For me, Peter Cook along with Spike Milligan, stands out as one of the two most brilliant British based comedians since the war. All the tributes paid to Milligan were quite justified, but I think Cook was the sharper satirist. He also had a unique ability to improvise a character and simply let him ramble on as if his eccentricity was the most natural thing in the world. The best known of these was Mr.Whistie (I have probably misspelt that). The sketch which parodied the war films (it was the films being sent up - not the actual war) included a wonderful scene with Jonathon Miller, in which a pilot was being sent off on a pointless, suicidal mission. "We need a futile gesture at a time like this"... Most of the others who get called "a comic genius" are simply good comedians. For Peter Cook, I will allow that the word genius fits.