Peter Cook picked by Jon Harvey aka Count Binface

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0:39Jonathan Miller:BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts.

0:43Jon Harvey:E.L. Wistie is not a name you hear mentioned much anymore. His heyday was in the 60s on TV, stage and radio too. That was where you heard his nasally tones offering some sage advice on anything from spinach to tadpoles, peace through nudism, or maybe just walking over the hills. I couldn't get enough of him. He reminded me of some of my relations.

1:09Richa:That's where poets wander. He's er the hill and dale. Other people wander over hill and dale. But not the poets. They go er. They think it sounds better. Anyway, when he's wandered er the hill and er the dale, he comes back again for a bit of tea and then he settles down for the evening till he falls asleep. It's not much of a life, is it?

1:35Jon Harvey:I love D.L. Wistie, so I'm delighted that he's our great life today, or at least his creator is. Peter Cook, dead, but not dead. Such is the power of this show. He says everything began at school.

1:49Ian Hislop:There was one man who waited at the high table. It was called Mr Boylett and he was quite a curious man. He'd say, I saw a very interesting stone today. And I'd say, oh yes, why did he say it? He'd say, just out by the driveway I saw it. And I thought I saw it move. So I said, oh yes. And he said, it's probably worth something, that stone. If they move, they must be valuable. I had long conversations with him about moving stones and twigs he'd seen which had hovered in a strange way and might be valuable. So I was going around Radley sort of doing boyletisms. I thought I saw it move, became a catchphrase for anything.

2:32Jon Harvey:And here he is later on, this time with Dudley Moore.

2:36Richa:Here, you've been furreting around in my sandwich box, haven't you? I certainly have and I've found something not altogether connected with sandwiches. I refer, of course, to Blauvetter's Encyclopaedia of Sexual Knowledge. How do you explain this? I found it on the heath, Pete, and I thought I'd better keep it dry, you know, until someone claimed it. You've been hiding it away, aren't you, because you're ashamed of it? No, I haven't. I just kept it there for safekeeping. You shouldn't be ashamed of sex, Dad. It's no good hiding your sex away in your sandwich tin. That won't do any good. Bring it out in the open.

3:11Jon Harvey:Peter Cook and Dudley Moore on stage in Celebration Celebration, a radio show from 1975. My guest, who is responsible for picking Peter Cook, describes himself as Earth's most renowned novelty politician. A tough gig, really, as the competition is pretty fierce. His name is John Harvey, comedian, presenter, but you may have spotted him at various recent elections, standing against Boris Johnson, then Rishi Sunak as Count Binface. Before that, John, you were Lord Buckethead. Tell me about these alter egos.

3:48Harry Thompson:Yes, a friend of mine and I are absolute lovers, finding the strangest movies you possibly can, the ones that are so bad they're ingenious. And it took us to a film which was a kind of Star Wars parody. The baddie is a kind of Darth Vader-like creature with this cylinder on his head. He's only called the leader in the film, but in the credits he's called Lord Buckethead. And you look him up online like I did afterwards and it said, did you know somebody dressed up as Lord Buckethead took on Margaret Thatcher in the election in Finchley? And you go online and there he is sitting next to Thatcher.

4:21Harry Thompson:And then it said, did you know someone also did the same thing in 92 against John Major? What it was is the bloke who'd bought the rights to sell this video, this sort of ropey film in the UK, he was just trying to flog the film. He was holding the VHS tape. Then it disappeared for 25 years. And my friend and I thought, well, let's bring it back for a laugh. Before we knew it, on the Thursday night, I was standing next to Theresa May in that 2017 general election. I said to her in the leisure centre in Maidenhead, just good evening, Prime Minister. And she sort of very politely, but slightly petrified, replied, good evening.

4:56Harry Thompson:That was it. Because, of course, she'd detonated her own majority. I think she had bigger fish to fry. Then my phone melted because it sort of went viral. It was the first time it had been done in the viral age. And two days later, I was being flown first class to be on John Oliver's show in the States. And it just went crazy from there. But the one that really chatted to me was Boris. He couldn't get enough of it.

5:17Jon Harvey:These alter egos are kind of facets of the Lord of the Omniverse, which brings us back to you. What are you trying to do with these inventions?

5:27Harry Thompson:Do you have an aim? The number one is to make people laugh. You've got to hope you can do that. They talk in comedy about finding your clown. And before I really did Count Binface and before that Buckethead, I was mainly a producer, probably the only person who can claim to have a producer credit on the thick of it. Have I got news for you? And yes, Minister. Falling into this character has sort of started the tap a bit like Peter Cook and it keeps gushing. And I love doing it. But I think there's also something else, which is I've had Lords in the Houses of Parliament say they like the fact that I do it because it proves on election night, you as a former MP or the Prime Minister of the day has to stand against whoever of us wants to stand against them.

6:14Harry Thompson:And it's beautiful because just for that moment, we are the arbiters, the voters, that is. And then along with it comes crazy things like beating Britain first in the London mayoral election in 2024. So hopefully there's positivity with it. Let's get back to Peter Cook. Why are you picking him today? I mean, he was brilliant, for one thing, as we've already heard in the clips. But also, I couldn't believe that after more than 600 episodes of Great Lives, nobody had picked him before. And the comedy got me into his life. And then there were some strange parallels with my family. So my dad was an alcoholic and was absolutely bedeviled by drink, just like Peter.

6:55Harry Thompson:Died at 57, just like Peter Cook did. So some eerie sort of parallels there. other things as well from his early days he was at a public school and found the whole experience mystifying and experienced bullying I was also asthmatic like him there's a line in his biography by Harry Thompson which talks about how his asthma was sometimes life threatening but occasionally useful in that it got him out of national service and likewise with me I was able to use my asthma which did almost claim me a couple of times

7:27Jon Harvey:Are you obsessed by him? There are four books on Peter Cook in front of you.

7:34Harry Thompson:I'm a student. I've got both his... This is a classic thing with publishing. I bought the complete Peter Cook, you can see here. And of course, as with any complete Peter Cook, volume two came out. So I've got that. And the rather brilliant biography by Harry Thompson, who is another satirical producer. I remember Harry. Yes, a brilliant mind. And also Humphrey Carpenter's book about 60s satire. Peter Cook was born in Torquay would you have guessed? No but I guess this is the British public school system he was sent to Radley his dad worked overseas for the I think he was a diplomat so he was boarding at Radley and of course like so many children you're not going to come out of that with anything other than a cut glass English accent at the end of the day so I guess he's a product of that and I think that's one of the things he was railing against

8:22Jon Harvey:His grandfather was traffic manager for the Federated Malay States Railway, and in 1914 he shot himself. His father was only eight at the time and later became an assistant district officer in Nigeria, and the young Peter Cook went away to school, as you've said, to Radley College. Listen to this clip.

8:43Ian Hislop:At my school, in any case, we were constantly in hysterics of laughter at our feeble imitations of Masters in chapel and in classes. The whole time you'd be doing it, And really, I mean, I've never laughed so much as I did then.

8:58Harry Thompson:Gosh. Well, it's funny, isn't it? It feels almost like his characters over the decades rubbed off on him. Yes. Because by the end, he really didn't sound like that. And it's a little bit like if you listen to Dudley Moore, kind of the reverse happens because, of course, Dudley came from Dagenham and sort of grew into the middle class and the establishment and became a bigger star than Peter, which, of course, there's this very interesting dynamic between the duo. But yes, it's really fascinating how Peter... I mean, you can hear it in there. I mean, that is a 1950s public school education, if ever you hear one.

9:31Jon Harvey:I'm quite interested in the young Peter Cook, but sharp-eared listeners may have noticed that our usual second voice, the biographer, in this case, the only person who could really do the job, and he hasn't got here yet. Harry Thompson is his name. Harry once made a show about Peter Cook and the establishment, with the producer of this programme today, but that was 20 years ago, and Harry died shortly afterwards, so I think we're going to be waiting a while. Hopefully, we'll have time for his voice later on. Meanwhile, here's an extract from Harry's biography. Perhaps you'd like to read it, John?

10:07Harry Thompson:I should say, it is a fantastic piece of work about Peter. I really recommend it. Absolutely. So this is what Harry says. A key part of the Cooks' family code of manners was the stress on not being boring. Never outstaying one's welcome, for example, while being prepared to suffer it from others. This had a profound effect on Peter, who was careful never to bore anyone in his life, and yet whose ability to converse politely when cornered by pub bores was justly famous.

10:36Jon Harvey:We haven't really talked about what he looked like. Take a look at these pictures. Have you got your own copies there? Yes. He's rather handsome.

10:45Harry Thompson:As you say, good-looking, sort of a statuesque man, worthy of Hollywood, as indeed he ended up in LA at one point. I've read that he was described as not effeminate, but feminine. Obviously a very handsome person. And so that magnetism, I think, must have helped him at various points. Kenneth Williams actually was doing Peter Cook sketches at the turn of the 60s. Cook was writing for the West End while he was still an undergraduate. It's astonishing. I don't think anybody has done that before or since to that extent. and Williams would try to do that character and it just didn't work. It had to be Peter.

11:21Jon Harvey:I sort of feel he's with us now in the studio so I'll ask him this question. When did the comedy career begin?

11:29Ian Hislop:It started when I was at Cambridge, I think in about 1957 and I was writing stuff for myself and the Footlights Club and Michael Codron, who was producing in London, saw some of the material and thought it'd be good for Kenny Williams and he hired me, so to speak, to write a review called Pieces of Eight and after that one over the eight and there are other writers involved like Harold Pinter John Mortimer I had vaguely planned to join the Foreign Office but I don't think the Foreign Office had any idea that I was planning to join them

12:01Jon Harvey:So he was writing for all kinds of people while still at university And in what incredible company

12:07Harry Thompson:He just drops the name of Pinter like that I read a really funny story that he was very annoyed with Pinter because I think they were paid per minute and Pinter even then was dropping his famous pauses into the sketches.

12:20Jon Harvey:And I think Cook eventually parodied even that. Much later on, Peter Cook bought Private Eye. That was in 1962, the year after the magazine was founded. Presumably they needed some cash. Why did they turn to him? Do you know anything about this time?

12:37Harry Thompson:Yes, it was a very curious time. Cook was initially annoyed because he'd had the same idea. but so these old shrewsbury boys got their first christopher booker richard ingrams willie rushton what happened was this was all happening at the same time that cook started the establishment club in soho and private eye was basically run out of i think the the waiters changing room the sort of upstairs in the establishment but it didn't really work after a little while the the circulation dropped completely and they needed investment and by that point cook was doing very well and as he understood it he bought I think a majority holding in it with his then business associate Nick Luard but much to Cook's surprise later on it was actually only put in the name of Luard which caused consternation later but eventually Cook became the proprietor of the magazine the famous Lord Gnome and had this rather brilliant sort of role where he would swan in come up with the best jokes possible swan out and not be seen for months again later but I think for people like Ian Hislop, he was probably the perfect boss.

13:40Harry Thompson:Let's listen to this.

13:41Ian Hislop:But we're not here tonight to dwell in the past.

13:43Jonathan Miller:Well, we are, actually. Sorry, Peter. Private Eye is where I first met Peter Cook in his role as Lord Gnome, the great and benevolent proprietor. Even when he appeared to be doing very little in the public eye, he would always proudly claim that he had kept an independent organ of satire going. When he came into the eye, I just remember him saying good evening all the time. Exactly. It was ridiculous. Good evening. Still to this day... And everybody went round saying good evening. And after a bit you thought, what a silly thing to say a good evening. Well, what it was, it was a lot of that satire at Cambridge in the late 50s was to do with the telly, which of course was new in everybody's lives.

14:18Jonathan Miller:Men saying good evening. And it was men coming on saying good evening. Because it was only on in the evening. Yeah, exactly.

14:24Jon Harvey:Christopher Booker, Barry Fantoni, Ian Hislop and Richard Ingrams on Cook's Time at Private Eye.

14:30Jonathan Miller:Whenever we had a libel action, even when he'd ceased to come into the magazine very much, if ever there was a court case, he would always come. What Cookie's job was to come and buy you lunch and get you drunk before you had to go back at two o 'clock to listen to the lawyers wanging on for another three weeks. But he was very sort of encouraging, because it's incredibly deadening, court. Everything that you think's funny isn't suddenly. But it is if, like in the Maxwell case, Cookie is sitting there when Maxwell's giving evidence and Cook was just waving his checkbook at him.

15:03Jon Harvey:Is that the man you admire? Yeah, it is.

15:06Harry Thompson:That's exactly the man that I both admire and know that I probably could never be. To have that freedom in yourself to mock the absolute sort of epitome of the establishment in a courtroom. And I think to be a real satirist, you have to look at everything. And he attacked left and right. And again, I think the very best satirist, another one of my heroes, Trey Parker in the United States, does the same. that you think he's just going to go for the right wing targets, but he doesn't. Cook's sort of freedom and sort of heroic abilities to not be scared by, as we just heard, a gigantic court case, but rather to see it as a David and Goliath battle to be taken on and won, I think is fantastic.