‘We’re playing the piano on a ship. A crane picks us up and lowers us into the river. We keep singing and finish the song underwater.’
I listened to Peter Cook, wondering how the hell I could direct that. This was our first production meeting on Not Only … But Also, in 1965, 60 years ago. There were no scripts.
Roger Race, my assistant, broke the silence.
‘Well, we can’t do that, Peter, surely?’
Peter gave him a steely look. ‘Why not?’
A few weeks later, we were on a freighter moored in London’s East End near Tower Bridge. It was January. Peter and Dudley settled at a grand piano sitting on the deck and began to sing the show’s opening number. The piano sat on a wooden platform. A crane picked it up, swung it over the side and began to lower them towards the murky Thames.
When it reached the water, I yelled, ‘Cut!’ The crane’s cables went slack. As they began the return journey, one of them draped over Dudley’s shoulder. For an awful moment I thought it might decapitate him when it went taut.
Dudley would have been 90 on 19th April. He died in 2002, aged only 66, suffering from PSP (progressive supranuclear palsy). The saddest aspect of this was that he could no longer play the piano, his greatest joy. Peter Cook died 30 years ago, aged only 57.
Women adored Dudley and the feeling was mutual. My writing partner, Ian La Frenais, was sometimes mistaken for him.
We were having dinner in the Virgin Islands – one of them – when a man at a nearby table kept looking at Ian knowingly. When he got up to leave, he was too cool to ask for an autograph. He said instead, ‘The people of Philadelphia really appreciate your artistry. When you hopped across that beach…’
This was a reference to a scene from 10 (1979), many years later, when Dudley was becoming a movie star.
Let’s circle back to Shepherd’s Bush. We shot the show on Sunday evenings with a live audience. Demand for tickets was intense. They were free, but people were always asking for favours.
Afterwards, inevitably, we had a few drinks. The following morning, we’d set off, slightly bleary, to shoot location sequences for the next-but-one show. On Tuesdays, we’d debate what we would shoot that week, rehearse and decide on the sets and props we would need, and I would slope off to edit the filmed sequences. I think I got Saturday afternoons off.
There was never anything on paper; perhaps a few scribbled notes. My principal role was less one as a director, and more one as nanny.
Peter’s ad-libs were brilliant – and never the same. So I had to tell him, ‘That’s very funny, Peter, but yesterday was funnier.’
He’d already forgotten what he’d said the day before, but if he agreed with me, that’s what we went with.
One of his main delights was in making Dudley corpse. This was especially true on their Pete-and-Dud segments. I never knew quite what they were going to say. So I had to put four cameras on them – two singles and two two-shots – and wing it. If Peter detected the hint of a grin on Dudley’s face, he seized on it relentlessly until his shoulders were shaking. The audience didn’t mind, feeling they were in on the joke.
When I was given the assignment of taking over the show – this was the second series – Frank Muir took us all to lunch at the White Tower. Peter was so funny that I felt daunted. How could I compete with his brain? I felt reassured when I read that most people felt the same way.
Alan Bennett said, ‘It takes me a week to come up with a joke, which I present like a delicate flower. Then I find that Peter has come up with at least two dozen of them in the same period.’
Peter was keen to start each episode of the show with something startling. In one episode, they were cavemen carving the Westbury White Horse on Salisbury Plain. A helicopter shot revealed this, together with the letters ‘NOT ONLY … BUT ALSO’ in matching white.
It was all very well having no script for these location shoots, but understandably questions were asked. What props do you need? What sort of location? Any other actors?
One week there was a very simple answer: Pete and Dud were taking an out-of-season holiday. That was about it. We found ourselves, slightly hungover as usual, on a train to Felixstowe. I looked out of the window and realised we had an amazing stroke of luck: it had snowed overnight.
This meant that I was able to shoot Dud and Pete in deckchairs, looking out to sea, discussing the benefits of beating the summer crowds. When they got up to walk away, the camera revealed that the beach behind them was white with snow.
The Gods of Comedy had another gift for us. We went into the local fairground, which had a rollercoaster. We asked the man in charge if we could shoot something on that.
He looked gloomy and said, ‘There’s ice on the rails and I don’t think the cars would make it over the first “big dip”.’
Our eyes lit up – this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We got the cameras ready. The light was fading. Pete and Dud were the only passengers in the leading car as it trundled up the first rise. It sailed down the rails, went up, faltered and then went into reverse, leaving them stranded. All that remained was to find a long ladder so they could get down. Peter revealed that he was scared of heights, but he obviously overcame this fear in the interests of comedy.
This was one of the best — and luckiest — sequences I ever shot. It kills me that it didn't survive when the BBC decided to make more shelf space area and wiped more than half of the series.
One sequence that still exists is Peter and Dudley playing puppets in a parody of Thunderbirds, a popular children’s show of the time. They named this one Superthunderstingcar. Dudley played the aristocratic Lady Penelope, Peter her butler, Parker. He was also the evil villain, with a bald head and bushy eyebrows. Dudley was the hero and Brains, the backstage boffin with outsize glasses.
This one really needed a script to create time for changes of make-up and costume. I volunteered to write it with this in mind, and they agreed.
My favorite exchange was:
Peter: ‘How did you get into this show?’
Dudley: ‘I knew someone who pulled strings for me.’
The villain then produced a giant pair of scissors and cut the strings one by one till Dudley slumped to the floor.
Don’t expect any backstage anecdotes about tension and rivalry between them. That came later, when Dudley was suddenly a movie star and Peter felt left behind.
When I was involved with them, they were riding a wave. The show was a huge hit, people were clamouring for seats and Peter never ran out of ideas – such as bare-knuckle boxing on Wimbledon Common with real boxers as their seconds: Henry Cooper and Terry Downes.
The underwater sequence from the opening routine was shot in a swimming pool at a Butlin’s holiday camp. Peter checked his make-up in a mirror; they both had a cup of tea and continued to sing in a bubbly way until a mermaid swam by and they pursued her, Dudley on a bicycle he happened to find.
Working alongside them, with an occasional light hand on the tiller, was one of the best experiences of my life.
Dick Clement wrote, with Ian La Frenais, Porridge, The Likely Lads, Lovejoy and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet
