6 Mar 1999 Books: Audio: The Guardian, thanks to Peter Gordon.
By PETER KINGSTON
Why bother? by Peter Cook and Chris Morris (BBC Radio Collection, £5.99, 50min)
A foolhardy title to put on the front of any goods for sale. And at first hearing, this flimsy collection of five short
interviews, recorded by Radio 3 in 1994, between Morris, of On the Hour and Cook, in his ancient disguise of Sir Arthur
Streeb-Greebling, leaves you wondering why you did bother.
It's probably an unfair reaction to the reverential guff spouted
after Cook's death, which he would surely have been the first to send up. This is a contest. Morris aims throughout
to bludgeon Cook into silence by barraging him with absurd, aggresive and impossibly arbitrary questions.
After those
so familiar early sketches when Cook dominated the improvisatory duels with Dudley Moore, it's almost sad to
hear him as a victim. Misplaced sympathy. Cook proves impossible to knock down. Like a wibbly-wobbly toy, he always
rights himself, always finds a logic to leap across the enormous chasm Morris tries to open in front of him.
At second
hearing, Cook's combined nerve, wit and superb ear comes through and he never trips out of character. And some of it is
very funny. Recalling his wartime career in the Foreign Legion with Rex Harrison, Sir Arthur says: "Rex
was awfully brave - could have been an actor, you know. . ."
