Peter Cook’s revue, “Beyond the Fringe,” had a famous sketch called “The Sadder and Wiser Beaver,” Coe tells us, about a “bunch of young, would-be radical journalists who won’t admit they have sold their soul to a rapacious newspaper proprietor.” It is a sketch that works as well today as it did fifty years ago, right down to the beavers, trapped inside their illusions of subversion:
COOK: Whenever the old man has a cocktail party, there’s about ten of us - young, progressive people - we all gather up the far end of the room and … quite openly, behind our hands, we snigger at him.
BENNETT: Well, I don’t know, that doesn’t seem very much to me.
COOK: A snigger here, a snigger there - it all adds up.
Posts
