Is It Fun Being Funny?

[Famous Mortimer]

https://youtu.be/VNZay0BSybE

There's smaller segments of this show already on Youtube, but this is the full episode. I think.

Good Afternoon Special with Mavis Nicholson
Thames TV, transmitted January 7, 1974
with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Morecambe and Wise, and Kenneth Williams

Mavis Nicholson introduces a special edition of the 1970s daytime chat show Good Afternoon. This edition contains interviews between Nicholson and comedy greats Morecambe and Wise, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, and Kenneth Williams.

Cook and Moore had already collaborated on numerous stage, tv and film projects (Beyond The Fringe, Not Only ...But Also, Bedazzled) through the 1960s, but their partnership was becoming strained by Cook's worsening alcoholism. This interview was taped in 1973, around the time they were performing their Broadway show Good Evening and were inadvertently recording what was to become their first Derek and Clive record.

Morecambe and Wise were in the middle of the run of their BBC show The Morecambe and Wise Show.  Kenneth Williams had been a long-standing British comedian, appearing in most of the Carry On films and for whom Peter Cook had written material for Williams' West End review Pieces of Eight. Some of this material was reused by Cook for the groundbreaking satirical Beyond The Fringe (with Moore, Alan Bennett, and Jonathan Miller).

[Small Man Big Horse]

Thanks for this, I'm looking forward to watching it at some point over the next few days.

[bgmnts]

Must be a ballache bringing joy to others.

[Mister Six]

Ooh cracking find, thanks FM!

[The Boston Crab]

Nice one, cheers!

[Keebleman]

Mavis Nicholson had the reputation of being a fairly intelligent interviewer, but the series of questions starting around 12.48 in this clip seem almost willfully dim.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72-qrtlrAzk