Cook, Peter (Edward) (1937-1995)

English satirist and entertainer. With his subsequent comedy partner Dudley Moore, and with Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller he appeared in the revue Beyond the Fringe (1959-64). He opened London's first satirical nightclub, The Establishment, in 1960, and backed the satirical magazine Private Eye. Cook's distinctive humour was as little restrained by any concern for people's feelings as by good taste, and frequently tended towards a kind of verbal surrealism.

Cook was born in Torquay, Devon, and educated at Radley public school and Cambridge University, where his performing career began. With his talent for mimicry and verbal fantasy, Cook was one of the chief movers of the British satire movement of the early 1960s. The success of Beyond the Fringe was consolidated in the television comedy series Not Only But Also with Moore, which ran from 1965 to 1973. As well as financing Private Eye (founded in 1963), he remained a regular contributor and source of influence.

Cook and Moore often appeared together in films. Cook's films include The Wrong Box (1966), Bedazzled (1968), The Bed Sitting Room (1969), a parody of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1977), Supergirl (1984), and Black Beauty (1994).

An anthology of his writings, Tragically I Was an Only Twin, was published in 2002.