Who is popular today?

His influence is everywhere – but is the great, groundbreaking comedian being forgotten? Twenty-five years after his death, we reassess his impact
The reports of Peter Cook’s death on 9 January 1995 had no difficulty arriving at a consensus about him, but then there had been plenty of time to consider his legacy. Although Cook was only 57, his triumphs and innovations were generally agreed to lie in the distant past. There was Beyond the Fringe, the groundbreaking revue he wrote and performed with Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore, and which brought new bite to British satire. There was Not Only … But Also, the TV sketch comedy in which he and Moore played Pete and Dud, a pair of flat-capped, mackintosh-wearing amateur philosophers. And there were the improvised Derek and Clive albums that pushed comedy into the realms of scabrous obscenity.
Even toward the end of his life, Cook was still an inspired improviser. This could be in an official capacity (in Why Bother?, upper-class braggart Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, one of his longest-running characters, was quizzed by the young satirist Chris Morris) or in an impromptu one (he would call late-night radio phone-ins under assorted guises including Sven the Norwegian fisherman). But such activity did nothing to subdue the image of Cook as a man with a bright future behind him. Continue reading...