Peter Edward Cook was an English comedian, actor, satirist, playwright and screenwriter. He was the leading figure of the British satire boom of the 1960s, and he was associated with the anti-establishment comedic movement that emerged in the United Kingdom in the late 1950s.
Dudley Stuart John Moore CBE was an English actor, comedian, musician and composer. He first came to prominence in the UK as a leading figure in the British satire boom of the 1960s. He was one of the four writer-performers in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe from 1960 that created a boom in satiric comedy. With a member of that team, Peter Cook, Moore collaborated on the BBC television series Not Only... But Also. As a popular double act, Moore's buffoonery contrasted with Cook's deadpan monologues. They jointly received the 1966 British Academy Television Award for Best Entertainment Performance and worked together on other projects until the mid-1970s, by which time Moore had settled in Los Angeles to concentrate on his film acting.
David Graeme Garden OBE is a Scottish comedian, actor, author, artist and television presenter, best known as a member of the Goodies and a regular panellist on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.
Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. The form developed and became popular in vaudeville, and is used widely in variety shows, comedy talk shows, and some sitcoms and children's television series. The sketches may be improvised live by the performers, developed through improvisation before public performance, or scripted and rehearsed in advance like a play. Sketch comedians routinely differentiate their work from a “skit", maintaining that a skit is a (single) dramatized joke while a sketch is a comedic exploration of a concept, character, or situation. Sketch comedy is a genre within American television that includes a multitude of schemes and identities.
Timothy Julian Brooke-Taylor OBE was an English actor and comedian. He was best known as a member of The Goodies.
Alan Bennett is an English actor, author, playwright and screenwriter. Over his entertainment career he has received numerous awards and honours including two BAFTA Awards, four Laurence Olivier Awards, and two Tony Awards. He also earned an Academy Award nomination for his film The Madness of King George (1994). In 2005 he received the Society of London Theatre Special Award.
The Cambridge Footlights, commonly referred to simply as Footlights, is a student sketch comedy troupe located in Cambridge, England. Footlights was founded in 1883, and is one of Britain's oldest student sketch comedy troupes. The comedy society is run by the students of Cambridge University.
Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE was an English theatre and opera director, actor, author, television presenter, humourist and physician. After training in medicine and specialising in neurology in the late 1950s, he came to prominence in the early 1960s in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett.
"One Leg Too Few" is a comedy sketch written by Peter Cook and most famously performed by Cook and Dudley Moore. It is a classic example of comedy arising from an absurd situation which the participants take entirely seriously, and a demonstration of the construction of a sketch in order to draw a laugh from the audience with almost every line. Peter Cook said that this was one of the most perfect sketches he had acted in, and that it amazed him, later in his career, that he could have created it so young, at the age of 17 or 18.
The satire boom was the output of a generation of British satirical writers, journalists and performers at the beginning of the 1960s. The satire boom is often regarded as having begun with the first performance of Beyond the Fringe on 22 August 1960 and ending around December 1963 with the cancellation of the BBC TV show That Was The Week That Was. The figures most closely identified with the satire boom are Peter Cook, John Bird, John Fortune, David Frost, Dudley Moore, Bernard Levin and Richard Ingrams. Many figures who found celebrity through the satire boom went on to establish subsequently more serious careers as writers including Alan Bennett (drama), Jonathan Miller (polymathic), and Paul Foot.
Sir David Edwin Hatch, was an English broadcaster, involved in production and management at BBC Radio where he held many executive positions, including Head of Light Entertainment (Radio), Controller of BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 4 and later managing director of BBC Radio.
The Experimental Theatre Club (ETC) is a student dramatic society at the University of Oxford, England. It was founded in 1936 by Nevill Coghill as an alternative company to the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), and produces several productions a year.
The Oxford Revue is a comedy group primarily featuring students from Oxford University and Oxford Brookes University, England. Beginning in 1953, The Oxford Revue has produced many prominent comedians, actors and satirists - as is the case with their Cambridge University counterparts, the Footlights. The Revue writes, produces and performs several shows each term in the pubs and theatres around Oxford, as well as touring to cities in the United Kingdom and performing a month-long run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival every year.
A Poke in the Eye (With a Sharp Stick) is the title of the first show in what later became the Secret Policeman's Ball series of benefit shows for human rights organization Amnesty International, although it pre-dated by three years the first show to bear that name. The film of the show was titled Pleasure at Her Majesty's which is sometimes mistakenly thought to be the title of the actual benefit show.
Pete and Dud: Come Again is a stage play about British Beyond the Fringe comedians Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, which was written by Chris Bartlett and Nick Awde. The comedy-drama had a sold-out run at the Assembly Rooms as part of the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it was shortlisted for a Fringe First Award by The Scotsman, before moving to London's West End at The Venue in March 2006; this version starred Kevin Bishop as Moore, Tom Goodman-Hill as Cook, Colin Hoult as Jonathan Miller, and Fergus Craig as Alan Bennett. It was published in playtext form by Methuen.
The Cambridge Footlights Revue is an annual revue by the Footlights Club, a group of comedy writer-performers at the University of Cambridge. Three of the more notable revues are detailed below.
John Bassett is the person credited with putting together the talent for the Edinburgh International Festival revue, Beyond the Fringe, in 1960.
Jonathan Huw Sweet is a British comedian and the recipient of the 2009 Edinburgh Comedy Award for best newcomer.
"A Trip to the Moon" is a 1964 television science fiction comedy film, produced as an episode of the CBS series Chronicle. The script was written by Jonathan Miller and Robert Goldman, based on Jules Verne's 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon. All characters are portrayed by Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Miller, and Dudley Moore, who had first worked together in the revue Beyond the Fringe.
Jason Forbes is an English actor, writer, comedian, impressionist, and TV presenter. He is best known for the CITV series Horrible Science; The Mash Report on BBC Two; as PC Peasey in the Professor Branestawm television films on BBC One; and as a member of the award-winning sketch trio 'Daphne'.
