Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, AKA Derek and Clive:
‘Are you going to go out laughing?’ asks Dudley Moore during the sessions for Derek & Clive Come Again. ‘No,’ replies Peter Cook. ‘I’m going to go out shitting myself with fear and fucking cancer that God so kindly provided. Without that, we wouldn’t have a way to die would we? Fucking good of him not to torment us with being eternally young and being able to fuck everyone – no, he gave us this great gift of fucking cancer. I wouldn’t have thought of that if I’d been creating a universe, would you? Bung in cancer? No, I’d have left that out.’
Eighteen years later, Peter Cook did go out shitting himself with fear. According to an apocryphal event in Harry Thompson’s 1997 biography, Cook’s friend Rainbow George looked into the comic genius’ eyes and told him, as his system haemorrhaged beyond recognition, that he was going to be OK and make a full recovery. Cook paused for one beat, and simply said ‘Fuck’.
(via DPH.)