The blanket name for Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s whimsically shocking dialogues, released on three LPs between 1976 and 1978. Hearing them, you gaze into the cunt of comedy itself.
1.
It has been widely reported that the first album, Derek & Clive (Live), released in 1976, originated as a private recording which was subsequently bootlegged for rock groups of the time to play while on the road. However, copies of the original tape have remained elusive, and their contents undocumented - it is not clear how the edit differed, how much material was added at a later date, and how much was re-performed. For example, is ‘The Worst Job I Ever Had’ the original 1973 improvised recording, or had it been re-taken for inclusion on the LP? The original tape, entitled Derek & Clive (Dead), which also allegedly featured Orson Wells’ foul-mouthed audition for a frozen peas commercial and a recording of Marianne Faithfull masturbating on a train, has never been documented by journalists or biographers. It’s possible that stray members of Led Zeppelin own the only surviving copies.
'Derek And Clive (Live)' (1976)
2.
Compare the Ad Nauseam album (released December 1978) with its accompanying film Derek & Clive Get The Horn (released February 1980) - the latter was culled from only one of the two recording sessions and only about a third of the material is contained on the original record. Most cuts were made for artistic reasons, but there was still censorship apparent. Discussing a preceding routine (‘The Horn’), Dudley Moore ponders on whether he will get away with ‘that bit about Kenneth with spunk under his eye’. Peter Cook is doubtful, since Moore would have been ‘implying it happened’. Since no evidence of this exchange made it to the edit, we can only speculate about who Kenneth was, and why it was such a litigious matter for the duo.
[Note (1): According to Harry Thompson's biography of Peter Cook (Hodder & Stoughton, 1997), the Ad Nauseam material was all recorded over one weekend in September 1978. Recordings started on Friday 8 September (the day of Keith Moon’s death), and continued the following day (where a camera crew were present, and all of the Get The Horn footage was shot). Moore allegedly did not turn up for the third session on 10 September.]
[Note (2): Get The Horn was never released theatrically, for fear that it could be prosecuted under blasphemy and obscenity laws. The new-fangled domestic video cassette was an exciting new format at this time, and it was not clear whether the laws would be as stringent. Ironically, rules governing video cassettes actually became even more strict as the 1980s wore on - The Exorcist (1973, released on video in 1982 and banned in 1987) being an obvious case in point.]
3.
The rushes of Ad Nauseam - amounting to over 20 hours of tape - apparently do exist, and snippets were included as bonus tracks on both the Ad Nauseam and Come Again CDs, released in November 1989. (Virgin’s 1994 ‘Chattering Classics’ re-issues now have these extra tracks on the cassettes too.) However, it is also possible that these sketches were edited at the time of the album’s release, and are out-takes rather than newly-compiled nuggets taken from rushes. Sadly, nobody seems prepared to sift through them for further material - apparently, Virgin will allow a researcher to do it, but it’ll cost him or her £1,000 an hour to cover studio costs.
'Ad Nauseam' (1978)
[Note (1): It is not known whether any of the out-takes on the CDs originate from the Come Again sessions, although the extreme stereo separation on some sketches (‘You Stupid Cunt’, ‘Rape, Death & Paralysis’) perhaps hint at this. Indeed, Virgin do not have any production notes on the release, and are unable to track down the original engineer to verify this theory. The first album, Derek & Clive (Live), was issued on CD at the same time as the other albums, but - because it was issued by Island rather than Virgin - does not contain any extra material.]
4.
Mystery surrounds a short sketch called ‘Films’, which is billed as a bonus track on Come Again but only appears on some copies of the CD. The premise concerns a Hollywood body-double who specialises in sucking shit out of people’s arses; he is referred to as ‘George Riddles’ but the star who required the stunt-work is referred to as ‘the actor...we can’t name’, suggesting that an earlier attempt at the sketch had been considered defamatory.
MOORECount Yorga - Vampire Shit Sucker’...you’ve seen that film, have you?
COOKYeah, I enjoyed that ’cos, er...when Yorga comes in and, er...is confronted by the, y’know, enraged arsehole...
MOORE Yeah...
COOK...of, er...well, y’know, the actor, but we can’t name him. The way he gets his gob round that arsehole is incredible. I don’t know what special effects they had, if any, at all...was that special effects, or was that for real?
MOORENo, that was for real.
COOK That was real?
MOOREThey’ve got a bloke in there who’s particularly good at sucking shit.
COOKWho’s that?
MOOREErrrrr...
COOK George Riddles?
MOORE Er...it’s Norman.
COOKOh Norman? Yeah, course he did that...and all the shit-sucking jobs, dunnee?
MOOREHe’s really got the...he’s got the market cornered on that. On shit-sucking.
COOK Must be nice to know that, y’know, whenever there’s gonna be a movie made in which tons of shit are gonna pour out of somebody’s arse that you’re...you’re in there, y’know?
MOOREYou’re in there.
COOK You’re right in there. He slept his way there, didn’t he?
MOORENo, he shat his way there.
COOK He shat his way, that’s it...
MOORE He shat his way to the bottom.
COOK He shat his way to the bottom, yeah. (Moore clears his throat in character) I was just wondering, Derek, how you been doin’ with Central Casting vis à vis, y’know, like, star roles...
MOORE Well, er...
COOK’Cos, y’know, a lot of, er, people get into movies simply because they are poofs...
MOORERight...
COOK ...and want to slide their fucking knob up any director who fancies them...(Moore corpses)...and, y’know, that’s one way of getting to the top, and I always say it’s another way of getting to the bottom, and I’m not going to do that for any fucking movie stardom in the world. I just wondered how you gone with Central Casting, knowing how fucking difficult it is not to fucking compromise your fucking self.
MOOREWell, it’s...er...as you know, Clive, the film industry is terribly depressed.
COOK Well, I’m terribly depressed, I didn’t realise the film industry was.
MOORE Well, maybe it’s...y’know, it’s probably...
COOK Co-incidental, yeah.
MOORECo-incidental...but there may be some sort of over-hang.
COOKBut any joy from the industry, from your point of view?
MOORE Well I was getting on to that. As you know, parts are very few and far between, y’know. But I’m willing to do almost anything.
COOKI think, if the role merits it...y’know, do it.
MOORE Right.
COOK’Cos if you don’t do it, it’s not done. And that’s part of life isn’t it? It’s the stuff of life, it’s the stuff of life, it’s the stuff of life, it’s the stuff of life...
MOORE (Over Cook saying ‘The stuff of life’) Well, you’re talking...you’re talking, you’re talking...you’re talking...you’re talking philosophy now, Clive.
COOKYeah, course I am.
MOOREY’know, if you wanna talk philosophy...fine.* And I...
COOKI heard about that
MOORE Yeah...
COOK The piece of shit from ‘Raise The Titanic’.
MOORE Yeah...
COOK Where somebody had to look shit-scared, and there was a big part for a turd?
Well, it seems to end there.
The asterisk denotes an interesting section of the sketch: Cook’s ‘I heard about that’ is a non-sequitur from the ‘You’re talking philosophy’ exchange (which has already moved away from shit-sucking, and now seems to be a more general satire on the film industry). However, we seem to return back to a scatological theme for a brief moment before the sketch cuts off. Was this an attempt to make a useable silk purse out of a libellous sow’s ear, from which the conceptual editing suffered? Ironically, the technical editing is pretty good - the stereo separation is extreme enough to allow only Cook’s track to be edited while Moore’s ‘And I...’ continues in the other channel.
The reason behind the sketch’s disappearance is unknown. Perhaps it was edited so heavily that the producers felt it to be travesty of the original and best dumped altogether? If we were Harry Thompson, we would make the point that the sketch was clearly Cook howling at the moon re: Moore’s successful Hollywood career and was perhaps rejected (by Cook himself?) on that basis. But quite who had the influence (and the interest) to censure re-issued Derek & Clive material is another matter. A likely theory is that two edits of Come Again were made (simply for artistic reasons), but the version sans ‘Films’ was mistakenly mastered as the definitive cut.
'Come Again' (1977)
5.
In 1996, a book was published chronicling the glory days of the Virgin Records empire. It featured an original advertisement for Derek & Clive Come Again, together with a cutting describing an early version of the ‘Joan Crawford’ sketch, entitled ‘Exploring Joan Crawford’s Cavernous Vagina’. Since this cutting was not annotated, its source remains obscure - it did, however, transcribe some of the dialogue, which had a slightly different premise to the sketch on Come Again, appearing to concern the activities of an archaeologist. The item was also curiously free of swearing. The article claimed that the material totalled 17 minutes and lies in Virgin’s vaults. Whether this was a demo version of the sketch, or a longer edit of the same recording remains unclear.
A 'Come' shot…
6.
Derek & Clive Get The Horn was issued on video in February 1980, and 300 copies were famously ‘seized’ shortly afterwards by James Anderton of the Greater Manchester Police. Copies of this tape are rare, and nobody has confirmed whether any cuts were made before it was re-released in September 1993. Peter Cook, talking to the NME at the time of the re-release (issue dated 21/9/93), indicated that he had been witness to its re-editing, and had been shocked at a scene where ‘Clive stabs the rubber doll with a knife, puts it in a bin-liner and says he’s going to drop it in the canal’, although the way this admission is reported is irritatingly ambiguous. The film was shown on Channel 4 in 1984 in its familiar 89-minute edit, although it is possible that their copy came from a better (i.e., less dark) print.
[NOTE (1): Peter Cook brandished a garish dayglo publicity poster for Derek & Clive Get The Horn while on a 1991 edition of Clive Anderson Talks Back. He was too pissed to explain exactly what he was plugging, but it is possible that a video release had been pencilled in at this time. Why it took a further two years to surface is unknown]
[NOTE (2): The original video cover of Get The Horn was very similar to the cover of Come Again. The 1993 re-release featured the duo in their ‘Derek’ and ‘Clive’ t-shirts, complete with a comedy ripped-brown-paper effect on the inlay itself. The ‘orange’ and ‘green’ copies are both identical, the only difference being that the back-cover blurb on the latter is now less migraine-inducing.]
'Derek And Clive Get The Horn' (1980)
7.
‘Squatter And The Ant’ was released as a promotional single, backed with an otherwise unavailable track called ‘Sex Crimes’. The latter was an embryonic version of ‘Winkie Wanky Woo’, clearly recorded at the same Bottom Line sessions as the other live tracks on the LP. ‘Squatter’ itself was edited slightly to remove the ‘fart’ section, rendering it suitable for radio play.
8.
An American compilation of Derek & Clive was released by Krass Records in 1981. Entitled Six Fabulous Filthy Favourites, it featured musical material from Live and Ad Nauseam ‘under licence from Island Records’. The cover artwork was terrible - naff packing-crate lettering on the front, comedy ‘bad typing’ on the back (amended with an anarchic red pen) amidst crude drawings of flies, handprints and coffee-mug rings. A Woolworth’s notion of ‘punk’. The title had been amended from Five Filthy Favourites, suggesting there was an earlier compilation...but this could be a joke like Graham Chapman might do. Side One had ‘Soul Time’, ‘Just One Of Those Songs’, ‘Jump’, ‘The Horn (Choral Version)’ [sic; it was the closing song only], and ‘Street Music’. Side Two has ‘Bo Dudley’ in its entirety. The record did not feature any alternate edits or previously-unreleased material.
Beautiful...
(see ARCHIVE REVIEW
for furtherness…)