Peter Cook: A Biography

Gives very thorough life of Mr. Cook. Well-balanced, good journalism, avoiding sensationalism. Just wish there were more photos!

This is so much more than an excellent account of Cook's life, it is a beautifully written, towering achievement that will have you howling with laughter one minute and howling with pain the next. Essential.

Peter Cook was a man of contradictions: an amazing talent who eventually failed in the harsh world of show business; a kind, friendly, good-humoured man who destroyed his marriages and repelled his best friends through drunkenness and cruelty. Now that is a challenge for a biographer - and Harry Thompson has risen superbly to the occasion. This 480-page blockbuster, crammed with detailed reminiscences, gives an unparalleled insight into the personality of this most English of comedians. What a long way it is from Peter Cook's grandfather, a railway official in Kuala Lumpur who shot himself under the stress of a big promotion, and his father - a "sea-green incorruptible" colonial administrator - to the party he threw at the Cobden Working Men's Club in 1993, where the Rolling Stones rubbed shoulders with the Monty Python crew, two England cricket captains, Julian Clary and a mass of other celebrities. So tight was the scrum that Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller never managed to greet their host at all. Like a stock market boom/bust cycle, the ups and downs of Cook's career were hugely amplified by the dictates of fashion. He was lucky enough to catch the early 1960s satire wave, and quickly became so sought-after that President Kennedy and his wife actually had to go and meet him, after he declined an invitation to the White House. Other than becoming global dictator, there was hardly anywhere to go after that but down - and Cook's perfectionism and lack of ambition conspired to make the descent almost as fast as the rise. Cook's attitude to alcohol may have been at the root of his downfall. He simply wasn't prepared to give it up, and - like many people to whom money is no object - found himself drinking more and more. He even turned up for shows hardly able to stand, although he redeemed himself by recovering miraculously when the curtain went up. Like Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, who had a similar problem with heroin, Cook showed a curious fatalism about the habit that he knew very well was killing him and driving away the people who meant most to him. Also like Garcia, he managed to kick it in his final years, when his health had already been ruined. Like all great biographies, this book involves us in the tragedy of success that contains the seeds of its own destruction. It is also the story of a tremendously talented and likeable man.

This is a fascinating biography of a man who bored himself to death. Surreal, satirical and often plain silly, Peter Cook's comedy was like Monty Python with fangs. Achieving everything he could hope for at the beginning of his career, he spent the rest of his life looking for a vehicle, suffering the same fate as countless other unique comic talents - years ahead of his time, he was eventually marginalised by an establishment that couldn't find a role for him, ending his career with a few brilliant flourishes and a sense that he never really fitted in.The biography itself is the best that can be hoped for - despite a lack of support from Cook's last wife, Harry Thompson interviews almost everybody who knew him, and the book covers everything he did up to and including 'Why Bother?', with Chris Morris. At the end of the book you'll want to go out and buy the complete 'Beyond the Fringe' recordings, and a higher compliment cannot be paid.