REGULAR PERFORMERS

Dudley Moore
Peter Cook
John Lennon
Barry Humphries
Peter Sellers
Una Stubbs
Eric Sykes
Henry Cooper
Cilla Black
Dustry Springfield
Spike Milligan
William Rushton
Frank Muir
Ronnie Barker

PRODUCERS John McGrath, Dick Clement, John Street, James Gilbert

PROGRAMMING HISTORY 23 Episodes

BBC2
January 1965-April 1965                 7 45-minute Episodes January 1966-February 1966           7 30-minute Episodes Christmas Special                              25 December 1966 February 1970-May 1970                7 45-minute Episodes Live Performance Show of the Week         14 March 1973

 

See also British Programming

 

 

   

Not Only...But Also... was among the most influential comedy programmes seen on British television in the 1960s. Starring former Beyond the Fringe partners Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, this fondly remembered comedy revue series had a considerable impact upon television comedy of the era, with its innovative and often eccentric brand of anarchic humour.

The series, first broadcast on BBC2 in 1965 and then repeated on BBC1, was conceived after Dudley Moore was asked to a single comedy show for the BBC. Moore recruited Cook to help him write the sketches and Cook responded with "Pete and Dud," who were destined to become the show's greatest success, and another sketch in which a man explained his life's mission to teach ravens to fly underwater. The resulting show persuaded the BBC to commission a whole series from the duo.

Moore and Cook set about developing sequences of lively comedy sketches linked by musical interludes and other set-piece events variously featuring themselves or guests. Among the most successful of these latter items was Poets Cornered, in which invited comedians were required to compose (without hesitation) instant rhyming poems, or risk being plunged into a vat of gunge--the first appearance of the so-called "gunge tanks" that became such a feature of zany quiz shows and children's programmes in the 1980s and 1990s. Among those to brave the gunge were Frank Muir, Spike Milligan and Barry Humphries. Guests in sketches included John Lennon, who appeared in the uniform of a nightclub commissionaire, and Peter Sellers.

Other characteristics of the show included its opening sequence, for which the cameras were set up at some unexpected location, such as London's Tower Bridge, to film Moore playing the signature tune on his piano, and the closing song "Goodbye" (which was successfully released as a single in 1965, reaching number 18 in the pop charts).

The undoubted highlights of the Not Only... But Also... shows were the appearances of Cook and Moore in the roles of "Pete and Dud"--two rather dimwitted characters in long raincoats and cloth caps who mulled over affairs of the day and the meaning of life itself as they sipped pints of beer or munched sandwiches. These hilarious routines were frequently enlivened by bursts of ad-libbing, particularly by Cook, and on several uproarious occasions both men collapsed in fits of giggles, to the delight of audience and viewers.

A second series of Not Only... But Also... was broadcast in 1966 and its effect was evident upon many subsequent comedy shows, notably in the head-to-head dialogues of Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones some 20 years later, which harked back unmistakably to the classic "Pete and Dud" format.

-David Pickering