Peter Cook had a clear-eyed view of satire

Yesterday I suggested that the extreme reaction to Jimmy Carr's tax evasion was due to our exaggerated respect for satirists.


But Peter Cook, the founder of the modern movement and still quite arguably its greatest talent, did not share this weakness.

He once described his club The Establishment as being modelled on "those wonderful Berlin cabarets ... which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the Second World War".