The series, first broadcast on BBC2 in 1965 and then repeated on BBC1, was conceived after Dudley Moore was asked to do a single comedy show for the BBC. Moore recruited Cook to help him write the sketches, and Cook responded with “Pete and Dud,” the characters 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 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 programs 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 unique 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 highlights of the Not Only . . . But Also . . . shows were undoubtedly 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 in Alas Smith and Jones some 20 years later, which harked back unmistakably to the classic “Pete and Dud” format.