Customer Reviews
Peter Cook Biog- Harry Thompson - By: Mrs. A. F. Ellis, 28 Jun 2007 
Wonderful book,always gripping. I have read many biogs of TV Comics/Film Stars etc & my interest has waned with irrelevant,wandering facts but not with this book ! Compelling reading, could not put it down.Always thought of Peter Cook as satirical,wordy clever genius & this book balances this part of him with the sad, dark side as well.One of the best,if not the best, biographies I have ever read.A must have.
Alexandra Ellis
Very Well Researched - By: Paul Johnson, 23 Jul 2005 
Most people will be aware both of just how funny Peter Cook was & how his life fell apartin the late 70's & never really recovered. This excellently researched biography provides us with a great deal of detail about his entire life & the author has clearly spent a great deal of time interviewing various people who knew him.
For myself I did not realise just how many people he influenced & worked within the early part of his life. There is a good amount of transcribed scripts which make the book extremely funny to readin places. It does however become moving towards the end as it is covering the times when Cook's life fell apart. It is truely tragic just how much of a mess he got himself into.
The one thing that slightly lets the book down is that the author is clearly somewhatin awe of Cook & seems unable to be critical of the bad aspects of his character. There were several instances of Cook being truely horrible to various people (frequently to Dudley Moore) & the author seems determined to make excuses for Cook when the fact is, he was just being horrible.
Allin all though this is a great biography of one of the funniest men there has ever been.
Triumphal - By: , 04 Dec 2003 Do you want to know an interesting fact? I thoroughly enjoyed this absorbing biography of a truly individual Englishman.
Notwithstanding the other interesting fact that I was born on Peter Cook's 30th birthday, I have always felt a sort of detached connection to his life & comedy. This excellent biography removed that feeling completely. Thoroughly researched would be an understatement. I had to check the cover to ensure it was indeed only written by Harry Thompson.
Full of humour, full of pathos, full of Cook. Fantastic.
Buy it, read it & enjoy it. Oh, & do you know the one I placed on my bookshelf? I think I saw it move!!!
Utterly compelling biography - By: , 14 Feb 2003 On the presumption that it will mainly be fans of Peter Cook's comedy who pick this book up, I can assure potential readers that you will often laugh out loud at the stream of reproduced work from his long career & anecdotes from his strange life.
More than that though, you get a thoroughly convincing assessment of Cook's long, slow descent into alcoholism (and most other vices you care to name), depression, loneliness, & fear of failure. It is perhaps a testament to 'Cookie' that he could sink so low, & so slowly, & yet remain so loved & admired by anyone, star name or not, who came into contact with him.
It is quite astonishing that a book could be this funny & at the same time so sad. The best biography I've ever read.
A well-researched and understanding biography - By: T. D. Welsh, 09 Feb 2003 Peter Cook was a man of contradictions: an amazing talent who eventually failedin the harsh world of show business; a kind, friendly, good-humoured man who destroyed his marriages & repelled his best friends through drunkenness & cruelty. Now that is a challenge for a biographer - & Harry Thompson has risen superbly to the occasion. This 480-page blockbuster, crammed with detailed reminiscences, gives an unparalleled insight into the personality of this most English of comedians.
What a long way it is from Peter Cook's grandfather, a railway officialin Kuala Lumpur who shot himself under the stress of a big promotion, & his father - a "sea-green incorruptible" colonial administrator - to the party he threw at the Cobden Working Men's Clubin 1993, where the Rolling Stones rubbed shoulders with the Monty Python crew, two England cricket captains, Julian Clary & a mass of other celebrities. So tight was the scrum that Alan Bennett & Jonathan Miller never managed to greet their host at all.
Like a stock market boom/bust cycle, the ups & downs of Cook's career were hugely amplified by the dictates of fashion. He was lucky enough to catch the early 1960s satire wave, & quickly became so sought-after that President Kennedy & his wife actually had to go & meet him, after he declined an invitation to the White House. Other than becoming global dictator, there was hardly anywhere to go after that but down - & Cook's perfectionism & lack of ambition conspired to make the descent almost as fast as the rise.
Cook's attitude to alcohol may have been at the root of his downfall. He simply wasn't prepared to give it up, & - like many people to whom money is no object - found himself drinking more & more. He even turned up for shows hardly able to stand, although he redeemed himself by recovering miraculously when the curtain went up. Like Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, who had a similar problem with heroin, Cook showed a curious fatalism about the habit that he knew very well was killing him & driving away the people who meant most to him. Also like Garcia, he managed to kick itin his final years, when his health had already been ruined.
Like all great biographies, this book involves usin the tragedy of success that contains the seeds of its own destruction. It is also the story of a tremendously talented & likeable man.
