Cook and Moore: the intellectual comics

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32779, 2 December 1971, Page 4

Cook and Moore: the intellectual comics

Peter Cook reflectively stirred his coffee and talked intelligently about the hazards of being a professional comedian. Dudley Moore arrived 20 minutes late looking a bit jaded. He was happy just to stir his coffee. And listen to Pete expounding his views on comedy, literature, Australia, newspapers, British football teams, Australian hospitality (“quite overwhelming”) and Des O’Connor.

The pair were talking in the plush dining-room of Sydney's prestige Gazebo hotel in King’s Cross where their show, “Behind the Fridge," has played to.packed and delighted houses. Pete and Dud have become irreverent celebrities in Australia. Their own unique brand of cultivated horseplay and gentle satire has turned them into nation-wide figures. Pete is coolly at ease amid the flurry of euphoria. He refuses to be an automated funny-man, switching on his humour for all and sundry. “I don’t try to be funny all the time,” he said. "Most comedians I find hard to live with. They’re either manic depressives or madly extrovert—a joke a minute." He is assured and polite, unpretentious and just a little bit reserved. (He was born in the genteel seaside resort of Torquay in England, son of a Foreign Office official.) In a way, he’s an amateur in the profession—“l just stumbled into all this.” This is probably why he’s not prepared to tum on the comic high voltage on demand.

Dud is the same. They both reacted with horror at the mention of the madly social cocktail party where they are shown off like prize exhibits, expected to produce a few quips as magicians produce rabbits, and then whisked on to the next important guest.' "Oh,” said Dud with a shudder, “that’s quite ghastly. People just have to learn that we’re not like that.”

He’s not generally in favour of the frenzied social whirl—"l like small dinner parties, round about half a dozen friends.”

The large and trendy party also turns Pete off—“l tend to cringe into a comer if there are more than 20 people there. Nothing ever gets said at bigger parties.” He dislikes talking about himself and bemoaned the fact that he never had a chance to get together with his old fellow-students from Cambridge, where he studied modern languages on a scholarship and wrote comic skits.

Dud looked up from a large plateful of omelette and mince cakes—“l have absolutely no trouble talking about myself.” Dud is permanently engaged in what could be a lifelong battle of getting psychoanalysed. When he’s not performing (either as a comedian or accomplished jazz pianist), he lounges about his London flat playing a Hammond organ specially installed, or having sessions with his psychoanalyst. “I’m only too pleased to also meet somebody under analysis.”

In the flesh Dud looks even less substantial than he does on television in the “Not Only But Also” series. He was wearing a faded blue denim suit flecked with stickers and wearing underneath a pink T-shirt with the word “cocaine” written across the chest in red letters. He looks younger than his 35 years, whereas Pete looks slightly older than his 34; Dud admits to few absorbing interests outside comedy and music. Although he’s known as a jazz pianist, his first musical love appears to be classical compositions. In private he plays mostly Bach (about whom he admits to indulging a cerebral love affair), Schumann, Chopin and Liszt. He eschews contemporary music but likes to listen to a few of the modem composers like Stockhausen —“But I never listen for long, because even a little bit gets me up to here.” Strange tastes for the son of a railway electrician. Dud was bom in Dagenham in the East End of London, studied the violin and piano and sang in the church choir before winning a prized organ scholarship to Magdalene College at Oxford. He took a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Music and emerged with a desire to become a cathedral organist and choirmaster and with an assured reputa-

tion as, according to a friend, the “Clown Prince of Oxford.” He still retains a blithe sense of the ridiculous (in dress as well as in conversation). • He once played the piano in a working men's club in the Midlands sandwiched between a wrestling match and a strip-tease dance • act—- “ Honestly, you could have put the two together and you'd never know the difference.”

Pete and Dud still get a sort of undergraduate enthusiasm out of being funny. When I remarked I enjoyed their television show in which Pete promised to get Dud a 200,000 dollar role as James Bond, they spontaneously broke into the routine and provided an impromptu performance for the diners and waitresses.

They do quite a lot of adlibbing in “Behind the Fridge” and continually hack their material around (Pete types out the script on a battered Remington with his merciless two-finger technique). Asked whether they would change the show much to include New Zealand content, Pete said "Behind the Fridge" (their first success was "Beyond the Fringe”) had changed since it was first produced in Canberra. It might change again. But they hadn’t included Australian-angled material, so why should they introduce New Zealand-type stuff?

"Comedy,” he said, “is based on truth.” And he did not think they’d spent enough time in Australia to be comically truthful about the country. “For a start,” Pete said, “the accent is pretty hard to get off.” Neither knew much about New Zealand.

“I believe Wellington is windy,” Pete remarked knowledgeably. Dud has already spent three davs in Wellington earlier this year, making commercials. So that’s probably where Pete got his information from. “I saw a colour documentary on New Zealand when I was in Wellington,” Dud offered gallantly. Beyond that he knew little except that he thought the country looked terrific.

Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, the most successful British comedy team in a decade, begin a New Zealand tour at Wellington on December 6.