Captain Rainbow was dismayed when he lost. He had been convinced that he was about to be swept to victory on a tidal wave of popular support.
He had contested the 1984 by-election in the London borough of Enfield/Southgate as the sole member of Captain Rainbow s Universal Party (CRUP). His central platform was a plan to abolish parliament. In spite of this shrewd policy programme, Captain Rainbow received only 48 votes. The seat was taken by a Conservative candidate who had scored a tally of 16,684. The Tory s name was no less unusual than Captain Rainbow s; it was Michael Denzel Xavier Portillo.
Captain Rainbow was born George Weiss, the son of a rich diamond dealer. By the mid-70s, George had worked his way through a substantial inheritance and was almost penniless. He moved to Dublin to pursue a girlfriend for a while before becoming a visionary and returning to London in the early 80s.
George was, and is, an extravagant fantasist, a man permanently in the frenzied grip of wild schemes and plots, very few of which ever come to fruition. With his grey, lichen-like beard, woollen jacket and Coke-bottle-glasses, he probably would ve been fated to remain just another genial eccentric, lost amid London s teeming underworld of oddballs, freaks and nutjobs, had he not lived in a house on a cobbled cul de sac called Perrin s Walk, in Hampstead.
George hasn t a clue who owns the house, which he painted DayGlo green and continues to occupy to this day, and he s certainly never paid any rent, but he quickly became aware that one of his closest neighbours was the legendary Peter Cook, by common consent the father of modern British comedy.
Captain Rainbow kept open house. His living room, with its floor-to-ceiling mural of an autumn forest, was almost permanently jostling with random passers-by, local tramps and drunks, and a motley crew of ageing hippie acquaintances. Although George doesn t drink, there was rarely any shortage of drugs beneath his eaves.
Peter Cook became one of the most regular visitors to the Captain s quarters. Peter would lie on the floor (most of George s furniture had been borrowed or repossessed), sometimes for days on end, guzzling vodka, snorting coke, smoking (tobacco and weed) and chatting to whoever else happened to be passing through the house at the time.
George s CRUP project was inspired by a comic fantasy of Peter s conceived, between hangovers, on the living room floor. Peter came up with the idea of the What? Party, a political organisation committed to, among other things, the closing down of Britain for redecoration.
Peter appointed George as Minister for Confusion. Bronco John, a down-and-out who used to wander around the locality festooned with tea bags, became Minister for Tea. An 18-year-old office assistant called Ciara Parkes, with whom Peter had become besotted, was inveigled into becoming What? Party Secretary. During spare moments at the film editing company where she was employed, Ciara would colour in badges with hand-drawn What? Party logos.
When Ciara s parents grew concerned about the amount of time she was spending with Cook (who had taken to sending a car to collect Ciara from her workplace every evening), Peter phoned them up and made them laugh so much that they too became What? Party affiliates. The clincher of this charm offensive may have been the appointment of Ciara s mother as Minister for Lifts.
One whole wall of George s living room is today hidden behind a giant stack of cassettes, containing tens of thousands of hours of conversation. Until 1986, when he ran out of storage space, George recorded every word spoken in his house on the portable cassette recorder that was his only possession. While the tapes rolled and marijuana smoke drifted out of the living room windows, the What? Party kitchen cabinet would hold marathon policy-discussion meetings. On most of the tapes, Peter Cook sounds either drunk or completely out of his head.
The What? Party was essentially just something Peter liked to talk about while he got stoned, but it became a serious undertaking for George, who saw in it the capacity to change Britain for the better. He was despondent when Peter refused to either stand himself or put forward a candidate in the Enfield/Southgate by-election and so formed his own political party instead, the aforementioned CRUP, with ideals identical to those of the What? Party.
Peter found Rainbow George (as he now preferred to be known) endlessly fascinating, particularly his utter conviction that parliamentary success and great riches were just around the corner. From the cigarette-strewn and booze-stained carpet of the living room floor, Peter spurred George on to further political initiatives.
After the by-election disappointment, George decided that what CRUP needed was substantial funding. #30,000 became his target figure. To raise this money, George contrived the notion of staging a massive party that would cost only a penny to enter, but three pounds to leave. No-one would be able to resist the lure of such a low entrance fee, he reasoned, and would have such a jolly time that they d happily pay three pounds at the end of the evening. All he needed was an attendance of 10,000 people, and he d have his 30 grand.
George hired Camden Palace on a pay-later basis. On party night, 1,500 people turned up, Peter among them, for what all agreed was an excellent bash. Everybody happily paid the 1p entrance fee. Unfortunately, almost everybody except Peter, refused to pay the exit fee.
There was, after all, nobody to prevent their departure, and no sanction that could be applied to make them pay. George ended up with #150 in pennies and a bill for nearly #4,000. Peter was in hysterics.
Inevitably, everything George touched turned to mud. An inveterate gambler, Peter made huge sums simply by placing bets on the direct opposite of whatever George predicted. Sometimes, Peter helped his neighbour out financially in return.
When the Rainbow Party found itself #1,000 in debt, Peter put #1,000 at evens on a horse called Rainbow Quest. Rainbow Quest won, and he donated his winnings to George. On another occasion, George lost #1,000 on another fund-raising concert; Peter quietly covered his costs.
Peter Cook s belief in the precision inaccuracy of George s predictions never faltered. In the early morning of January 4th, 1995, Peter began throwing up blood. An ambulance was called to his house. George came out onto the street to see him go. As Peter s stretcher was lifted into the ambulance, he called George over and gripped his hand. Will I be OK, George? he whispered. Will I be all right?
You ll be fine, Peter, assured George. Everything s going to be just fine.
Oh fuck, replied Peter.
It was his last joke. His embattled liver finally collapsing, Peter Cook was admitted to the Royal Free Hospital, in north London, where he soon fell into a coma from which he would never awaken. He died on Monday, January 9th, 1995. He had just turned 57.
There are at least two ways of looking at this. One is that the comic genius Peter Cook tragically wasted the final 15 years of his recklessly abbreviated life on sloth, drink, drugs, daytime television and late-night ramblings with a pack of ne er-do-well cronies.
The other is that the comic genius Peter Cook, having completed a lifetime s work before the age of 40, gleefully dedicated the final 15 years of his recklessly abbreviated life to his own amusement and pleasure, which he found in sloth, drink, drugs, daytime television and late-night ramblings with a pack of ne er-do-well cronies. Neither of these interpretations is entirely false, but they both make assumptions that are far from true.
Recent months have seen the publication of two fascinating books which fill in many of the gaps that exist between the perception and the reality; Harry Thompson s comprehensive and gripping Peter Cook: A Biography, and, in paperback, Something Like Fire: Peter Cook Remembered, a collection of essays by the comedian s closest friends and associates.
The portrait of Cook that emerges from these tomes is of a born original who had no intention of dying a faded copy. In his 60s heyday, he was universally agreed to be the funniest man in England he blazed a glorious satirical trail with the Cambridge Footlights, wrote an acclaimed revue for Kenneth Williams called Pieces Of Eight at the age of 21, had a huge international stage success along with Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett and Dudley Moore in Beyond The Fringe (1960-1964), founded the Establishment Club, became the major shareholder in Private Eye, and enjoyed a dazzling television partnership with Dudley Moore for two series of the seminal BBC comedy show Not Only . . . But Also.
The term comic genius has become shoddy and meaningless with gross overuse, but it can aptly be applied to Peter Cook. Never can there have been a comedian who combined such speed of thought, such power of spontaneous invention and such sheer tangential originality, says Harry Thompson whose book is laden with illustrations, both private and public, of Cook s extraordinary knack for making mountains of mirth out of molehills.
From Monty Python to Harry Enfield, from Not The Nine O Clock News to every student revue in the country, Cook s influence on British comedy has been enormous and unequalled. Almost every comedian seems to admire a different facet of his talent. It was Cook s relentless flair for improvisation, for instance, that most impressed John Cleese.
Whereas most of us would take six hours to write a good three minute sketch, it actually took Peter three minutes to write a good three-minute sketch, says Cleese. I always thought he was the best of us, and the only one who came near being a genius, because genius, to me, has something to do with doing it much more easily than other people.
Peter Cook s last years started around 1980. He had, it seemed, ended the 70s as he had begun them, in hilarious alliance with Dudley Moore. The Derek and Clive personae they adopted in the late 70s were foul-mouthed, aggressive versions of the droll but bewildered proles they had played to such effect as Pete and Dud on Not Only . . . But Also.
Even before the Derek and Clive routines were officially released, bootleg versions had become cherished artefacts among rock bands such as The Who, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones, with all of whom Peter soon became a regular partying accomplice.
But the triumph of the brief reunion with Dudley masked a deep rift within the partnership and deeper troubles within Peter s life. Following a particularly drunken American tour in 1975, Moore s relationship with Cook had irrevocably fractured, and the tension between them was exacerbated by some snide comments of Peter s in the media (he described his partner as a club-footed, untalented dwarf in an interview with a U.S. magazine, for example).
Dudley had agreed to the Derek and Clive caper for old time s sake but was not about to re-subject his life, his future and his sanity to the mercy of a man he had come to see as a lazy, volatile, overweight, shambolic drunk.
Moreover, by now, Dudley had become a hot Hollywood property, something which Peter had always thought he should be. Despite protestations to the contrary, bitterness at Moore s movie stardom clearly gnawed away at him. He also resented Cuddly Dudley s sex thimble image (established by Moore s role alongside Bo Derek in the 1980 massive hit film, 10), especially given the chaos that reigned in his own lovelife.
Moore reckons that Cook s alcoholism began in 1971 when his first wife and the mother of his two daughters, Wendy, divorced him. Peter s second wife, Judy, was supportive but eventually she too could no longer tolerate his drinking. Peter did try to kick the sauce. He went to AA and had several periods of sobriety, during which he would diet, get fit and play tennis, but the bottle always reclaimed him.
Many of those who knew Peter best claim that his alcoholism actually prolonged his life. His addiction to liquor, they argue, saved him from falling prey to the lure of much harder drugs, with which he might have killed himself decades earlier.
Like many comedians, Peter Cook was by inclination and temperament a pessimist; possibly even a depressive. He also had an ardent devotion to the bacchanalian injunction that we should eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Aside from the personal sorrows he was feverishly endeavouring to drown in hooch (and which, predictably, only multiplied the more he drank), Peter was a natural born idler. He was, he said, born to be on holiday.
Moneyed indolence is a common enough aspiration but Cook had both the means and the will to raise it to an art form. He possessed such a keen eye for the absurdity of life that he found it impossible to take anything seriously, least of all what some chose to call his career.
Work is for grown-ups, Peter would say. The idea that you should work like a maniac until you are 65 and then take time off is crazy I d much rather take time off along the way. Idleness comes naturally to me.
Undoubtedly, there was an element of fear involved too, a fear of being unable to match past achievements. Asked by a journalist once, towards the end of his life, if he had achieved his potential, Peter rasped, in mock-comic indignation: I have never attempted to achieve my potential. What could be worse than to achieve one s potential so early in life?
Above all else, the story of Peter Cook s final years is the story of his defiant battle against the existential boredom that seemed to dog his every waking moment. The central theatre of war for this conflict was the house on Perrin s Walk into which he would retreat from the world for weeks at a time. The diligence with which Peter set about his dissolution was astounding, and puts to shame the puny efforts of many s the so-called rock n roll hellraiser.
By the early 80s, a daily pattern had developed. If he had gone to bed at all, Peter would rise when he felt like it, usually around midday, and breakfast on triple vodkas, while simultaneously chain-smoking Superkings. Then, it was straight onto chilled bottles of Holsten Pils, topped up throughout the day with hits of speed, cocaine and Ecstasy, while he read every single British newspaper, starting with The Sun.
For years, Peter s gorging on newsprint had supplied him with the fodder for comic invention but now, more often than not, it simply fed his loafer s passive fascination with the misfortunes of others. Nevertheless, Peter revelled in his position as the best-informed debauchee in London.
The TV screen, which had been the vanity mirror of his brilliant youth, was now the twitching curtain from behind which he watched the world drift past. His set was left on 24 hours a day. Peter devoured everything, from Good Morning With Anne and Nick through Brazilian soaps on cable to satellite porn from Holland. He didn t simply watch TV, he taped it, talked to it, shouted at it, commentated on it, anticipated dialogue and rang friends to discuss what had been on, even what was on while they spoke.
One of his favourite japes was to ring the BBC or ITV to complain that a pornographic programme had been shown too late for his children to see it. He would also get mates such as George or Ciara to phone up various TV channels, in different voices, and register preposterous objections. The BBC (or whoever) were completely taken in of course, says Harry Thompson, and responded to this parade of bogus obsessives and half-wits with the profound reverence normally reserved for genuine obsessives and half-wits.
Peter loved the telephone, and had two lines installed in his house. He would regularly try to assuage his ennui by phoning his friends. At length. I would know when Cookie had rung, recalls Harry Enfield. The answerphone screen would say one message , but the 30-minutes worth of tape was used up. I would rewind to find him skimming through the day s events as covered by the tabloids, or questioning the legal validity of Noel Edmonds beard.
He often seemed to find it easier to talk to loved ones on the telephone than in person. Frequently, when he wanted to speak to his ex-wife Judy, he would ring her on one line, and then hold the receiver up to the other phone while he called the Russian Embassy or the BBC Duty Office with some frivolous complaint.
In later years, Stephen Fry became a close friend and bought him a fax machine named Betty, with which a delighted Peter spent a day bombarding every world leader he could think of with absurd messages. Fry himself owned a fax machine called Hetty and the two machines kept up a long, convoluted and obscene correspondence.
In his 20s, Peter had enjoyed cooking but the sinkfuls of unwashed crockery that characterised his kitchen in the mid- 80s gradually necessitated a reliance on takeaway food, especially very strong Indian curries. The only dish ever prepared in his Perrin s Walk kitchen was baked beans, invariably served in mugs because there were no clean plates.
Peter s favourite restaurant was an Italian place called La Sorpresa, on the corner of Perrin s Walk, where he ate once or twice a week. When he didn t feel like walking the 30 yards, however, the food would be brought round to his house. With every La Sorpresa meal, Peter ordered a plate of spinach, which he detested. I get my own back on it by leaving it, he explained.
Peter Cook bet on everything. He kept a second-hand fruit machine by the sofa, for in-house gambling. He became an expert punter on minority TV sports, from world championship darts to truck-racing ( Live from Idaho ) on satellite. Yet he would wager just as avidly on a heat of the Miss Singapore beauty contest. Peter and George bet on racing every day. Peter never seemed to know whether he d won or not, he just found out at the end of the week if he was up or down.
But if he cared about the result, for instance if his beloved Tottenham were playing, he d back the opposition, so as to give fate no chance of beating him on both counts.
He could be quite an astute gambler. He correctly forecast the results of elections throughout the 1980s and 1990s staking no less than #1,000 each time and would annoy his left-wing friends by punching the air with delight on election night when the Tories won.
All of it though, the whole carnival of endless kicks and pranks, was ultimately powerless in the teeth of the vast chasm of boredom that yawned incessantly inside Peter. His friend Willie Donaldson (the author of the Henry Root books) recollects interminable afternoons during which they would both drop Es and then just sit together on park benches staring into the middle distance.
Two sad, old addicts stumbling around, bored in the afternoon, is how Donaldson now characterises himself and Peter. I know all about boredom, and Peter was bored. He d do anything rather than be bored. Drink, drugs and dirty sex was one answer. If you re not bored yourself, I don t think you d understand that sort of despair. It was three o clock in the afternoon and he couldn t bear being alive, in his head, without taking drugs. If you cannot bear the fact that somehow you ve got to exist for two-and-a-half hours until Neighbours starts at 5.30, hard drugs or alcohol snaps you out of it.
Peter Cook didn t lack friends or social acquaintances. During the 60s and 70s, he had been one of Britain s most famous and envied figures, a golden boy whose company was eagerly sought by entertainers, politicians, royalty, socialites and others in search of some gilt by association. That aura continued to surround him, and this combined with his family s upper class connections and his own Cambridge ties meant that he was routinely invited to parties hosted by some of the most distinguished and influential people in London.
Throughout the 80s, the rising school of new comedians were also keen to spend time with the man they too regarded as The Comedy Guv nor. Peter s generosity towards younger comics was almost unique among his generation. Performers of my age and younger who met him, says Mel Smith, were just bowled over by the fact that he was so interested in what we were doing, and that he was so relaxed about it.
Peter s social circle was wide and varied enough to encompass, say, an afternoon of pro-celebrity golf with adoring old-school chums like Jimmy Tarbuck and Bruce Forsyth, dinner with Malcolm McClaren or Sonya Khashoggi, followed by a boozy night with Harry Enfield, Robbie Coltrane or Jonathan Ross.
But Peter didn t consort with celebrities for celebrity s sake. Famously, his 60s friend David Frost (now Sir David) once telephoned him to announce: Peter, I m having a little dinner party on behalf of Prince Andrew and his new wife-to-be, Sarah Ferguson. I know they d love to meet you, big fans. Be super if you could make it. Wednesday the 12th.
Hang on, Peter replied. I ll just check my diary. Some ostentatious rustling of pages later, Peter said, Oh dear, I find I m watching television that night.
Society certainly hadn t rejected Peter Cook; he had rejected society. He would disappear on benders into Perrin s Walk for long periods of time. Most of his friends assumed, during these long unexplained absences, that he was simply off with other friends. When he would re-emerge, he never discussed what he did or who he d been with, preferring to talk about what was in the papers or on TV.
When he was up, and in a relatively good mood, he would leave his lair to spread laughter and mild anarchy. The inebriated Peter Cook became a familiar sight shuffling down Hampstead High Street, often in his carpet slippers, always with a stack of newspapers under his arms. To those who knew him, he did not cut a pathetic figure; there always seemed to be a humorous twinkle in his eye, and his collection of loud hats, outlandish sunglasses and coloured sneakers were clearly deliberately mismatched.
His antics were frequently eccentric, perpetrated for no good reason but his own diversion. Once, he went into his local off-licence and requested a bottle of wine which was not on the shelves. The assistant went into the storeroom to find it, leaving a steaming cup of fresh coffee on the counter. When he returned with the wine, Peter was gone and so was the coffee, the empty mug sitting forlornly on its saucer.
At the wedding of Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, on New Year s Day, 1984, Peter tried to seduce the bride, then got into the wrong limousine in the car park. The Stones were greatly amused by this kind of behaviour, and they and Peter formed a sort of mutual appreciation society.
In November 1986, on his 49th birthday, Peter bought a brand new Honda saloon. Within hours, he drunkenly smashed into the back of a police car at a zebra crossing. He was subsequently fined #200 and banned from driving for a year. Events such as these soon became hilarious epics in the telling, ornately and outrageously embellished by Peter but often for an audience no bigger than a friend s answerphone.
Despite the dissipation, Peter retained his comic energy. It was the outlets he chose that were unorthodox. Throughout their association, both Peter and Rainbow George had difficulty sleeping. They therefore became obsessive late-night listeners to LBC, the London radio station. It was George who first had the idea of wrangling his way onto the airwaves to promote his political career. He would often turn up on LBC several times a day on different people s programmes. Soon, Peter began contributing as well.
It was all too easy for the famous Peter Cook to get onto a radio phone-in. There was no challenge in that. So, Peter set himself the task of interrupting George s political appearances in a variety of guises.
Eventually, both George and Peter began concentrating their phone-in energies on an LBC show fronted by Clive Bull, which went out in that eerie, radio wasteland between 1am and 4am. Peter s most commonly used persona was that of Sven, a lugubrious Norwegian fisherman newly relocated to Swiss Cottage. Sven would call, throaty and tearful, to talk about fish or his unfaithful girlfriend even, on one occasion, about his girlfriend running off with a fish.
Throughout his slacker years, Peter Cook enjoyed tacky, lowlife thrills with the ravenous gusto of a character in an early Martin Amis novel. He had a particularly fervent taste for seedy sex, and was a regular and enthusiastic consumer of prostitutes and pornography.
As far back as the late 70s, he would round off an afternoon s drinking with a trip to a strip club or a massage parlour. One Private Eye boozing buddy remembers that he occasionally seemed to take a perverse delight in having sex with the most unattractive, unappetising girls a brothel had to offer.
Peter had also taken to attending regular orgies with swingers in Muswell Hill. Rainbow George was forever pestering Peter to invite him along to one of these gang-bangs, but had no success. One day, when Peter drove off to an orgy without his house keys, George had the perfect excuse to follow along.
In turn, another friend of George s agreed to furnish the transport in the hope that he too would get to participate in the action. On arrival, however, while the driver friend was eagerly invited to join in by the assembled guests, poor old George was unanimously rejected. He had to sit in the kitchen drinking tea until proceedings upstairs had exhausted themselves.
Many of Peter s girlfriends during this period were strippers, or Bunnies from The Playboy Club, of which he was a devoted and highly-valued member. Peter said that he liked tarts, especially blondes with short skirts and fishnet stockings.
One of his longest relationships in the 80s was with a black model called Sandy Grizzle who had once had a bit part in Eastenders. When they split, Sandy marked the end of the romance by telling all in a lurid fashion to the Daily Star. The picture she painted of Peter s sexcesses and bizarre home life was true in essence but it portrayed George as a sort of sexual mastermind who co-ordinated Peter s affairs of the groin and nothing could be further from the truth.
An aggrieved George sued for libel, but had neither the financial resources nor the organisational discipline to mount a successful case. He tried to represent himself but the action was finally struck out for inordinate and inexcusable delay. Peter found his first kiss-and-tell hilarious, especially the fact that George had succeeded in losing out yet again.
Peter s passion for porn remained constant to his final years. He watched hours and hours of it on satellite. He acquired his hardcore videos oriental porn was his favourite from a smut-megastore called Supermags, on Old Compton Street.
Peter would often recommend exceptionally good tapes to his close friend, the comedian Rory McGrath, now perhaps best known as a panellist on They Think It s All Over.
Rory once asked Peter how he felt when he went into Supermags, because, surely, he must be recognised? Peter retorted: Well, I go in and they say, Aren t you Peter Cook? . And I say, Yes, have you got any porn?
McGrath remembers that Peter was very upfront and quite a traditionalist about his film bleu requirements. I don t want any kinky stuff, or animals, he d say. I want dicks and cunts.
He also took considerable pleasure in embarrassing others with his blunt attitude to porn. Meeting McGrath and a group of mates for a drink, he d barge into the pub, wearing orange flip-flops and a very loud shirt, brandishing a cassette in his hand, and calling out loudly, Is Kowloon Cunt any good to you?
On form and in good spirits, Peter was still capable of
iinspired mischief. In 1986, his magazine Private Eye found itself locked in a fierce legal clash with the nefarious Robert Maxwell, then proprietor of the Daily Mirror.
Private Eye had run a photographic lookalike item comparing Maxwell s face to Ronnie Kray s and accused the tycoon of funding the Labour party in the hope of one day securing a peerage. Maxwell was incandescent with rage and pledged to crush the Eye.
Revitalised physically by a period of sobriety during the making of the film Whoops Apocalypse (in which Peter played an insane British Prime Minister), Cook threw himself into the legal hostilities with relish. As Maxwell gave evidence on the witness stand, Peter waved his chequebook scornfully at him across the courtroom.
The magazine lost the case. A weeping Maxwell had told the court that, Mrs. Maxwell and all of our children were utterly shocked to have me, their father, compared to a convicted major gangster. In November 1986, the Eye was ordered to pay Maxwell approximately a third of a million pounds, which all but cleared them out at the bank.
But Maxwell wasn t finished and neither was Peter. The tycoon diverted the Mirror s presses to produce a million copies of Not Private Eye, a bogus magazine featuring large pictures of Nazi leaders conversing, doctored to include Private Eye columnist (and former editor) Richard Ingrams chatting with Hitler. He then bullied WH Smith s, the newsagent chain, into stocking it before flying off to New York to visit his mistress.
Ian Hislop, the Eye s editor, reasoned that if the magazine could get hold of the production dummy of Not Private Eye, they could persuade Smith s to reverse their decision. But how to get it?
Peter Cook had a brainwave; he decided to send a crate of exceptionally good whiskey over to the people who were putting the dummy together at the Mirror offices.
Two hours later, Peter phoned up to see what had happened. As he d hoped, the four people laying out Not Private Eye were completely legless. Sounds like really good fun there, we re coming over, said Cook. Yeah, fine, burped the sozzled layout team.
Cook, Hislop and a couple of other Eye staffers hopped in a taxi and headed for Maxwell House, the Mirror HQ. With Peter at the helm, they blagged their way past security and made straight for Maxwell s suite on the top floor, where they found the layout team literally in a drunken heap.
Hislop liberated the dummy and was keen to leave but Peter had only just begun. He sat at Maxwell s desk, rang the Mirror s catering department and ordered champagne. Then, he telephoned the photo desk and ordered them to send up a snapper to take a picture of the Eye party relaxing in Maxwell s suite.
He also graffiti d the walls and windows with crayons, writing HELLO CAP N BOB! everywhere. When he was finally ready to leave, he phoned Maxwell s mistress in New York and got Maxwell himself on the line to explain what he had done.
Maxwell went ballistic. He telephoned Mirror security at once. Within minutes, a crew of red-faced security men burst into the suite. But such was Peter s charisma, Hislop relates, that before long they too had joined the party.
In due course, WH Smith were shown the Not Private Eye dummy and were persuaded to reverse their decision. For years afterwards, Robert Maxwell exploded into paroxysms of rage whenever Peter Cook s name was mentioned in his company.
Throughout the 1980s, one of Peter Cook s pride and joys was a tree outside the front door of his Perrin s Walk home. For years, he had assiduously sculpted this tree with topiary shears, transforming it into a colossal, evergreen two-fingered gesture to the world.
The loving care he lavished on this arboreal gag was in stark contrast to the disdain he displayed for the state of his indoor living conditions. The house at Perrin s Walk was as unkempt as its owner, and just as perilously close to rack and ruin.
Peter s sitting room floor was a mass of videotapes, newspapers, empty bottles and takeaway food cartons. He had scribbled all over the walls of the house; favourite words like oxymoron , for instance, and extensive eulogies in biro above the decaying corpses of flies he had swatted. He blu-tacked up vital documents like his passport and driving licence so that he could find them amid the chaos.
Captain Rainbow was dismayed when he lost. He had been convinced that he was about to be swept to victory on a tidal wave of popular support.
He had contested the 1984 by-election in the London borough of Enfield/Southgate as the sole member of Captain Rainbow s Universal Party (CRUP). His central platform was a plan to abolish parliament. In spite of this shrewd policy programme, Captain Rainbow received only 48 votes. The seat was taken by a Conservative candidate who had scored a tally of 16,684. The Tory s name was no less unusual than Captain Rainbow s; it was Michael Denzel Xavier Portillo.
Captain Rainbow was born George Weiss, the son of a rich diamond dealer. By the mid-70s, George had worked his way through a substantial inheritance and was almost penniless. He moved to Dublin to pursue a girlfriend for a while before becoming a visionary and returning to London in the early 80s.
George was, and is, an extravagant fantasist, a man permanently in the frenzied grip of wild schemes and plots, very few of which ever come to fruition. With his grey, lichen-like beard, woollen jacket and Coke-bottle-glasses, he probably would ve been fated to remain just another genial eccentric, lost amid London s teeming underworld of oddballs, freaks and nutjobs, had he not lived in a house on a cobbled cul de sac called Perrin s Walk, in Hampstead.
George hasn t a clue who owns the house, which he painted DayGlo green and continues to occupy to this day, and he s certainly never paid any rent, but he quickly became aware that one of his closest neighbours was the legendary Peter Cook, by common consent the father of modern British comedy.
Captain Rainbow kept open house. His living room, with its floor-to-ceiling mural of an autumn forest, was almost permanently jostling with random passers-by, local tramps and drunks, and a motley crew of ageing hippie acquaintances. Although George doesn t drink, there was rarely any shortage of drugs beneath his eaves.
Peter Cook became one of the most regular visitors to the Captain s quarters. Peter would lie on the floor (most of George s furniture had been borrowed or repossessed), sometimes for days on end, guzzling vodka, snorting coke, smoking (tobacco and weed) and chatting to whoever else happened to be passing through the house at the time.
George s CRUP project was inspired by a comic fantasy of Peter s conceived, between hangovers, on the living room floor. Peter came up with the idea of the What? Party, a political organisation committed to, among other things, the closing down of Britain for redecoration.
Peter appointed George as Minister for Confusion. Bronco John, a down-and-out who used to wander around the locality festooned with tea bags, became Minister for Tea. An 18-year-old office assistant called Ciara Parkes, with whom Peter had become besotted, was inveigled into becoming What? Party Secretary. During spare moments at the film editing company where she was employed, Ciara would colour in badges with hand-drawn What? Party logos.
When Ciara s parents grew concerned about the amount of time she was spending with Cook (who had taken to sending a car to collect Ciara from her workplace every evening), Peter phoned them up and made them laugh so much that they too became What? Party affiliates. The clincher of this charm offensive may have been the appointment of Ciara s mother as Minister for Lifts.
One whole wall of George s living room is today hidden behind a giant stack of cassettes, containing tens of thousands of hours of conversation. Until 1986, when he ran out of storage space, George recorded every word spoken in his house on the portable cassette recorder that was his only possession. While the tapes rolled and marijuana smoke drifted out of the living room windows, the What? Party kitchen cabinet would hold marathon policy-discussion meetings. On most of the tapes, Peter Cook sounds either drunk or completely out of his head.
The What? Party was essentially just something Peter liked to talk about while he got stoned, but it became a serious undertaking for George, who saw in it the capacity to change Britain for the better. He was despondent when Peter refused to either stand himself or put forward a candidate in the Enfield/Southgate by-election and so formed his own political party instead, the aforementioned CRUP, with ideals identical to those of the What? Party.
Peter found Rainbow George (as he now preferred to be known) endlessly fascinating, particularly his utter conviction that parliamentary success and great riches were just around the corner. From the cigarette-strewn and booze-stained carpet of the living room floor, Peter spurred George on to further political initiatives.
After the by-election disappointment, George decided that what CRUP needed was substantial funding. #30,000 became his target figure. To raise this money, George contrived the notion of staging a massive party that would cost only a penny to enter, but three pounds to leave. No-one would be able to resist the lure of such a low entrance fee, he reasoned, and would have such a jolly time that they d happily pay three pounds at the end of the evening. All he needed was an attendance of 10,000 people, and he d have his 30 grand.
George hired Camden Palace on a pay-later basis. On party night, 1,500 people turned up, Peter among them, for what all agreed was an excellent bash. Everybody happily paid the 1p entrance fee. Unfortunately, almost everybody except Peter, refused to pay the exit fee.
There was, after all, nobody to prevent their departure, and no sanction that could be applied to make them pay. George ended up with #150 in pennies and a bill for nearly #4,000. Peter was in hysterics.
Inevitably, everything George touched turned to mud. An inveterate gambler, Peter made huge sums simply by placing bets on the direct opposite of whatever George predicted. Sometimes, Peter helped his neighbour out financially in return.
When the Rainbow Party found itself #1,000 in debt, Peter put #1,000 at evens on a horse called Rainbow Quest. Rainbow Quest won, and he donated his winnings to George. On another occasion, George lost #1,000 on another fund-raising concert; Peter quietly covered his costs.
Peter Cook s belief in the precision inaccuracy of George s predictions never faltered. In the early morning of January 4th, 1995, Peter began throwing up blood. An ambulance was called to his house. George came out onto the street to see him go. As Peter s stretcher was lifted into the ambulance, he called George over and gripped his hand. Will I be OK, George? he whispered. Will I be all right?
You ll be fine, Peter, assured George. Everything s going to be just fine.
Oh fuck, replied Peter.
It was his last joke. His embattled liver finally collapsing, Peter Cook was admitted to the Royal Free Hospital, in north London, where he soon fell into a coma from which he would never awaken. He died on Monday, January 9th, 1995. He had just turned 57.
There are at least two ways of looking at this. One is that the comic genius Peter Cook tragically wasted the final 15 years of his recklessly abbreviated life on sloth, drink, drugs, daytime television and late-night ramblings with a pack of ne er-do-well cronies.
The other is that the comic genius Peter Cook, having completed a lifetime s work before the age of 40, gleefully dedicated the final 15 years of his recklessly abbreviated life to his own amusement and pleasure, which he found in sloth, drink, drugs, daytime television and late-night ramblings with a pack of ne er-do-well cronies. Neither of these interpretations is entirely false, but they both make assumptions that are far from true.
Recent months have seen the publication of two fascinating books which fill in many of the gaps that exist between the perception and the reality; Harry Thompson s comprehensive and gripping Peter Cook: A Biography, and, in paperback, Something Like Fire: Peter Cook Remembered, a collection of essays by the comedian s closest friends and associates.
The portrait of Cook that emerges from these tomes is of a born original who had no intention of dying a faded copy. In his 60s heyday, he was universally agreed to be the funniest man in England he blazed a glorious satirical trail with the Cambridge Footlights, wrote an acclaimed revue for Kenneth Williams called Pieces Of Eight at the age of 21, had a huge international stage success along with Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett and Dudley Moore in Beyond The Fringe (1960-1964), founded the Establishment Club, became the major shareholder in Private Eye, and enjoyed a dazzling television partnership with Dudley Moore for two series of the seminal BBC comedy show Not Only . . . But Also.
The term comic genius has become shoddy and meaningless with gross overuse, but it can aptly be applied to Peter Cook. Never can there have been a comedian who combined such speed of thought, such power of spontaneous invention and such sheer tangential originality, says Harry Thompson whose book is laden with illustrations, both private and public, of Cook s extraordinary knack for making mountains of mirth out of molehills.
From Monty Python to Harry Enfield, from Not The Nine O Clock News to every student revue in the country, Cook s influence on British comedy has been enormous and unequalled. Almost every comedian seems to admire a different facet of his talent. It was Cook s relentless flair for improvisation, for instance, that most impressed John Cleese.
Whereas most of us would take six hours to write a good three minute sketch, it actually took Peter three minutes to write a good three-minute sketch, says Cleese. I always thought he was the best of us, and the only one who came near being a genius, because genius, to me, has something to do with doing it much more easily than other people.
Peter Cook s last years started around 1980. He had, it seemed, ended the 70s as he had begun them, in hilarious alliance with Dudley Moore. The Derek and Clive personae they adopted in the late 70s were foul-mouthed, aggressive versions of the droll but bewildered proles they had played to such effect as Pete and Dud on Not Only . . . But Also.
Even before the Derek and Clive routines were officially released, bootleg versions had become cherished artefacts among rock bands such as The Who, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones, with all of whom Peter soon became a regular partying accomplice.
But the triumph of the brief reunion with Dudley masked a deep rift within the partnership and deeper troubles within Peter s life. Following a particularly drunken American tour in 1975, Moore s relationship with Cook had irrevocably fractured, and the tension between them was exacerbated by some snide comments of Peter s in the media (he described his partner as a club-footed, untalented dwarf in an interview with a U.S. magazine, for example).
Dudley had agreed to the Derek and Clive caper for old time s sake but was not about to re-subject his life, his future and his sanity to the mercy of a man he had come to see as a lazy, volatile, overweight, shambolic drunk.
Moreover, by now, Dudley had become a hot Hollywood property, something which Peter had always thought he should be. Despite protestations to the contrary, bitterness at Moore s movie stardom clearly gnawed away at him. He also resented Cuddly Dudley s sex thimble image (established by Moore s role alongside Bo Derek in the 1980 massive hit film, 10), especially given the chaos that reigned in his own lovelife.
Moore reckons that Cook s alcoholism began in 1971 when his first wife and the mother of his two daughters, Wendy, divorced him. Peter s second wife, Judy, was supportive but eventually she too could no longer tolerate his drinking. Peter did try to kick the sauce. He went to AA and had several periods of sobriety, during which he would diet, get fit and play tennis, but the bottle always reclaimed him.
Many of those who knew Peter best claim that his alcoholism actually prolonged his life. His addiction to liquor, they argue, saved him from falling prey to the lure of much harder drugs, with which he might have killed himself decades earlier.
Like many comedians, Peter Cook was by inclination and temperament a pessimist; possibly even a depressive. He also had an ardent devotion to the bacchanalian injunction that we should eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Aside from the personal sorrows he was feverishly endeavouring to drown in hooch (and which, predictably, only multiplied the more he drank), Peter was a natural born idler. He was, he said, born to be on holiday.
Moneyed indolence is a common enough aspiration but Cook had both the means and the will to raise it to an art form. He possessed such a keen eye for the absurdity of life that he found it impossible to take anything seriously, least of all what some chose to call his career.
Work is for grown-ups, Peter would say. The idea that you should work like a maniac until you are 65 and then take time off is crazy I d much rather take time off along the way. Idleness comes naturally to me.
Undoubtedly, there was an element of fear involved too, a fear of being unable to match past achievements. Asked by a journalist once, towards the end of his life, if he had achieved his potential, Peter rasped, in mock-comic indignation: I have never attempted to achieve my potential. What could be worse than to achieve one s potential so early in life?
Above all else, the story of Peter Cook s final years is the story of his defiant battle against the existential boredom that seemed to dog his every waking moment. The central theatre of war for this conflict was the house on Perrin s Walk into which he would retreat from the world for weeks at a time. The diligence with which Peter set about his dissolution was astounding, and puts to shame the puny efforts of many s the so-called rock n roll hellraiser.
By the early 80s, a daily pattern had developed. If he had gone to bed at all, Peter would rise when he felt like it, usually around midday, and breakfast on triple vodkas, while simultaneously chain-smoking Superkings. Then, it was straight onto chilled bottles of Holsten Pils, topped up throughout the day with hits of speed, cocaine and Ecstasy, while he read every single British newspaper, starting with The Sun.
For years, Peter s gorging on newsprint had supplied him with the fodder for comic invention but now, more often than not, it simply fed his loafer s passive fascination with the misfortunes of others. Nevertheless, Peter revelled in his position as the best-informed debauchee in London.
The TV screen, which had been the vanity mirror of his brilliant youth, was now the twitching curtain from behind which he watched the world drift past. His set was left on 24 hours a day. Peter devoured everything, from Good Morning With Anne and Nick through Brazilian soaps on cable to satellite porn from Holland. He didn t simply watch TV, he taped it, talked to it, shouted at it, commentated on it, anticipated dialogue and rang friends to discuss what had been on, even what was on while they spoke.
One of his favourite japes was to ring the BBC or ITV to complain that a pornographic programme had been shown too late for his children to see it. He would also get mates such as George or Ciara to phone up various TV channels, in different voices, and register preposterous objections. The BBC (or whoever) were completely taken in of course, says Harry Thompson, and responded to this parade of bogus obsessives and half-wits with the profound reverence normally reserved for genuine obsessives and half-wits.
Peter loved the telephone, and had two lines installed in his house. He would regularly try to assuage his ennui by phoning his friends. At length. I would know when Cookie had rung, recalls Harry Enfield. The answerphone screen would say one message , but the 30-minutes worth of tape was used up. I would rewind to find him skimming through the day s events as covered by the tabloids, or questioning the legal validity of Noel Edmonds beard.
He often seemed to find it easier to talk to loved ones on the telephone than in person. Frequently, when he wanted to speak to his ex-wife Judy, he would ring her on one line, and then hold the receiver up to the other phone while he called the Russian Embassy or the BBC Duty Office with some frivolous complaint.
In later years, Stephen Fry became a close friend and bought him a fax machine named Betty, with which a delighted Peter spent a day bombarding every world leader he could think of with absurd messages. Fry himself owned a fax machine called Hetty and the two machines kept up a long, convoluted and obscene correspondence.
In his 20s, Peter had enjoyed cooking but the sinkfuls of unwashed crockery that characterised his kitchen in the mid- 80s gradually necessitated a reliance on takeaway food, especially very strong Indian curries. The only dish ever prepared in his Perrin s Walk kitchen was baked beans, invariably served in mugs because there were no clean plates.
Peter s favourite restaurant was an Italian place called La Sorpresa, on the corner of Perrin s Walk, where he ate once or twice a week. When he didn t feel like walking the 30 yards, however, the food would be brought round to his house. With every La Sorpresa meal, Peter ordered a plate of spinach, which he detested. I get my own back on it by leaving it, he explained.
Peter Cook bet on everything. He kept a second-hand fruit machine by the sofa, for in-house gambling. He became an expert punter on minority TV sports, from world championship darts to truck-racing ( Live from Idaho ) on satellite. Yet he would wager just as avidly on a heat of the Miss Singapore beauty contest. Peter and George bet on racing every day. Peter never seemed to know whether he d won or not, he just found out at the end of the week if he was up or down.
But if he cared about the result, for instance if his beloved Tottenham were playing, he d back the opposition, so as to give fate no chance of beating him on both counts.
He could be quite an astute gambler. He correctly forecast the results of elections throughout the 1980s and 1990s staking no less than #1,000 each time and would annoy his left-wing friends by punching the air with delight on election night when the Tories won.
All of it though, the whole carnival of endless kicks and pranks, was ultimately powerless in the teeth of the vast chasm of boredom that yawned incessantly inside Peter. His friend Willie Donaldson (the author of the Henry Root books) recollects interminable afternoons during which they would both drop Es and then just sit together on park benches staring into the middle distance.
Two sad, old addicts stumbling around, bored in the afternoon, is how Donaldson now characterises himself and Peter. I know all about boredom, and Peter was bored. He d do anything rather than be bored. Drink, drugs and dirty sex was one answer. If you re not bored yourself, I don t think you d understand that sort of despair. It was three o clock in the afternoon and he couldn t bear being alive, in his head, without taking drugs. If you cannot bear the fact that somehow you ve got to exist for two-and-a-half hours until Neighbours starts at 5.30, hard drugs or alcohol snaps you out of it.
Peter Cook didn t lack friends or social acquaintances. During the 60s and 70s, he had been one of Britain s most famous and envied figures, a golden boy whose company was eagerly sought by entertainers, politicians, royalty, socialites and others in search of some gilt by association. That aura continued to surround him, and this combined with his family s upper class connections and his own Cambridge ties meant that he was routinely invited to parties hosted by some of the most distinguished and influential people in London.
Throughout the 80s, the rising school of new comedians were also keen to spend time with the man they too regarded as The Comedy Guv nor. Peter s generosity towards younger comics was almost unique among his generation. Performers of my age and younger who met him, says Mel Smith, were just bowled over by the fact that he was so interested in what we were doing, and that he was so relaxed about it.
Peter s social circle was wide and varied enough to encompass, say, an afternoon of pro-celebrity golf with adoring old-school chums like Jimmy Tarbuck and Bruce Forsyth, dinner with Malcolm McClaren or Sonya Khashoggi, followed by a boozy night with Harry Enfield, Robbie Coltrane or Jonathan Ross.
But Peter didn t consort with celebrities for celebrity s sake. Famously, his 60s friend David Frost (now Sir David) once telephoned him to announce: Peter, I m having a little dinner party on behalf of Prince Andrew and his new wife-to-be, Sarah Ferguson. I know they d love to meet you, big fans. Be super if you could make it. Wednesday the 12th.
Hang on, Peter replied. I ll just check my diary. Some ostentatious rustling of pages later, Peter said, Oh dear, I find I m watching television that night.
Society certainly hadn t rejected Peter Cook; he had rejected society. He would disappear on benders into Perrin s Walk for long periods of time. Most of his friends assumed, during these long unexplained absences, that he was simply off with other friends. When he would re-emerge, he never discussed what he did or who he d been with, preferring to talk about what was in the papers or on TV.
When he was up, and in a relatively good mood, he would leave his lair to spread laughter and mild anarchy. The inebriated Peter Cook became a familiar sight shuffling down Hampstead High Street, often in his carpet slippers, always with a stack of newspapers under his arms. To those who knew him, he did not cut a pathetic figure; there always seemed to be a humorous twinkle in his eye, and his collection of loud hats, outlandish sunglasses and coloured sneakers were clearly deliberately mismatched.
His antics were frequently eccentric, perpetrated for no good reason but his own diversion. Once, he went into his local off-licence and requested a bottle of wine which was not on the shelves. The assistant went into the storeroom to find it, leaving a steaming cup of fresh coffee on the counter. When he returned with the wine, Peter was gone and so was the coffee, the empty mug sitting forlornly on its saucer.
At the wedding of Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, on New Year s Day, 1984, Peter tried to seduce the bride, then got into the wrong limousine in the car park. The Stones were greatly amused by this kind of behaviour, and they and Peter formed a sort of mutual appreciation society.
In November 1986, on his 49th birthday, Peter bought a brand new Honda saloon. Within hours, he drunkenly smashed into the back of a police car at a zebra crossing. He was subsequently fined #200 and banned from driving for a year. Events such as these soon became hilarious epics in the telling, ornately and outrageously embellished by Peter but often for an audience no bigger than a friend s answerphone.
Despite the dissipation, Peter retained his comic energy. It was the outlets he chose that were unorthodox. Throughout their association, both Peter and Rainbow George had difficulty sleeping. They therefore became obsessive late-night listeners to LBC, the London radio station. It was George who first had the idea of wrangling his way onto the airwaves to promote his political career. He would often turn up on LBC several times a day on different people s programmes. Soon, Peter began contributing as well.
It was all too easy for the famous Peter Cook to get onto a radio phone-in. There was no challenge in that. So, Peter set himself the task of interrupting George s political appearances in a variety of guises.
Eventually, both George and Peter began concentrating their phone-in energies on an LBC show fronted by Clive Bull, which went out in that eerie, radio wasteland between 1am and 4am. Peter s most commonly used persona was that of Sven, a lugubrious Norwegian fisherman newly relocated to Swiss Cottage. Sven would call, throaty and tearful, to talk about fish or his unfaithful girlfriend even, on one occasion, about his girlfriend running off with a fish.
Throughout his slacker years, Peter Cook enjoyed tacky, lowlife thrills with the ravenous gusto of a character in an early Martin Amis novel. He had a particularly fervent taste for seedy sex, and was a regular and enthusiastic consumer of prostitutes and pornography.
As far back as the late 70s, he would round off an afternoon s drinking with a trip to a strip club or a massage parlour. One Private Eye boozing buddy remembers that he occasionally seemed to take a perverse delight in having sex with the most unattractive, unappetising girls a brothel had to offer.
Peter had also taken to attending regular orgies with swingers in Muswell Hill. Rainbow George was forever pestering Peter to invite him along to one of these gang-bangs, but had no success. One day, when Peter drove off to an orgy without his house keys, George had the perfect excuse to follow along.
In turn, another friend of George s agreed to furnish the transport in the hope that he too would get to participate in the action. On arrival, however, while the driver friend was eagerly invited to join in by the assembled guests, poor old George was unanimously rejected. He had to sit in the kitchen drinking tea until proceedings upstairs had exhausted themselves.
Many of Peter s girlfriends during this period were strippers, or Bunnies from The Playboy Club, of which he was a devoted and highly-valued member. Peter said that he liked tarts, especially blondes with short skirts and fishnet stockings.
One of his longest relationships in the 80s was with a black model called Sandy Grizzle who had once had a bit part in Eastenders. When they split, Sandy marked the end of the romance by telling all in a lurid fashion to the Daily Star. The picture she painted of Peter s sexcesses and bizarre home life was true in essence but it portrayed George as a sort of sexual mastermind who co-ordinated Peter s affairs of the groin and nothing could be further from the truth.
An aggrieved George sued for libel, but had neither the financial resources nor the organisational discipline to mount a successful case. He tried to represent himself but the action was finally struck out for inordinate and inexcusable delay. Peter found his first kiss-and-tell hilarious, especially the fact that George had succeeded in losing out yet again.
Peter s passion for porn remained constant to his final years. He watched hours and hours of it on satellite. He acquired his hardcore videos oriental porn was his favourite from a smut-megastore called Supermags, on Old Compton Street.
Peter would often recommend exceptionally good tapes to his close friend, the comedian Rory McGrath, now perhaps best known as a panellist on They Think It s All Over.
Rory once asked Peter how he felt when he went into Supermags, because, surely, he must be recognised? Peter retorted: Well, I go in and they say, Aren t you Peter Cook? . And I say, Yes, have you got any porn?
McGrath remembers that Peter was very upfront and quite a traditionalist about his film bleu requirements. I don t want any kinky stuff, or animals, he d say. I want dicks and cunts.
He also took considerable pleasure in embarrassing others with his blunt attitude to porn. Meeting McGrath and a group of mates for a drink, he d barge into the pub, wearing orange flip-flops and a very loud shirt, brandishing a cassette in his hand, and calling out loudly, Is Kowloon Cunt any good to you?
On form and in good spirits, Peter was still capable of
iinspired mischief. In 1986, his magazine Private Eye found itself locked in a fierce legal clash with the nefarious Robert Maxwell, then proprietor of the Daily Mirror.
Private Eye had run a photographic lookalike item comparing Maxwell s face to Ronnie Kray s and accused the tycoon of funding the Labour party in the hope of one day securing a peerage. Maxwell was incandescent with rage and pledged to crush the Eye.
Revitalised physically by a period of sobriety during the making of the film Whoops Apocalypse (in which Peter played an insane British Prime Minister), Cook threw himself into the legal hostilities with relish. As Maxwell gave evidence on the witness stand, Peter waved his chequebook scornfully at him across the courtroom.
The magazine lost the case. A weeping Maxwell had told the court that, Mrs. Maxwell and all of our children were utterly shocked to have me, their father, compared to a convicted major gangster. In November 1986, the Eye was ordered to pay Maxwell approximately a third of a million pounds, which all but cleared them out at the bank.
But Maxwell wasn t finished and neither was Peter. The tycoon diverted the Mirror s presses to produce a million copies of Not Private Eye, a bogus magazine featuring large pictures of Nazi leaders conversing, doctored to include Private Eye columnist (and former editor) Richard Ingrams chatting with Hitler. He then bullied WH Smith s, the newsagent chain, into stocking it before flying off to New York to visit his mistress.
Ian Hislop, the Eye s editor, reasoned that if the magazine could get hold of the production dummy of Not Private Eye, they could persuade Smith s to reverse their decision. But how to get it?
Peter Cook had a brainwave; he decided to send a crate of exceptionally good whiskey over to the people who were putting the dummy together at the Mirror offices.
Two hours later, Peter phoned up to see what had happened. As he d hoped, the four people laying out Not Private Eye were completely legless. Sounds like really good fun there, we re coming over, said Cook. Yeah, fine, burped the sozzled layout team.
Cook, Hislop and a couple of other Eye staffers hopped in a taxi and headed for Maxwell House, the Mirror HQ. With Peter at the helm, they blagged their way past security and made straight for Maxwell s suite on the top floor, where they found the layout team literally in a drunken heap.
Hislop liberated the dummy and was keen to leave but Peter had only just begun. He sat at Maxwell s desk, rang the Mirror s catering department and ordered champagne. Then, he telephoned the photo desk and ordered them to send up a snapper to take a picture of the Eye party relaxing in Maxwell s suite.
He also graffiti d the walls and windows with crayons, writing HELLO CAP N BOB! everywhere. When he was finally ready to leave, he phoned Maxwell s mistress in New York and got Maxwell himself on the line to explain what he had done.
Maxwell went ballistic. He telephoned Mirror security at once. Within minutes, a crew of red-faced security men burst into the suite. But such was Peter s charisma, Hislop relates, that before long they too had joined the party.
In due course, WH Smith were shown the Not Private Eye dummy and were persuaded to reverse their decision. For years afterwards, Robert Maxwell exploded into paroxysms of rage whenever Peter Cook s name was mentioned in his company.
Throughout the 1980s, one of Peter Cook s pride and joys was a tree outside the front door of his Perrin s Walk home. For years, he had assiduously sculpted this tree with topiary shears, transforming it into a colossal, evergreen two-fingered gesture to the world.
The loving care he lavished on this arboreal gag was in stark contrast to the disdain he displayed for the state of his indoor living conditions. The house at Perrin s Walk was as unkempt as its owner, and just as perilously close to rack and ruin.
Peter s sitting room floor was a mass of videotapes, newspapers, empty bottles and takeaway food cartons. He had scribbled all over the walls of the house; favourite words like oxymoron , for instance, and extensive eulogies in biro above the decaying corpses of flies he had swatted. He blu-tacked up vital documents like his passport and driving licence so that he could find them amid the chaos.
He also stuck up pictures of his childhood and of himself as a brilliant young man, as well as pictures of famous alcoholics like George Best and Jimmy Greaves, Pete and Dud photos, cuttings and memorabilia and a tabloid double-page spread headed THE DAY PETER COOK BECAME A DRUNK by DUDLEY MOORE.
Behind the front door, there was a waist-height pile of u