Monot­o­n­al cod philoso­pher Pete and def­er­en­tial side­kick Dud deliv­er an arche­typ­al dia­logue in the rep­tile house at the zoo. This is one of the so-called “Dagen­ham dia­logues”, fea­tur­ing “Pete and Dud”, pop­u­larised on the show Not Only…But Also, first aired in 1965.

Com­ing out of the heady icon­o­clas­tic suc­cess of the satir­i­cal stage revue, Beyond the Fringe, Dud­ley Moore embarked on what was orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed to be a solo project, Not Only Dud­ley Moore, But Also His Guests. How­ev­er, hav­ing invit­ed Peter Cook to appear with him in the pilot, the suc­cess of their dou­ble act quick­ly led to Cook join­ing the show per­ma­nent­ly.

The dia­logues between the flat-capped com­e­dy cre­ations from Dagen­ham pre­sent­ed Peter Cook with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ad-lib and cre­ative­ly explore the myr­i­ad com­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties of his char­ac­ter. His abil­i­ty to sus­tain long peri­ods of straight-faced com­ic ram­blings that often­times bring Moore to the brink of corps­ing hilar­i­ty, adds a won­der­ful com­ic ten­sion to the dia­logues. Ever alert to Moore’s strug­gle to stay in char­ac­ter, Cook enjoys ramp­ing up the com­ic sur­re­al­i­ty in order to crack Dud up.

The duo’s rela­tion­ship was always a bit edgy, but their part­ner­ship fell apart dur­ing the marathon tour of their two-man show Behind the Fridge, in the ear­ly sev­en­ties, and they nev­er worked togeth­er on a reg­u­lar basis again, save for some albums and shows fea­tur­ing the less-than-edi­fy­ing “Derek and Clive” char­ac­ters. A flawed bro­mance they may have been but it’s prefer­able to remem­ber the good times, and at times those good times were comed­ical­ly sub­lime.