Why Bother?
Studio album by Chris Morris and Peter Cook
Released 1 March 1999
Recorded 1993
Genre Comedy
Length 49:41
Label BBC Radio Collection
Producer Chris Morris
Why Bother? was a Talkback production for BBC Radio 3, consisting of five 10-minute long radio interviews between Chris Morris and Peter Cook's character Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, recorded in late 1993 and originally broadcast from 10 January – 14 January 1994. The complete series was released on CD and cassette through BBC Radio Collection in 1999, with the show intros and credits removed to create a tight 50-minute comedy album presumably designed to evoke the Derek and Clive records. Cook received the sole writing credit whilst Morris also produced the series, although the majority of the dialogue was ad libbed between the pair, which Morris then edited.
Morris played a variation on the abrasive interviewer character he had perfected on On the Hour and The Day Today, prompting Cook into some of his best work. The short pieces provide further insights into the Streeb-Greebling character that Cook had created for Not Only... But Also in 1965. Topics of conversation include Streeb-Greebling's experiments on eels, his role in the racial violence during the 1992 Los Angeles riots following the Rodney King trial, his military career, including his time in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during World War II, and his habit of strangling his business partners. The listener learns that Streeb-Greebling was put in prison by his father at the age of four, once spent a 'year and a quarter' standing on Lake Ontario with only bears for company, and hears of his next project: cloning from the fossilised remains of the infant Christ with the assistance of BMW, Honda and Sony.
When questioned on how structured the interviews were, Morris replied that the pair had agreed to "just shoot from the hip" and that "the preparation that existed, existed only in terms of the things we had already done", with each of the characters being familiar roles. Morris described the recording as:-
It was a very different style of improvisation from what I'd been used to, because those On The Hour and The Day Today things were about trying to establish a character within a situation, and Peter Cook was really doing 'knight's move' and 'double knight's move' thinking to construct jokes or ridiculous scenes flipping back on themselves, and it was amazing.
Peter Cook as Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling in conversation with Christopher Morris
1 Eels, Love & Guns – Broadcast January 10, 1994
2 Bears – Broadcast January 11, 1994
3 Christ – Broadcast January 12, 1994
1-3 of 5
Replies
4 Prisoner of War – Broadcast January 13, 1994
5 Drugs etc. – Broadcast January 14, 1994
4-5 of 5
04 - Prisoner Of War.mp3
05 - Drugs Etc.mp3