Peter Cook and Chris Morris revisit an old character. Cook plays Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, the reactionary old mainstay of many of Cook & Moore's landmark sketches (e.g. The Frog & Peach, Teaching Ravens To Fly Underwater, etc). Morris is the interviewer, part Dr Anthony Clare, part Sue Lawley. The dialogues were completely improvised and edited down from eight hours of rushes, recorded at a studio somewhere in Camden.
1. Why Bother? originally ran throughout one week on Radio 3 (10-14 January 1994) in 10-minute instalments. Chris Morris produced the show for Talkback. The CD/cassette BBC Radio Collection release captures the shows as originally broadcast, although one element was missing - the specially-written continuity announcements which preceded them. Although possibly seen by some as superfluous, the announcements were very much part of the amusement and contain Morris-quips which add another dimension to the Streeb-Greebling myth. It was also interesting hearing the various BBC announcers reading the links, trying not to resort to audible gushing and 'actually this is a bit of a joke' type grins. At least two of them managed it...
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SHOW 1
'Now on Radio 3, the first in a series of five interviews with one of Britain's most distinguished peers. Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling is renowned at home and abroad as an entrepreneur, politician, humanist and explorer. He is perhaps one of the true examples of a Renaissance Man. However, his more controversial projects, such as his pioneering working testing designer drugs on imported orphans have led to strained relations with the media. In 1968 he broke Malcolm Muggerage's arm in two. He's refused to be interviewed for more than ten years. What follows is therefore a unique chance to hear the recollections and opinions of Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling in conversation with the broadcaster Christopher Morris'.
SHOW 2
'Now on Radio 3, the second in a series of interviews with one of Britain's most distinguished peers, Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling. Tomorrow sees the publication of the Sir Arthur report on prisons and, earlier today, Christopher Morris met him to discuss it'.
SHOW 3
'And now on Radio 3, the third in this week's series of interviews with Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling. As well as being a renowned Internationalist, a confident of Fidel Castro and enemy of Leon Britten, Sir Arthur is a less well-known, but no less accomplished, explorer and biologist. In tonight's interview with the broadcaster Christopher Morris he reveals the remarkable archaeological discovery he'll be unveiling in tomorrow's lecture to the Royal Society'.
SHOW 4
'This is BBC Radio 3. And now, the fourth in our series of interviews with the politician and human-rights abuser Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling. This esteemed and reviled knight, now well into his late-70s, has agreed to break a ten year media silence for Radio 3 and speak to the broadcaster Christopher Morris. It's not quite clear why he made this decision although it is known that he's unlikely to finish his autobiography 'Not Worth The Candle' before his imminent death.'
SHOW 5
'BBC Radio 3. It's nine o'clock. And now Radio 3 presents the last in our series of interviews with Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling. Sir Arthur has always professed a strong love of music, writing a string of patriotic toe-tappers during the war and setting fire to Brian Wilson when he ran out of hits. In this evening's interview with the broadcaster Christopher Morris, Sir Arthur explains why he decided to purchase the BBC Concert Orchestra'.
(POST SHOW 5)
'Why Bother was produced by Christopher Morris and is a Talkback production for BBC Radio 3. Sir Arthur is not expected to live beyond May'.
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[NOTE: In an interview given to Publish & Bedazzled, the Peter Cook Appreciation Society fanzine, Morris alluded to a section about Sir Arthur importing a tribe of 12 year old orphans and conducting 'child-nurturing' experiments on them, which was never included in the final edit as apparently even Peter Cook was shocked by the routine. Since references to the latter made it to Show 1's pre-broadcast announcement it might be fair to ponder that routines about 'setting fire to Brian Wilson' or discussions about Sir Arthur's autobiography may also have been snipped from the final edits.]
[NOTE (2): The references to setting fire to Brian Wilson may be based on stories about the infamous Beach Boys Smile sessions which saw Wilson insist on the session players dressing up as firemen to record a scary instrumental called 'Fire' (aka 'Mrs O'Leary's Cow'). When several buildings in the area subsequently caught fire, Wilson assumed he'd created magic fire-starting music and purportedly destroyed the tapes forever by burning them (which is why the track is freely available on every Smile bootleg in existence�)]
2. A CD release of Why Bother? was originally planned way back in '94. Chris Morris hoped to bypass the BBC and distribute the show through RCA (which raised a wry smile with a few fans who recalled Avalon wanting a similar sort of deal for the original On The Hour release, to avoid BBC Worldwide who were (and still are) 'spectacularly bad at promoting their own material'). Nothing happened with the deal and eventually the BBC got the gig. The potential packaging was a worry to Why Bother? fans, generally appalled at the BBC's abject lack of imagination in that area. Suggestions were put forward by the Peter Cook Appreciation Society that Gerald Scarfe/Ralph Steadman (or someone of that scratchy cartoonist ilk) should be hired to provide a nice illustration. Such advice was dismissed by the BBC who preferred their own choice of featuring 'a picture of Peter Cook wearing a hat'. We gave them the benefit of the doubt at the time (after all, we hadn't seen the hat � maybe it was a good one).
The test-design was later revealed to feature a picture of 'E.L. Wisty',
a character who couldn't be further away from Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling if they tried. Complaints were made to the effect that, if they went ahead with the design as planned, they would simply show that they knew fuck all about the contents of the programmes and fuck all about comedy. Their compromise was to use the same picture, blow it up almost beyond recognition, and shade it an appalling purple. They finished off the travesty by cleverly designing the lettering so that it read 'Peter Morris; Chris Cook' (with the actual title of the show in tiny lettering at the bottom of the cover).
Morris apparently attempted in vain to get the BBC to remove the 'BBC Radio Collection' banner from the design (even to the extent of offering money) but, well, when a cunt has made a decision there's little anybody can do about it.
A screengrab of Cook as Streeb-Greebling was used on the back cover of the inlay (in the little square which the rubbish uniform BBC Radio Collection design template includes on all such releases). Now why couldn't they have used that for the front cover,
blown, up, distorted, tinted purple or otherwise?The Peter Cook Appreciation Society fanzine Publish & Bedazzled conducted an interview with Chris Morris before the release (one of the few interviews he's enthusiastically agreed to without promoting his latest project). Keen to assist the Why Bother? release, the editor handed over a copy of the transcribed piece to BBC Worldwide so that they could perhaps use bits of it in the finished inlay or promotion.
Instead, the cunts - totally without obtaining permission from the fanzine editor or Morris - gave the whole thing to Loaded magazine who, removing one defamatory remark about the cocaine habit of a certain well-known voluptuous soul singer who shall remain nameless (but it was Chaka Khan, if you're interested), ran the whole thing as a scoop.[NOTES:
Peter Cook had done a series of interviews as Sir Arthur before for BBC2. This was another Talkback production called A Life In Pieces (5-minute interviews, based on the Twelve Days Of Christmas, broadcast daily from 26/12/90 - 6/1/91) and the results weren't particularly successful. The interviewer on this occasion was Ludovic Kennedy, although his questions were actually dropped in afterwards. ('And if you look closely, you can see he's actually reading his lines...' - Tony Hancock)There are conflicting facts about the Why Bother? Pilot, some (Morris included) claiming that it was simply a slightly different edit of Show 1; other maintaining that it was a never-broadcast affair which featured Talkback supremo Peter Fincham in the interviewer role.
Chris Morris trawled the rushes of the sessions before the CD release to see if anything else could be salvaged from them
(or at least promised to do so), but nothing made it onto the CD. Apparently most of the unused rushes simply feature Cook and Moore burping and yawning as they try to conjure up ideas...which sounds fantastic to us, don't know about you. We have suggested that the whole lot be donated to the National Sound Archive so that fans can find out for themselves, but�We saw a copy of the Why Bother cassette in some no-hope branch of Waterstones once which didn't have the 'BBC Radio Collection' insignia on it. The sleeve had been blown up to accommodate the size and the whole thing looked unofficial as fuck. Seemed to be more of a TalkBack release, judging by the dominance of said logo on the back. Very odd. We never saw it again. Mind you, it's a shoe shop now.]
'Joan isn't a prescribed substance � she's just a pain in the arse�'
