For anyone who really doesn't fancy such a large download, I've also encoded a forty second "sample" of Peter Cook doing his Revolver stuff. This is encoded in exactly the same manner as the larger file. Please feel free to download it as a preview.

Find out more about Peter Cook's involvement with Revolver here.

These files have all been encoded to video using the Div4 codec. You will need this codec to view the files. It's a very small download and instals easily. If you haven't downloaded this from us before, please do so now:

Windows | Mac | Linux

You will need an unzip programme installed on your computer. If you're not sure what this is, try StuffIt! Expander. It's available free, for a number of different platforms and is easy to use.

1. Download ALL the files in one half episode to a new folder.
2. Select the "zip" file - this will automatically utilise all the files belonging to this half.
3. Chose a destination folder for the file and extract.
4. Your new Peter_Cook_+_Revolver... DivX file will be in one piece, ready and waiting :)

[ Download: Revolver SAMPLE DivX|0m40s|3.96mb ]
(NB the Download Instructions do not apply to this sample... just Click 'n' Go)

[ Download: Revolver Episode 1 pt1of2 DivX|16m43s|99.6mb ]

[ Download: Revolver Episode 1 pt2of2 DivX|17m01s|101mb ]

Here's what Harry Thompson had to say about Revolver, in his book "Peter Cook, A Biography.":

The rebellious image of Derek and Clive had actually yielded a job offer, when Peter had been asked to appear as a weekly guest on Revolver, a brand new ATV show highlighting punk and new wave music. Revolver was presented by Chris Hill and Les Ross, and produced by Mickie Most. When they had met to discuss his involvement, Most had been extremely impressed by Peter's knowledge of the punk scene: 'He knows more about it than I do. I hadn't even heard of some of the bands he mentioned to me,' he said. `That was probably because I made some of them up,' Peter later confessed. `They didn't exist.' The conceit of the show was that the ill-tempered manager of a dilapidated dance hall, played by Peter, had been forced to let out his premises to the TV company; this allowed him to make regular abusive interjections about the standard of the music on offer. Given Peter's current nihilistic state, it was the perfect job for him. He genuinely thought that some of the punk bands were 'dire', and said so. `That was rubbish,' he would pronounce emphatically as Eater or the Lurkers finished their set. The Only Ones, he announced, were 'direct proof that there is unintelligent life in outer space.' Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks remembers Peter distributing porn mags among the audience, and encouraging the recipients to hold them up when the cameras rolled, in order to put the band off.

It was, of course, a performance entirely in the spirit of punk. The audience would shout `Off, off!' whenever Peter appeared on screen, seated behind a desk with a big-breasted stripper perched on it. `Learn a language,' he would retort, then - to the stripper as she removed a stocking - `Thank you Jill Tweedie.' His jokes went down well, including the one about the man at a Sex Pistols concert who attacked Sid Vicious (a rare instance of the fan hitting the shit) and the one about his huge cult following (everywhere I go I have a huge cult following me). Peter became the favourite comedian of another generation of rock bands, most notably the Sex Pistols; Johnny Rotten and Malcolm McLaren consulted him at various stages of the group's development, and Rotten assured him that one of their songs had been based on his Drimble Wedge and the Vegetations number from Bedazzled. `I don't know which one,' Peter told the NME. `I was too pissed to remember.' Revolver was charmingly disorganised and rather enjoyable to watch, the first decent new material that Peter had been involved in creating since the early seventies.

The critics naturally detested the show, not because of any humorous failings but because they both feared and failed to understand the musical concept. Philip Purser in The Sunday Telegraph called it `a deplorable entertainment', while The Sunday Times suggested that encouraging the Sex Pistols in this way might lead young people into a life of crime. Peter wrote to the letters page in mock appreciation, claiming that `I myself, turned to crime on learning that my idol, Robert Mitchum, had been convicted on a drugs charge'. The barrage of criticism had its effect, though. After a successful pilot in a prime Saturday evening placing in March, the series proper was moved by frightened TV executives to a late night ghetto slot in July which varied from region to region; the resulting paucity of viewers in relation to the size of the programme budget inevitably condemned it to be viewed officially as a failure. Peter, who had only signed up for Revolver on the basis that it would be a Saturday evening primetime show, was furious.

RETURN TO TOP