Friday, March 13, 2009

Peter Cook & Dudley Moore


A double cassette found today in a charity shop for 99p. It contains Peter Cook's original E.L.Wisty LP (1965)and the Evening With... LP (1974). This cassette was released in 1994. Here's one side which includes the classic "One Leg Too Few" sketch.

"Well the Not Only was Peter Cook and the But Also, Dudley Moore. In the 60s and 70s this pair were a major part of the new comedy era, and Peter Cook was probably one of those who was the most responsible for the change in direction of comedy. He wrote a couple of well received revues for the West End, Pieces of Eight, and then One over the Eight, and then with Moore, Jonathon Miller and Alan Bennett, wrote and starred in Beyond the Fringe, the show that finally killed off the intimate review and replaced it with the Satire movement. Cook was the professional amongst the four and as such was paid more (although he actually received less due to his agent taking his cut!), and was responsible for a lot of the script, whereas Moore, was the musical one and came up with the parodies and musical interludes.

Not Only But Also was their BBC show, written and conceived by the pair, which developed their partnership, and gave rise to the famous Dagenham Dialogues of Pete and Dud, and included other gems such as One Leg too Few, and Sir Arthur Streeb Greebling. Their way of writing was rather novel in as much as they would talk into a microphone, recording their impromptu speech and then review it, developing parts that they thought had promise and discarding the rest. The scripts were not written in stone though, and half of the charm of the show is the ad-libs from Cook and Moore's reactions to them, usually with him trying to hold back laughter."

Discover more about Peter Cook HERE.


Pete & Dud - Hello

Pete & Dud - One Leg Too Few

Pete & Dud - Madrigal

Pete & Dud - Mini Drama

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Peter Cook was the funniest man ever.

Unknown said...

They were quite a funny duo, but I think you had to be in the right mood to watch them. A bit like Monty Python.