For me, the book's title evokes My Brother was an Only Child by Jack Douglas, who was a comedy writer for Jack Paar. Peter Cook too was a comedy writer and also a comedian
("number one in the Comedians' Comedian" poll). For this "Yank," his greatest claim to fame was his partnership with Dudley Moore. Together they made one of my favorite comedies: Bedazzled. They also appeared in movies that I didn't find as funny as that 1967 parody of Faust, e.g., The Wrong Box, The Bed-Sitting Room, and The Hound of the Baskervilles. But, in the flippant parlance of Andrew Dice Clay, they can't all be golden.
Before teaming with Moore, Cook achieved stardom in Beyond the Fringe, which also featured Moore, Alan Bennett, and Jonathan Miller. A box office and critically acclaimed hit both in England and on Broadway, the satirical revue "spawned" irreverent TV programs such as That Was the Week That Was (born from Cook's nightclub The Establishment) and Monty Python's Flying Circus. The success of Beyond the Fringe prompted the BBC to offer Dudley Moore his own TV show, which Cook joined at Moore's invitation and which became Not Only But Also. A decade later, Cook and Moore scored another Broadway hit with another comedy revue, Good Evening. Ultimately, Moore's star ascended while Cook's veered off on a trajectory that found him pseudonymously calling a talk show as a Norwegian named Sven obsessed about fish.
As with practically everything, humor and comedy are subjective. Whether one finds Peter Cook's satirical and surreal sketches, routines, and improvisations humorous will be a matter of taste. I did not find everything in William Cook's compilation humorous. Chapter Six, Private Eye, offers Peter Cook's contributions to the satirical journal Private Eye that had been started by Peter Ustinov and taken over by Cook. After reading about a quarter of it, I bailed. Cook's "outrageous nonsense fantasies" just did not grab me. I skipped Chapter Twelve, Sports Reporter entirely; I'm not a sports fan. The material that tremendously tickled my funny bone consisted of Peter Cook's sketches with Dudley Moore -- the chapter Pete & Dud being a hilarious highlight, particularly their Not Only But Also skit "Film Stars."
After Dud reports being passionately accosted by "bloody Anna Magnani, up to her knees in rice, screaming at me, 'Amore me, por favor!", Pete commiserates . . .
Pete: ". . . I had the same bloody trouble about two nights ago. I come in, about half past eleven at night. We'd been having a couple of drinks, I remember. I come in, get into bed, you see, feeling quite sleepy. I could feel the lids of me eyes beginning to droop, you see -- a bit of the droop in the eyes. I was just about to drop off when suddenly -- tap, tap, tap at the bloody window pane. I looked out. You know who it was."
Dud: "Who?"
Pete: "Greta Garbo. Bloody Greta Garbo, stark naked, save for a short nightie, hanging on to the window sill, and I could see her knuckles all white, saying, 'Peter, Peter.' You know how those bloody Swedes go on. I said, 'Get out of it!' Bloody Greta Garbo. She wouldn't go, she wouldn't go. I had to smash her down with a broomstick -- poke her off the window sill. She fell down onto the pavement with a great crash."
Dud: "She just had a nightie on, is that all?"
Pete: "That's all she had on, Dud."
Dud: "See-through?"
Pete: "A see-through short nightie, nothing else -- except for her dark glasses, of course. Dreadful business."
The, to me, hilarious Pete & Dud transcripts along with the equally delightful Chapter Eleven, Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling (nattering on about The Twelve Days of Christmas), and the inclusions of the classic Cook and Moore routines Frog & Peach and One Leg Too Few more than compensated for the parts of Tragically I Was an Only Twin that I found . . . (Ahem!) less than brilliant.
"Comic genius." The father of modern satire." . "The funniest Englishman since Chaplin." "The funniest man in England." "The funniest man in the world." These are the accolades showered upon Peter Cook by his peers and contemporaries. In a 1979 TV interview with Cook, journalist and "television presenter" David Dimbleby tells Cook that people who worked with him regard him as a revolutionary who "totally changed the face of English humor" and credit that he "showed them the way or was the most inspired humorist of all of them."
"Well, this is no time for false modesty," responded Cook, not entirely kidding, "I agree completely."
IMO, the perfect punchline from a very, Very, VERY funny wit whose legacy deserves to be preserved and honored, and, I hope, shall be, thanks to Editor William Cook.
Excerpts from Tragically I Was an Only Twin -- The Complete Peter Cook
