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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 183 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 183, February 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Peter Cook, who died in January, changed the face of comedy in Britain. He was born in 1937, the son of a colonial officer in Nigeria. And, as the Daily Telegraph obituary informatively tells us, he ‘had planned to follow his father into the colonial or diplomatic service, but at Radley (the public school) he discovered a talent for mimicking masters.’ The difference between him and every other cheeky schoolboy, however, was that he used this talent in a devastating way to undermine the absurdities of the British establishment.
It’s easy to forget today the deferential way in which ‘top people’ were treated in the 1950s. The doings of politicians, businessmen, judges and their ilk went almost unquestioned. When cabinet ministers deigned to appear on television they were usually addressed as sir.
Although the British ruling class had been severely jolted by the Suez crisis of 1956, it still had delusions of grandeur. Black people still appeared to know their place. BBC announcers still spoke with their reassuring wartime accents, the Lord Chamberlain censored the London stage.
It was this world of comfortable hypocrisy and nostalgia for past glory which was targeted by Beyond the Fringe, the (uncensored) satirical show which was packed out every night between 1961 and 1965. Peter Cook wrote and performed most of the best sketches.
The prime minister in its early years was Harold Macmillan, a Tory who ruled as if by divine right. Cook’s Macmillan had the perfect plummy tones as he replied to critics of the pathetic ‘four minute warning’ which would precede a nuclear attack, ‘I would remind them there are some people in this great country of ours who can run a mile in four minutes’.
The success of Beyond the Fringe was directly responsible for That Was The Week That Was (TW3), the Saturday night BBC revue which launched David Frost to stardom. TW3 aimed at the same targets but usually with rather less skill and venom. Even so, you had to watch it. Parents discovered they could control teenage children by threatening to cut off the flow of satire.
Macmillan’s successor during the last days of the Tory government was Sir Alec Douglas-Home, a man who in retrospect makes John Major seem charismatic. Home was mercilessly ridiculed and destroyed politically by Beyond the Fringe and also by Private Eye, the magazine which Cook saved from bankruptcy in 1962.
When Labour was elected in 1964, the target shifted but the aim was the same. Private Eye was not just the funniest magazine around but it also reported facts and ran articles which no one else would dare print. Every scandal and cover up of the Wilson years was first exposed in the Eye.
Almost every article about Peter Cook’s death has repeated the absurd remark that he ‘did not fulfil his promise’ by comparison with his Beyond the Fringe partners: Alan Bennett, Dudley Moore and Jonathan Miller. But, as John Bird commented in an obituary, ‘What is necessary for fulfilment? That you should have your own peak-time television show? Get to run the Royal Opera House, or the National Lottery? Be knighted?’ David Frost, of course, became Sir David at the behest of Margaret Thatcher, who must have been relieved she wasn’t around in 1963.
Peter Cook’s achievement was that he, more than anyone else, broke the cosy consensus. He did not create political satire, but he reinvented it and everyone else followed in his wake. Many of those who followed chose targets which were a lot more comfortable (take a bow, Ben Elton). Others have simply degenerated into a formula (Rik Mayall). Some didn’t even have to degenerate.
The best of today’s television comedy owes a huge debt to Cook. But even Rory Bremner’s enormous talent suffers because his delivery is so slick that often you are dazzled by the performance rather than the content. The best thing in his show is the John Bird/John Fortune double act. Both Bird and Fortune take time to put the knife in and then twist it. Their targets are always the lies and hypocrisy of the establishment – the arms dealers, the profiteers of privatisation, the political commentators. They pursue them relentlessly, often with a slightly puzzled air which helps create the impression that you, the viewer, see further than they do. This is political satire at its best and every word is a tribute to Peter Cook’s inspiration.
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