Peter Cook; Comic With Dudley Moore

Peter Cook, the tall, acerbic half of a comic partnership with Dudley Moore, died Monday. He was 57.

Cook died of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage at Royal Free Hospital, where he had been admitted Jan. 3, his family said.

“There is a place in society for nasty-minded, rude people,” Cook once said. The crack could have summarized his performing persona.

Cook achieved fame in the 1960s in the comedy review “Beyond the Fringe,” appearing with Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett and Moore. After a long run in London, the show moved to Broadway in 1962.

Cook and Moore had a British television hit with “Not Only But Also,” a comedy show that ran on the BBC briefly in the mid-1960s and again from 1970 to 1973.

While Moore went on to movies, Bennett to the British theater and Miller to theater, opera and television, Cook was content with a quieter life.

“I don’t give a toss,” he said. “Life is a matter of passing the time enjoyably.”

Cook’s film roles included “The Wrong Box” (1965); “Bedazzled” (1967), Cook’s revision of the Faust legend; “The Hound of the Baskervilles” (1979), with Cook as Sherlock Holmes and Moore as Dr. Watson; “Derek and Clive” (1981); “Yellowbeard” (1983), in which Cook shared a writing credit with the late Graham Chapman of Monty Python fame, and “Whoops Apocalypse” (1987).

Cook is survived by his third wife, Lin Chong Cook, and two daughters by his first marriage.