A FILM depicting the life of the comedian Peter Cook has been criticised by his widow for dwelling too much on his alcoholism and portraying him as bad-tempered.

Lin Cook, the comedian’s third wife, says she is disappointed that the drama gives the impression that her husband was rarely seen without a drink in his hand. Although Cook was renowned for his Pete ’n’ Dud drinking sketches with Dudley Moore, she says he managed to fight his alcohol problem.

“Of course Peter drank, but I can assure you that in the 12 years I was with him he was off the drink for long periods,” she said, after watching an advance screening of Not Only But Always, which will be shown on Channel 4 at Christmas. She attended the event to raise money for the Peter Cook Foundation which funds residential homes for disabled youngsters.

The film covers four decades from Cook’s student days at Cambridge University to his death in January 1995, although it concentrates on a period in the 1970s when he was frequently the worse for wear from drink.

While praising the acting and the script, Lin Cook expressed dismay that her husband is also shown as prone to bitter rages.

She came to know Cook in the early 1980s when he had been deserted by Judy Huxtable, his second wife, and was also deeply upset by the virtual loss of his friend and professional partner Moore, with whom he had made the comedy series Not Only But Also.

Moore, who was the butt of many a wounding remark from Cook, had moved to America where his career took off with Hollywood films such as 10 and Arthur. Lin Cook said: “The film doesn’t reflect the kind side which all his friends know was what he was like.”

Cook is shown to have a nasty temper: in one scene he throws a television set through a window because he sees Moore on screen canoodling with women, while in another Cook is loading Moore’s car with rubbish. Lin Cook doubts whether either incident happened and this is partly acknowledged by Charles Pattinson, co-executive producer of the film.

Adrian Slade, who was a close friend of Cook’s from Cambridge until his death, said: “The film shows too much of an unrelentedly waspish side of Peter. He was mocking but not nasty. He really was a very nice man and certainly very generous. He not only regularly bailed out Private Eye (the satirical magazine) but helped me out of some financial problems.

“The film, which in many ways is brilliant, especially the portrayal of Peter by Rhys Ifans who is uncannily like him, is nonetheless rather simplistic. It has Peter as the devil and Dudley as a little saint.”

Lin agrees with Slade that the film is mostly very well written and has praised Ifans for impersonating Cook so well that he gave her a glimpse of what he might have been like before she met him. But this was tempered by annoyance over key factual errors in the film.

For example, the film shows her returning home to find Cook dead on the kitchen floor. “That’s not the case,” she said. “I did come home and found he had collapsed, but he was taken to hospital and I spent a week beside his bed until he died.”

She also objects to episodes interspersed through the film in which Cook pretends to be a Norwegian obsessed by fish who telephones a radio station in the night.“It was written to depict the brilliant satirical edge of Peter,” said Pattinson. “But Lin thinks that we’re making fun of him. Not so.”

Pattinson did agree to change the tone of the last 20 minutes after the intervention of Lin Cook and Mel Smith, the comedian who was a close friend of Cook.

“We agreed to alter what was going to be essentially a downward curve in Peter’s life and give more of an uplift in the end,” said Pattinson.

Harry Thompson, whose 1998 biography of Cook was the inspiration for the film, argues that it was correct to show the comedian as an alcoholic. “Drink had a very detrimental affect on his creative life. He drank himself to death,” he said.

He, too, laments the fact that the film makes Cook look mean. “I agree with Lin that Peter was very generous and that doesn’t come over. Even Judy Huxtable, whom he begged for years to get back with him, said that Peter was a generous person.”

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