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UPDATED EVERY FRIDAY
Last Update:
Friday 14th January, 2005
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All content ©
New Journal Enterprises, 2004.
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Peter’s friends recall the comics’ comedian
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Paying tribute: from left, singer Ray Shell, actors Robert
Powell, Jonathan Aris, comedian Stephen Fry, actor Aidan
McCardle and comedian Phil Cornwell
Actor Rhys Ifans with comedian Stephen Fry
The church’s junior choir and the comedian’s friends
took part in the Twelfth Night tribute
Peter Cook
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TV wit Stephen Fry remembered just how dangerously funny the
late Peter Cook was at a Twelfth Night service on Thursday.
“If he had been even a quarter of one per cent funnier he would
have had to be put down,” Mr Fry said.
“There were rooms he was asked to leave because people just
couldn’t breathe with laughter.”
Organised by Hampstead Parish Church vicar the Rev Stephen Tucker
and Peter Cook’s widow Lin, the service at the church in Church
Row raised money for the Peter Cook Foundation, which benefits disabled
young people.
Readings, both liturgical and humorous, were given by actor Robert
Powell and comedian Phil Cornwell.
The latter drew applause for his performance of the Ogden Nash poem
The Boy Who Laughed at Santa Claus.
Actors Jonathan Aris and Aidan McCardle became Pete’n’Dud
for a rendition of the Gospel Truth sketch in which a Bethlehem
shepherd tending his flocks tells a reporter about the night the
angel of the Lord came down.
Before that, singer Ray Shell, who starred in the West End production
of the Lion King, gave a soulful a cappella rendition of O Holy
Night.
In the audience was actor Rhys Ifans, who played Peter Cook in Not
Only... But Always, a dramatisation of the comedian’s life
broadcast on television over Christmas.
He said the service, which included carols from the church’s
choir, had “tickled his atheism” and that meeting the
comedian’s widow made it a “very emotional night”.
Sunday marked the 10th anniversary of the death of the comedian,
who lived in Perrin’s Walk, Hampstead. Mr Fry said that so
many events of the last decade would have been better understood
had Peter Cook been around to offer his surreal commentary.
“His wit he couldn’t turn off, like beautiful people can’t
turn off their beauty,” Mr Fry added, before recounting one
of the comedian’s flights of fancy in which actress Elizabeth
Taylor is force-fed chocolate eclairs by her own glands.
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