"E27002" wrote in message
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On Sep 28, 3:38 am, "michael adams" wrote:

- Why would anybody with a shred of self respect want to pay to hear the
- foul mouthed Cook?

- The BBC, and any other decent body that did so,
- should be ashamed that they ever gave Cook a platform. If lowlifes
- want to enjoy the right to free assembly and exchange their
- distasteful verbiage, so be it. But, that venue was surely far below
- endorsement by the presence Her Majesty's First Minister.

You're totally out of synch. Which I'm afraid casts a lot of doubt on
many of your other judgements.

At that stage of his career Peter Cook was in no way foul-mouthed. The
foul-mouthed stuff only first emerged with the Derek and Clive tapes.
From memory ,and without any googling these were recorded by the pair
when half ****ed and first emerged as pseudo bootlegs i.e as never intended
for wider dissemination - possibly as a marketing exercise. This was much
much later. I repeat much, much, later.

The Macmillan thing happened in the middle of a run of "Beyond The Fringe".
Beyond the Fringe was only the latest of a series of review shows to which
Cook had contributed sketches. The main difference being that instead
of poking fun at middle class manners and mores it also poked fun at dearly
held national myths and at national institutions. There was the famous "Futile
Gesture" sketch where dressed as RAF Officers one of the cast Miller or Cook
says something along the lines of "Well Smithers, we've decided we need
someone to make a futile gesture and you're lucky enough to have been chosen".
"Oh thank you sir". (So famous that this is possibly totally wrong). BTF first
ran at the Fortune Theatre which is presumably where Macmillan attended the
show. It also later ran in New York.

As has been succinctly pointed out by another poster, what was really
offensive about Cooks behaviour was that he was confusing the person
(regardless of Macmillan's merits as a soldier or publisher) with the
office he held only during working hours. Plus the fact that in
attending in a private capacity Macmillan was caught totally off guard
whereas there's no knowing how long Cook had been aware of his presence -
even a minute would do so as to come up with his insulting remark.
Had it been in the middle of Prime Ministers Questions then Macmillan
would have been fair game but as it was, it was totally unsporting.
It would require a trip to the library to refresh my memory as to what
Cook is reported to have actually said, but it was deeply personal
along the lines of "I'm so stupid and senile I've come along tonight
to see myself being made a fool of". In Cook's Macmillan voice.
It's a bit post modernist in one sense but it would have worked
equally well in a far less insulting context.


michael adams

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