the sight of Bellwood standing on one leg to scratch the sole of the other foot. Instantly, Cook invented a scene in which a one-legged actor auditions for a role that would seem to require the full complement of lower limbs. “It just came out of his mouth,” Bellwood recalls. “He said, ‘Now, Mr. Spigott, you are auditioning, are you not, for the role of Tarzan.’ ” When “One Leg Too Few” was first performed on stage, Bellwood himself played Spigott, hopping about on one foot. In later years the role would be associated with Dudley Moore, who in 1959 was still an Oxford undergraduate who sometimes visited Cambridge to play jazz piano in a Footlights venue. Bellwood bonded with both Cook and Moore – but not with David Frost, another Cambridge undergraduate and Footlights stalwart. “He was a creep,” Bellwood says of Frost. “He stole all of Peter Cook’s material.” Cook served as president of the Footlights in the 195960 year, then made his big leap shortly after graduation. That summer, he joined the cast of “Beyond the Fringe,” a Footlights-style revue that debuted at the annual Edinburgh International Festival on Aug. 22, 1960. (The “Fringe” in the title referred to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, an alternative arts festival that takes place each year at the same time as the more traditional festival.) The other three “Fringe” cast members were Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller. Together with Cook, they comprised a cultural pivot point in Britain’s postwar history. “It created an explosion,” Bellwood recalls. So much so that in May 1961, “Beyond the Fringe” took up residency at the Fortune Theater in London’s West End. It was such a hit that Harold Macmillan came to see it, having heard about Cook’s impersonation of him. Spotting the prime minister in the audience, Cook ad-libbed a new line, which he delivered using Macmillan’s plummy upper-crust accent: “When I’ve a spare evening, there’s nothing I like better than to wander over to a theater and sit there listening to a group of sappy, urgent, vibrant young satirists with a stupid great grin spread over my silly old face.” As “The Crown” would have it, Macmillan was deeply embarrassed. In real life, the PM was a better sport. (Queen Elizabeth also saw “Beyond The Fringe” and reportedly enjoyed it.) Cook’s irreverent humor suited the times. The Suez Crisis of 1956 had stripped Britain of the illusion that it was still a first-class world power. The British had won World War II but lost their empire, and now found themselves playing second fiddle to those upstart Yanks across the pond. As a result, the traditional deference given to establishment institutions like the monarchy, and to upper-class statesmen like Macmillan, was curdling into something far less respectful. Bellwood points out that Cook’s humor owed a great deal to the anarchic antics of Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and others on the popular 1950s BBC radio program “The Goon Show,”
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Peter Cook’s classic sketch “One Leg Too Few” was inspired by the sight of Peter Bellwood, right, standing on one leg. Here they perform it in a Cambridge revue. which was more surreal than satirical. But in Cook’s hands, British humor acquired a political edge that had much to do with the nation’s suddenly diminished place in the world. His Macmillan impersonation called to mind an out-of-touch aristocracy in the process of passing from the scene. Hence the sting of his ad-lib at the Fortune Theatre that night. Back at Cambridge, Bellwood was now a senior, and had succeeded Cook as president of the Footlights. One day he and Frost, the club secretary, were invited to a cabaret revue that featured future Monty Python stalwart Graham Chapman, who was angling for a Footlights audition. “We gave them gallons of claret and didn’t start until they’d drunk at least a bottle each,” Chapman recalled in the book “Pythons The Autobiography By the Pythons.” Whether it was the claret or his performance, Chapman did wangle the coveted invitation from Bellwood and Frost to audition. So did John Cleese, another future Python. “I impersonated a carrot and a man with iron fingertips being pulled offstage by an enormous magnet,” Chapman recalled. “In the same set of auditions John Cleese did a routine of trampling on hamsters and can still do a good pain-ridden shriek. We were both selected and very soon were able to wear black taffeta sashes with Ars est celera artum (the art is to conceal the art) on them.” Bellwood by this point had switched from law to history
OQ / SPRING 2018