Peter Cook (I)

A life in focus: Peter Cook

John Bird writes about the giant of British comedy who inspired several generations.

When comedy double acts split

David Baddiel, Andy Zaltzman, Richard Herring and other comics on fame, failure and friendship.

Longevity, banging on and on, is the key component of national treasuredom. In his slick Sale of the Century years it was hard to imagine Nicholas Parsons might ever achieve the status, but now, aged 94, and having presented 975 episodes of Radio 4's Just a Minute/c], without deviation but with plenty of repetition, the mantle maybe fits. The BBC celebrated his half century with a tribute, Just a Minute: 50 Years in 28 Minutes, which had living panellists compete with departed wits; a ouija board parlour game. Paul Merton interrupted Peter Cook's 60 seconds on the Loch Ness monster, Jenny Eclair was superseded by Patrick Moore on foolishness. By the time Stephen Fry cut in on Kenneth Williams and Barbara Castle on the subject of Gregorian chants, it was tricky to work out who was in the studio and who wasn't. "I don't think we can have psychic challenges," a youthful Parsons reminded his departed guests; we can now.

Why Just a Minute hides a far more ruthless reality

Just A Minute has become one of the nation's most beloved radio shows -- but it began as a classroom humiliation, inflicted on daydreamers by a history teacher at Sherborne School in the Thirties.

Has comedy become too PC?

They say that much of the right-wing backlash being observed in the political mainstream across the world stems from how overly PC society has become. And if that's true, comedy may have a lot to answer for.

Opinion: comedies that were pulled earlier than planned

If Host The Week has been axed by Channel 4 after one episode, as has been reported, it joins a very select band of television comedies that were pulled earlier than planned.

Satire is a dying genre - who could satirise this?

When the leader of the free world is a planet-threatening anti-hero so frightening that he would test the credulity of readers of Marvel comics, it's a challenging time for the political satirist.

Peter Cook's widow Lin dies at 71

Peter Cook's widow Lin has died at the age of 71.