I’m a very new Peter Cook fan and I was just wondering if you’d heard or seen anything about the pieces he wrote for the magazine “Punch” as a child (I believe a teenager) which was where his comedy career basically started…or this musical he wrote up, “Black and White Blues”.
These are more relics than anything, I was just curious about them LOL!
Hiya! Thank you, that's so kind to say!! And we're all about relics here, so all curiosity is welcome! :)
Sorry for how long this answer is, lol!
Punch stuff!
I couldn't remember coming across any actual Punch writing before, so I had a search. I was glad to see that the Internet Archive seems to have a gazillion (4,796 to be precise) results for the magazine, from 1841-1992, in its collection of the periodical; surely I could source a Cook contribution or two with a little sleuthing!
Unfortunately, from what I can tell, it looks like his writings were published in a section titled "Charivaria." A browse through some of the issues from the time period in which Cook would have been active seems to indicate that this portion of the magazine didn't include the names of the authors of the brief comedic blurbs. Darn!!
But! We do have some Cook quotes on his Punch pieces, even if determining which ones are his is pretty difficult.
Of his Punch contributions, Cook recalled in a November 1981 interview with TV Guide:
"Every week I'd send an item to Punch for a column called 'Charivaria,' and every week I'd get a check for five guineas - it came to about $30 in those days. I was very rich for a preadolescent. But then I was assailed by puberty, which sapped my penchant for writing 'Charivaria' in some mysterious way. I never sold another item to Punch after the age of 14."
Here's more Punch info, again from Cook himself! In a 1975 Studs Terkel interview with Cook and Dudley Moore during their Good Evening tour, Cook notes:
"I started writing professionally when I was about 13 for the English humorous magazine, humorous in quotes, Punch, and I used to send in little items and I got paid three guineas a time, and I thought, 'Well, if I can get in two items a week, I got a living.' I was very rich at school, and then when I was about 15, my comic invention for Punch dried up, in that none of my bits were accepted, which I later regarded as a compliment, because it's such a boring magazine."
(The full audio of that interview is available, as well as its transcript, on The WFMT Studs Terkel Radio Archive. A very neat thing, on a very neat archive!)
The Black and White Blues stuff!
And now we come to The Black and White Blues! Cook wrote and performed voices in this show for the Marionette Society at Radley College in 1956, with music by Michael Bawtree. While it was popular enough at the time to produce a recording of the show, it seems Cook looked back on this early piece about as fondly as Punch, as he continued in the Terkel interview:
"But I was writing from [the Punch-contributing days] on, and I was doing shows at school, marionette shows, writing musicals, and there are still people who come up to me, I wrote a terrible musical called The Black and White Blues about a missionary band that went to Africa to convert the African people through this wonderful music and all it was was doggerel and very smutty."
Cook added:
"And there are a few records in existence. I'd like to destroy them all. But occasionally people come up to me and say, 'You know that Black and White Blues thing you did at Radley […] absolutely fantastic, best thing you ever did in your life.' This […] terrible memorial to my puberty hanging around, is about 150 copies left."
The Radley College Archives actually has the audio of The Black and White Blues! (Cook's terrible puberty memorial lives on.) The website notes that "Michael Bawtree gave permission for it to be reproduced here in 2022." Nice!
For anyone who plans to give The Black and White Blues a listen, do take heed of the website's flag about the recording: "WARNING Sensitive content."
So, while Cook's Punch bits are a lot harder to source, it's really, really neat that Radley and Bawtree made one of Cook's earliest pieces available to hear!
I want to apologize ahead of time for my poor writing.
I have the questions about ''Beyond the Fringe''.
Peter Cook solo "T.V.P.M."
Does P.M. mean Prime Minister?
What does T.V. mean?
Hi! Thank you for this great question! No worries at all, your writing is fine! :)
You're right! "P.M." does mean "Prime Minister." "T.V." stands for "Television."
In Peter Cook's "T.V.P.M." monologue in Beyond the Fringe, the "P.M." being satirized is then-serving British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, and the "T.V." part of the title is "a reference to the increasing influence television was having in influencing election campaigns."
(So basically, "T.V.P.M." is legendary in comedy history, stage history, political history, AND television history!)
Hiii! I'm kinda desperate for the material Youtube has taken down, again. I can't even get them on Wayback machine. They are the 1971 Australian special, pseudolene, Long Distance sketch and Val Doonican show 1971. Is there anyway you could upload them somewhere so I can download?
Hiya!! Thank you for getting in touch! :) The Cook content craving is totally understandable, lol!
I'm afraid I wasn't the source of an excellent masterpost I think (?) you might be referencing that has/had all those lovely links - 'twas just a humble reblog on my end!
I do remember that many years ago, back when I started up this Tumblr, I uploaded "Long Distance" to Vimeo (and somehow it's still there).
But otherwise - I'm so so sorry, I don't have the other files you're seeking… If I do come across a link to them I will let you know!!! :)
hi- i was wondering if there is any pic/gif/etc of Not Only But Always that i can reblog. also, if i may ask, what's your opinion about the movie? i heard that alan bennett didn't like it.
Thanks so much for the ask, @rnurder-one! :) Great questions!! But unfortunately - I only have unhelpful answers to give you, I'm afraid!
Somehow, I have purported this Tumblr to be dedicated to Peter Cook, yet in eleven dang years I haven't posted any Not Only But Always stuff. So sadly, nothing to reblog on that front...
And, here's more bad-fannishness from me - I haven't actually seen NOBAlways! :O I am ashamed to say it and will work on fixing that!!
But! There's gotta be someone out there who can weigh in (with a reblog/added comment, etc.) on Not Only But Always, the 2004 Channel 4 TV movie about Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Bonus points if ya got pics and gifs! :)
Thank you for this great question and info! "Long Distance" is such a fun sketch!
The Goodbye Again LP, featuring a selection of audio recordings of the sketches from the 1968 series of the same name, includes "Long Distance." As you mention, its audio recording is a little longer than the sketch as aired on TV.
In the Goodbye Again LP audio, we're treated to an additional bit with Peter Cook's character getting on the phone with Dudley Moore's girlfriend Penny to try to cover for the cheatin' Moore. Cook's a smooth-talking guy with lounge-y background music to match, but the boys are still caught in a lie!
I'm not sure why the LP audio includes that part but the TV series didn't, but my very amateur guess is the sketch was edited for time for the TV airing. It's kind of fun to have the sketch in two formats - so nice, you can enjoy it twice! :)
This isn't an ask but there isn't a reply function on the post. My older sister was too scared to go backstage so she waited for me at the train station. I told them I was "an incipient actress" which made them both laugh! There was a couple there but they left by the time Peter came downstairs. Dudley was so acrobatic. There's a post on my blog of Stephen Fry angrily refuting that Peter "didn't reach his potential" after Peter's death. They were good friends.
This story got even better - how neat that you made them laugh!! :) Thank you so much, @cuddyclothes, for this addition to your memory - what an exciting thing!! (I'm sorry the reply function isn't showing up - not sure why!!)
That's always been such a cool thing that Stephen Fry defended Cook against claims of Cook not reaching his potential! To have been a fly on the wall of that friendship - I bet Fry and Cook had some big laughs together! :)
Hello! Thanks for providing the link to the torrent "Success Story". But I have tried downloading this again and because there are not any seeders or leechers the download won't start or it's going to be extremely slow. I hope I can find it somewhere else =)
It’s available on this official DVD, and otherwise there’s this torrent, which has it as one of its files, although it might also be slow. You can also try to see if it’s on —, although you need to join them.
Hey, it’s from “Success Story: Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, a 1974 BBC documentary that catches up with the pair in New York as they star in their sketch review Good Evening’”. It’s just Peter and Dudley chatting together after one of their shows. It also shows some of their sketches from Not Only…But Also. It’s great just listening to them converse and move in and out of different characters and personas while they do :]
Thanks a bunch for the info! :D
(After a quick Google search, I discovered I must be out of the loop, or living under a rock or something - I didn't realize that the DVD version of The Best Of What's Left Of had this doc as a special feature. If you're like me and still only have the VHS version, you'll be happy to learn that Netflix has the DVD! Good news, that.)
