Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Moustache & The Beard, 8 Jan 2003
What happened to the fascinating Peter Cook after Derek & Clives I, II, III & the video? While Dudley was swanning around Hollywood with women twice his size, Peter held the fort in Hampstead, England. He strolled, stumbled or gallivanted around to his neighbour George's house, where the eccentric guru George taped him in a variety of moods... laughing, slurred, razor-sharp, witty as sin, ludicrous, bored and plain glorious. It is said that the two CDs (an hour each) in this package are taken from countless years of conversation. Until we can hear the rest of it, 'Over At Rainbow's' will do very very nicely indeed. Because this really does feel like we are meeting the real Cook. It is a revelation. Who would have thought that the father of modern satire would have been sitting around claiming to be jewish, or phoning radio shows as a German and a Norwegian, or discussing exercise with a tramp (standing on his last legs), or rehearsing visits to a psychiatrist, or discussing Mickey Rooney's entrapment in a lift, Jane Russell's assault on Elizabeth Taylor's breasts, and whether bringing down the establishment would just mean "some other cu*ts coming round asking me for something for nothing".
These CDs encapsulate the story that followed Derek & Clive, which most know off by heart now. They resonate on many levels - being both funny and funny-peculiar, rather spooky, a massive piss-take of new-age religion and suprisingly touching.
Dudley Moore left Peter Cook when he most needed him. And - as we hear here - Cook struggled through in the most philosophical, mystical, polite and hysterical way.
I will give this four stars rather than five stars only because Peter is sporting a moustache on the cover.
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26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lovely Dreamy Peter, 25 Oct 2002
This is strange and funny and unique.
Over At Rainbow's is interspersed by the sound of a door-buzzer, announcing the return trips by Peter Cook to the home of his neighbour; there to talk about everything from **** to how film footage of fish is used to bore hooligans to death at Norwegian football matches.
The late comedian's neighbour is called Rainbow George and - judging by the pretty wild booklet that comes with these two compact discs - he has a disturbing taste in pullovers. George wants to bring down everything and create a perfect new society, with the aid of a powerful alien force he says he has been speaking to. Peter thinks he's funny and good company. (It's great to hear Peter laughing, long & hard).
Early on in the record Peter tells a female guest of George's that he (Peter) gave up comedy years ago and that he's now a spiritualist. But he cannot take George's mystical notions seriously for more than a minute at a time.
The album contains phone-calls made by Peter to radio phone-in shows, in the guise of a man called Sven. They're brilliant and briliantly drole, but the main course, the main meat, is elsewhere. What we get on these records (recorded in the '80s)are lots of suprises and lots of insights into Peter's later life (he seems very much all there, if a little stoned) plus a wonderful array of silly ideas to feed the appetite of Cook fanatics who've listened to his 60s & 70s material and want a twist, a new perversion even. Peter discusses and spins surreal ideas around everything from whether Hampstead is the holy-land to whether 100 women stuffed up in the bedroom can make you wise; from the merits of bribing your mother's psychiatrist, to the woes of prehistoric hunting ("She says 'Why couldn't you have brought me fish, instead of tiger?. There's no way Alvin can win..."). On one track Peter pretends and insists he is jewish, in a room full of hassidic jews ("Is there anyone here who is jewish apart from me?"). On another track he becomes Nigella Lawson, directing the making of beans on toast for a vagrant who believes he is shortly to die and is almost as funny as him. On another track...
No, I won't spoil suprises for you.
This album has given me the horn, slowly but surely and strongly.
Peter is back from the dead. Or making this stuff from heaven. Or maybe he never died and he's just in hiding, making lovely spacey, ludicrous, adult, spooky, piss-taking stuff like this.
The tinkle of tea spoons was never so funny.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dead But Beautiful, 16 Dec 2002
Comedy to shave to. Or is it comedy? Some claim not - but categorically this reeks of humour. Towards the end, Cook phoning a radio programme to discuss the effects of cannabis on fish and of smoking fish on humans is Cook at his very very best. Cook is all over the place at the moment - a celebrated dead comedian with the same sketches repeated and similar comments made on him by commentators. But 'Over At Rainbow's' (the Rainbow's being the home of Cook's neighbour 'Rainbow/Coy George') shows a new Cook and perhaps the real Cook and certainly a fascinating Cook on his home turf.
When a tramp tells him excitedly 'I was in the War On Want shop and I saw you go past', well, call me new-fashioned but I felt giddy with affection and cheer.
Some say that humour on these two CDs (what a bargain)is at times downbeat. And in some ways it feels like Cook's Mid-Life Crisis Album... but what mirth is not mixed with some misery?
Some of 'Over At rainbow's' is poetry.This is my album for Christmas.
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