and John Cleese did an EL Wisty sketch so that teaching ravens to fly underwater is very Peter Cook and the character of Arthur Streeb-greebling. He did that character or versions thereof multiple times. And pleasure of Her Majesty’s. He does this character called EL Wisty “The whale is not, in fact, a fish. It’s an insect. And it Lives on bananas.” John Cleese turns “The whale is an insect and lives on bananas!?” “No. It’s a joke.” So Peter Cook being incredibly deadpan, John Cleese being very frustrated, both playing very much to their strengths. But the star of the show was the then unknown Rowan Atkinson, and the final sketch is a sketch from Beyond the Fringe about a group of doomsday cultists sitting on top of the mountain, waiting for the end to come, and Rowan Atkinson. And this would have been worked out in rehearsals, I’m sure, but it’s just fascinating to compare the Beyond the Fringe version with the pleasure at Her Majesty’s version. Rowan Atkinson, taking Dudley Moore’s part, pads his part in the most extraordinary way.
Abigoliah: Go. Go on.
Tom: So there’s a bit of the sketch bit in the sketch where Dudley Moore says so Peter Cook is the the leader of this cult, and he’s talking about all the things that will happen and the heavens will open and a mighty wind will rent all asunder. And Dudley Moore says, Will this wind be so mighty as to lay low the mountains of the earth? And Peter says, no, it won’t be quite as mighty as that. That’s why we come up on the mountain, so we shall be safe. But when Rowan Atkinson does it, he’s got this, his t shirt over his head like this, and he’s sticking his his tongue in his mouth, and he’s like “Will this wind… be so mighty…” And Peter Cook goes “I can’t hear a bloody word. What’s he saying?” “Will this wind… “Will this wind. Yes, yes. Carry on, carry on, carry on.” “Will this wind…” “We don’t want to hear will this wind again. We’ve all heard that. We all know will this wind. What will this wind is what we want to know. Not will this wind. We’re all sick of will this wind.” “Will this wind…?” Etc etc.
Abigoliah: It goes on and on and on.
Tom: I’ll make the decision later whether to try and put a clip in or whether it’s my feeble impersonations.
Abigoliah: I like your impersonations. I’m for it.
Abigoliah: So one thing that my roommate in college had was like a tape of Rowan Atkinson’s, I guess, his comedy special, where he did a bunch of sketches. And one is I think one, he’s playing a maybe a school principal or headmaster is like, had to have him killed there. There’s something about what they were doing that reminded me so much of what Rowan Atkinson does in that special.
Tom: That one of things I’m really interested in is we did this podcast is the way in which all these people influence each other. And I think Peter Cook’s slowness and his deliberation and his very particular way with words has a definite descendant in Rowan Atkinson’s use of language. And that famous one man show also featuring Angus Deaton.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: Who would often tartly point out that he was the other man in Rowan Atkinson’s one man show. And that gave rise, among other things, to Mr. Bean, because a couple of those sketches were turned into the first Mr. Bean special.
Abigoliah: So did Peter Cook write most of the sketches that we just watched, or did they both write them?
Tom: I think they both contributed. But just as Peter Cook was the chief writer on Beyond the Fringe, I think he was probably the driving force behind not only, but also maybe that’s why the not only but also episodes were about 40% music, because that was Dudley Moore’s domain. Okay. Remember, this had been conceived originally as a vehicle for Dudley Moore rather than as a vehicle for the two of them, as a double act.
Abigoliah: Who’s your favorite of the two?
Tom: Peter Cook is a comedy genius. Yeah, he’s just a legend. And I love Dudley Moore. I think he’s great, but nothing can touch Peter Cook when he’s flying one of those other charity shows, maybe. It was also pleasure at Her Majesty’s. They did it for four nights, and on the first night some of the wrote a very curmudgeonly review, basically saying these, these old men dragging out this ancient material, we don’t need to see one leg too few again. Yes we do. Can’t they come up with something new? And the Jeremy Thorpe trial was going on while this was happening. Very prominent politician involved in a sex scandal.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: And it was widely thought that the judge’s summing up was incredibly biased. And so, in between shows two and three, Peter Cook wrote a new monologue spoofing this summing up, which was an absolute sensation. It was so well received. Not only was it in the filmed version of the show, they actually put it out as a record. So when when he was kind of up against the wall, he really could deliver.
Abigoliah: Turn it up.
Tom: Yeah.
Abigoliah: I don’t know why, but, like, I was really drawn to Dudley Moore. I might have to break up with Rik Mayall. Like, I was, I was quite I was besought, I was besought with that tiny little man. But so the actual show is the actual show. Not only, but also as funny as the hour we just watched.
Tom: I mean, I’ve given you what I think is the best. So I would say a typical show would have at least one sketch. As funny as anything, I just showed you a couple of musical interludes which aren’t trying to be funny, and then probably one sketch that just maybe hasn’t succeeded as well. Like I said, you saw in the titles clips of nuns bouncing on a trampoline in slow motion, which is a sketch that starts out okay, and then it is just like a minute and a half or two minutes of nuns on a trampoline, which is like, sure, but that’s not as far as I’m concerned. A laugh riot.
Abigoliah: And then the sketch where Dudley Moore was dressed as Angus from AC/DC. Yeah. The one where he learns about the birds and the bees from his dad. He’s dressed as Angus from AC/DC. I, I liked that, and in my head I was like, was this a scandalous thing to do in 1965? Because it’s not like when I asked you that it went a different direction than like actually talking about sex, but I was like this. I just really thought it was fun.
Tom: Wasn’t scandalous as impersonating the prime minister in 1961. So no, this this wouldn’t be one of those shows that was offending public decency, like somebody like Mary Whitehouse. Do you know that name? She was the self-appointed guardian of TV morality in the 1970s and 80s, and was forever whipping up press campaigns. Ban this filth. And she hated the young ones. But I don’t think even though 65 is a bit before she was really active, I don’t think she would have had a bad word to say about Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. She probably would be saying of Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, why can’t they do something like that? Nice Peter Cook and Dudley Moore used to do.
Abigoliah: Okay, I see, I see. I liked all of the only one that I was just kind of like in was the French documentary about
Tom: The North Circular.
Abigoliah: Yeah. Which is, which was funny, but I for me, it wasn’t just super laugh out loud.
Tom: I wanted to include a couple of pre-filmed things, because a typical show would include several of those as well. I don’t think they’re the strongest material. I think strongest material is Pete and Dud in the studio talking nonsense to each other. Yeah, that’s that’s what I’m there for.
Abigoliah: I would totally agree with that. I, I just really found it to be just so Enjoyable to watch.
Tom: Just so pleased you like our little tale, because I think that’s among the funniest things that’s ever been put on television.
Abigoliah: I really, really liked it. And and it was just so comfortable to watch. Maybe it’s just because everything that’s going on in the world, it was just like this is nice. It would be interesting to now I want to see their more subversive stuff. You know what I mean? Now I want to see the Prime Minister. I want to see.
Tom: Have you ever heard of Derek and Clive?
Abigoliah: No. Who are Derek and Clive?
Tom: So later in their careers? Not much later, but. But later. Things aren’t going quite so well. And Peter Cook is battling alcoholism and therefore is becoming less and less of a reliable comedy partner for Dudley Moore, who’s now pursuing his own career. But he gets a call out of the blue, and Peter Cook tells him to come to this recording studio and has this sort of scraps of paper in his pocket. And he’s clearly, even though it’s the middle of the afternoon, clearly been drinking all day, and they just start recording and improvising these foul comedy routines. And I guess this was originally supposed to be for their own amusement, but a bootleg started circulating, and it became so popular that eventually three albums, because they went back and did more recording sessions, three albums of Derek and Clive were released.
Abigoliah: I’m gonna write that down.
Tom: So you want subversive? This is the This is the product which taught 12 year old me the word cunt, which they use over and over again. “I was so incensed. I wrote a letter to the BBC. I couldn’t think where to put it. I just, I just wrote cunt on the envelope.” “That’s all you have to do, Pete. You just write cunt. London. It gets to the Director-General of the BBC.” They just you know they’re pissed. They’re improvising. Some of its nonsense. Some of its incredibly funny. A couple of bits are done in front of an audience, not a big audience. But there’s an audience there. The cover of one of the albums literally looks like a polythene bag full of vomit.
Abigoliah: Great. What do you reckon? This came out in the 70s?
Tom: Late 70s. Yeah. So you want subversive? They they can deliver. Why don’t you tell me what you think might have been included in other shows or future shows?
Abigoliah: Okay, this one I found tricky. All I could think is because you mentioned they did stuff about the Royal family.
Tom: In Beyond the Fringe.
Abigoliah: In Beyond the Fringe. Okay, so maybe this didn’t make it to the television show, but I was like, okay, did they do one where it was like Prince Philip in The Queen trying to change a tire and arguing like an old married couple. Or is there like, kind of like what they did with Greta Garbo? Is there a version where they did something with Judy Garland or a spoof on Somewhere Over the Rainbow? If they were to do something today, the Greta Garbo mockumentary made me be like, I want to watch them do something similar, but talk about the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce romance.
Tom: Oh my God, I would.
Abigoliah: Love I would love to see that. This was hard to come up with. What else they might do?
Tom: A lot of it is either spoofing specific things. I asked you if you’d ever seen any of the Gerry Anderson puppet series like Thunderbirds, and you said you hadn’t, but there’s a very elaborate spoof of things like Stingray and Supercar. I think it’s called something like Super Thunder Stingray, where they’re dressed up as puppets and they’re doing all this, which is incredibly funny, but not if you haven’t seen what they’re spoofing.
Abigoliah: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom: So yeah. And the Pete and Dud dialogues, I mean, they, they had many more of those and talked about other topics besides those are the two that are most celebrated, which included them. So tell us a little bit more about what happened subsequently.
Abigoliah: Yeah. Where where are they now? Both deceased I assume so.
Tom: So not long after the.
Abigoliah: I’m a widow.
Tom: I’m afraid so. Twice over.
Abigoliah: Twice over. I know how to pick em.
Tom: Not long after, Beyond the Fringe, Peter Cook opened a nightclub in London called The Establishment, and it became the hottest place in town for new comedy in the early 60s.
Abigoliah: Is it now called the Groucho Club?
Tom: I don’t know where it was, actually, or what happened to it since but it was like you couldn’t get in there. It was, I can’t remember. It was some famous person. It was full and and he couldn’t get in. And Peter Cook himself was on the door, and he said, don’t you know who I am? And Peter Cook calls and says, excuse me, does anyone know who this person is? He seems to have forgotten. Anyway, while he and Dudley Moore were performing Beyond the Fringe on Broadway, the BBC came to the Establishment Club looking for talent for a new television series, and the television series, essentially based on the establishment, was fronted not by Peter Cook but by aspiring comedian David Frost.
Abigoliah: David Frost. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Peter Cook.
Tom: A man who was known to hold a grudge never forgave the man he saw as a talentless wannabe for taking his starring role on TV. He once saved David Frost from drowning in a swimming pool, and he said later, that was the only thing in his whole life he really regretted.
Abigoliah: Wow, Peter Cook sounds like a troubled, spicy man. Like most comedic geniuses. Wonderfully hilarious. Horrible to be around.
Tom: Horrible to not make life easy. So they took Not Only But Also to Australia. They made films together. They made a terrific film called Bazzled.
Abigoliah: Bedazzled. I’m gonna write that down.
Tom: Directed by Stanley Donen. Have you heard of Stanley Donen?
Abigoliah: No.
Tom: He was. He’s best known as the director of Singin’ in the Rain.
Abigoliah: Big fan. I know his work.
Tom: And so he was a fan of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. And he came to England to film this, this crazy film about a young man in love with a chip shop waitress who is offered seven wishes by the devil.
Abigoliah: Who’s the devil? Is it Peter Cook? Yeah.
Tom: Yeah, yeah.
Abigoliah: And because he was in real life.
Tom: And he wrote and starred in an amazing, incredibly satirical film called The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer, which is one of my all time favourites.
Abigoliah: Peter Cook did?
Tom: Peter Cook. But these are seen as classics, as minor classics. But they weren’t big successes at the time. And so Peter Cook is not like a bankable star. He was given his own television chat show, which was so terrible it was pulled off the air after three episodes.
Abigoliah: Is it because he has a disdain for everyone?
Tom: Well, it’s because Peter Cook on a chat show is great because he will be a force of chaos. Yeah, but making him the host of the show doesn’t work, and he’s kind of not really interested in what anyone else has to say.
Abigoliah: Yeah, yeah, I can picture that now.
Tom: Meantime, Dudley Moore is pursuing acting work in Hollywood. He gets cast in the hit Hollywood movie ten opposite Bo Derek and then the mega-hit Arthur in 1981.
Abigoliah: Was it was Michael Caine in that one?
Tom: No.
Abigoliah: Is Michael Caine in Arthur any? Arthur? Okay.
Tom: John Gielgud had a second lease of life in his career because he played the disdainful butler.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: And Liza Minnelli as the female lead.
Abigoliah: In the original.
Tom: Arthur. Yeah.
Abigoliah: Wow.
Tom: But tall, good looking Peter Cook is enraged and consumed with jealousy at the sight of his tiny, club footed friend becoming a Hollywood sex symbol. Yeah. And he descends further into drink and drugs. Guest appearances in terrible films like Yellowbeard. He’s in Supergirl in an awful film called Without a Clue, but he has one final moment of greatness. On the chat show, Clive Anderson Talks Back, an edition of that show in 1993. And maybe we’ll save that story for another day.
Abigoliah: No, I want to know.
Tom: Very briefly, Peter Cook wanted to come on the show. You know Clive Anderson? Yeah. He’s the original host of Whose Line Is It anyway? On British television.
Abigoliah: Famously show hosts the Chortle Awards.
Tom: Indeed, so had been a television scriptwriter, writing sketches for other comedians for Not The Nine O’Clock News, for Smith and Jones. All these people. Spitting image before then. And then had his own chat show. And Peter Cook wanted to come on it, but he wanted to come on in character.
Abigoliah: Which character?
Tom: Well, so none of this was like trailed. I was just watching Clive Anderson Talks back in the mid-nineties because I was a comedy fan.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: And I can’t remember who the first character is, but he comes out. He’s clearly Peter Cook.
Abigoliah: Wait, you watched this live?
Tom: I watched it go out on television, watched it in the audience.
Abigoliah: Right. Sorry. That’s what I mean. You watched it as it happened. Peter Cook for the world.
Tom: Clearly, Peter Cook comes out, but he’s introduced as. Which character was the old judge, Sir James Beecham. And they have this incredibly funny interview. And then he goes off and there’s a little comedy sketch, as there would be in between the guests on climate and talks back and then introduces the next guest who’s this mad UFO enthusiast, also played by Peter Cook. Peter Cook was all of the guests on this episode of Clive Anderson Talks Back.
Abigoliah: That sounds like so much fun.
Tom: It’s incredibly funny. But the way they had to do it was because Clive Anderson needs to know what questions to ask.
Abigoliah: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom: So they literally had to assign a researcher to each of these four characters to interview Peter Cook, who was just improvising, and then having to try and remember at least half of what he’d improvised with the researchers and then give at least some of the same answers back when interviewed by Clive Anderson. But it worked so well, and it’s so funny.
Abigoliah: And Clive Anderson was a good is a good improviser.
Tom: He’s a very good he.
Abigoliah: Yeah. He can play around with stuff like that. Is that something we’re going to watch later on? Is that why you wanted to hold that off?
Tom: I mean, it’s not part of I haven’t in my planning got that far, but it does exist. We can watch it.
Abigoliah: As you’re describing, kind of what became of them. It seems like Peter Cook is this tortured artist who always thought he deserved more. Am I right that Dudley Moore just can’t believe what was happening to him the entire time, and accidentally wound up opposite Liza minnelli in something.
Tom: Later in life, Peter Cook would take to ringing up local radio stations in character as Sven from Norway, just to amuse himself.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Just because.
Abigoliah: Just wow. And then when? When did they die?
Tom: So after Clive Anderson talks back Peter Cook had passed within the next two years.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Maybe never having bettered that sketchy he wrote when he was 18. He was 57 when he died. And Dudley Moore carried on making films and television appearances playing piano. He suffered a series of strokes in the late 90s. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1999, and he died in 2002, having made it to 66. So still not old by modern standards.
Abigoliah: Am I right in saying that all the comedians who we’ve talked about, who have passed, passed way younger than they should have? There’s a Python that’s gone.
Tom: Terry Jones had a decent innings. Graham Chapman died very young. Rik Mayall died very young. Yeah, the other Young Ones are still alive. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore both died young by modern standards. Peter Cook, really, 57, is no age at all.
Abigoliah: Was it drinking?
Tom: Basically, yeah. Yeah, he was he was. You see him making those later appearances, he’s in in one of the television episodes of Whose Line Is It anyway? And he does not look well.
Abigoliah: That’s so tragic, because what we just watched were just these just two silly, young, beautiful men making such fun, enjoyable stuff. Oh, it makes me sad that Peter Cook got sad and bitter and drunk.
Abigoliah: Drugs and alcohol do not make you a better comedian, children. Trust me.
Tom: All right. So where does this go? On the shelf of comedy glory? Or does it it remain in? What do we call it?
Abigoliah: We call it the bargain bin.
Tom: The bargain bin and the. The shelf of fame. The shelf of fame.
Abigoliah: The shelf of fame, the hall of fame, the shelf of fame. You know, I really thought the young ones were gonna stay number one for a while. Maybe it’s where I’m at in my mind today. But that just felt so good to me. It made me laugh, but it also relaxed me. Like I feel like.
Tom: Young Ones is not relaxing.
Abigoliah: No, it’s not relaxing at all. I feel like on days when I just need a moment or say I’m working and I just need 15 minutes of like, I just need to shake my head. I could put on a Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sketch and feel cleansed and feel inspired. So on that note, they go on the shelf of fame. They are now number one and the Young Ones is now number two. And you were so afraid.
Tom: I just thought especially with Alan a Dale, which I, like I said, I think is so funny, but this is my favorite part. Alan staring at that going, I have no idea what is going on or why this is supposed to be funny. They’re just singing the same thing over and over again.
Abigoliah: But I want to join in.
Tom: All right, so our show for next time completes a kind of informal quartet of men. They were all men who defined generations of British comedy. So if we let Rik Mayall stand for that alternative comedy generation, and we let John Cleese stand for the Monty Python era. So we have Peter Cook, John Cleese and Rik Mayall, and the fourth of these four comedians of the comedy apocalypse is Spike Milligan. Okay. He is somebody that all of the other three talk about, because we’re going to be listening to The Goon Show.
Abigoliah: This is the Goon Show.
Tom: And this, in many ways, is Patient Zero. But I think you’ll understand why I didn’t want to start our journey here. Even though all these strands end up coming back to The Goon Show eventually.
Abigoliah: I kind of like this mixing it up and throwing in, you know, different times. All right.
Tom: So we’re going to be listening to series five, episode two, which is called The Lost Gold Mine, which I just think is typical and also maybe a little bit more accessible than some of their stuff. And then we’re going to listen to series seven, episode 19, which is called the Mysterious Punch Up the Conker. And that’s included because it contains one of Spike Milligan’s most celebrated comic riffs.
Abigoliah: Okay, I’m a little nervous to do a radio program. You were nervous about not only. But also I’m a little nervous about about this one. We’ll see.
Tom: How was the last time you listened to something on the radio? I mean, I guess you listen to podcasts, podcasts, Podcast podcast where they’re doing something else.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: You’ll have to give this your undivided attention.
Abigoliah: Yeah. I haven’t listened to, like, a radio play. I don’t think ever. I’ve watched them. I’ve been in a live recording of a BBC like, sketch show and stuff like that. This is something I don’t search out. You know, probably the last time I listened to anything that won’t be close to this, but might touch it was when I was a kid. My dad really liked Prairie Home Companion by Garrison Keillor. So that’s the last time I ever listened to, like, a radio show in any earnestness. Yeah, this is gonna be an interesting one as well.
Tom: So come back next time to see if the show makes it on to the shelf of fame, as I shall now try to remember to call it.
Abigoliah: Yes, like the Hall of Fame. Shelf of Fame. I think it makes perfect sense. Guys, thank you so much for listening. Remember, if you want to support the podcast? Please like and subscribe. You can leave a review or share it with a friend. And don’t forget that if you want to watch us do this, you can watch all British Comedy explained on YouTube. Until next time, I’m Abigoliah Schamaun.
Tom: And I’m Tom Salinsky. Goodbye.
Abigoliah: Goodbye. Alan a dale. Alan a dale. Alan a dale. Hey hey hey. And then the whistling part, which I can’t whistle either. So I get it. So it’s like. Oh. Great stuff.