Quote #47

Being British in this part of the century meant living in the country that had Peter Cook in it. There are wits and there are clowns in comedy, I suppose. Peter was a wit, it goes without saying, but he was funny in an almost supernatural way that has never been matched by anyone I've met or even heard about. It wasn't to do with facial expression or epigrammatic wit, or cattiness or rant or anger or technique: he had funniness in the same way that beautiful people have beauty or dancers have line and grace. He had an ability to make people gasp and gasp and gasp for breath like landed fish. ~ Stephen Fry

More from Peter Cook

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  3. Tragically I was an only twin.
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  5. There's terrific merit in having no sense of humour, no sense of irony, practically no sense of anything at all. If you're born with these …
  6. He got used early to the adulation of a wide public and eventually decided that he could do without it; long before the end, fame had to ch…
  7. The most ordinary thing like appearing on Clive James fills me with panic, I don't much enjoy being on television. I'd rather be sarcastic …
  8. He wasn't just a genius, he had the genius's impatience with the whole idea of doing something again. He reinvented an art form, exhausted …

All Peter Cook quotes