Product Description

There are those who say – and Peter Cook himself was among them – that most of his humour was autobiographical. Others – and Peter Cook himself was among them -contend that this simply isn’t the case. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the middle.

Peter Cook made President Kennedy wait in line to see him and visited Elizabeth Taylor in her dressing room. He befriended tramps and fundraised for CND. He was capable of extraordinary kindnesses and occasional cruelties. He helped define comedy and satire for a generation, but ended his life a recluse. Harry Thompson has produced the first ever comprehensive biography of this influential and fascinating subject who came up with some of the funniest sketches and greatest jokes of all time.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #144142 in Books
• Published on: 2006-12-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 528 pages

Guardian
`Unputdownable, level-headed and intelligent'

Review

‘Lively and penetrating’

( Independent on Sunday )

‘At last, this book explains the mystery of Peter Cook – how someone so funny, so loveable, so handsome, could make such a total hash of his life. Harry Thompson’s pedigree in television comedy makes him an authoritative commentator on Cook’s performances’

(Lynne Barber, Daily Telegraph )

‘Unputdownable, level-headed and intelligent’

(Nicholas Lezard, Guardian )

‘This definitive biography…as heartbreaking as it is entertaining’

(Jessica Berens, Times Literary Supplement )

About the Author
Harry Thompson was the inventor and editor of many TV comedy series including Have I Got News For You and Never Mind the Buzzcocks. He was the author of acclaimed bestsellers, including Peter Cook: A Biography. His most recent book was a historical novel, This Thing of Darkness. He worked as a producer at Talkback TV and in his spare time ran an infamous cricket team, the Captain Scott XI. He died in November 2005.

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Customer Reviews

Utterly compelling biography
On the presumption that it will mainly be fans of Peter Cook's comedy who pick this book up, I can assure potential readers that you will often laugh out loud at the stream of reproduced work from his long career and anecdotes from his strange life.

More than that though, you get a thoroughly convincing assessment of Cook's long, slow descent into alcoholism (and most other vices you care to name), depression, loneliness, and fear of failure. It is perhaps a testament to 'Cookie' that he could sink so low, and so slowly, and yet remain so loved and admired by anyone, star name or not, who came into contact with him.

It is quite astonishing that a book could be this funny and at the same time so sad. The best biography I've ever read.

Excellent
A top-notch biography of a great comedian, one whose gift for comedic improvisation was too specialised. Like Peter Sellers, Cook comes across as a melancholy, introverted man who constantly felt the need to wear a mask, to act the part of 'Peter Cook'. His life story comes across as a greek tragedy - his rise is meteoric, and his decline and fall are inevitable, and entirely self-inflicted. The imagine of Peter Cook's talent languishing at home, telephoning late-night radio phone-in shows, is extremely depressing. That said, there's an unexpected upturn near the end (his classic appearance on 'Clive Anderson Talks Back'), and the book thankfully doesn't gloss over the brilliant, brutal 'Derek and Clive' LPs.

It would make an excellent film, too.

A fine biography of a difficult subject
...This was of particular interest to me because I wrote a book calledSOMETHING WONDERFUL RIGHT AWAY about Second City, the Americancounterpart to BEYOND THE FRINGE...and I couldn't help but compare and contrast the British "satire boom" with the one in America and think about what was happening in both cultures that a similar response arose simultaneously on two sides of the ocean. I was particularly interested because, though I grew up in Chicago, Cook was an important influence on me, and because I interviewed him and Dudley Moore when they were playing their two-man show on Broadway. According to this book, when I met them their relationship was about to go into a steep decline because of Cook's drinking. I must say that he hid it from me very well, and the interview was a good one (though Moore apparently had been playing too hard the night before and kept nodding off). Anyway, Thompson's biography made me laugh outloud a lot and it pained me as much. Shortly after Cook died, I was introduced to Stanley Donen, who directed BEDAZZLED. I remarked on Cook's death and Donen instantly remarked, "Angriest man I've ever met." Thompson's book doesn't so much convey the anger Donen saw as the profound and soul-destroying cynicism that (to paraphrase a line from Cook) moved him to inertia. Excellent job.