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Comedian Peter Cook (1937-1995) was described by most people who met him as the wittiest man they knew.

The satirist - best known for his work with Dudley Moore - was born in Bronshill Road, Torquay in November 1937.

The house was within cheering distance of Plainmoor, the home of Torquay United, who he supported all his life (along with Spurs).

Cook was born and brought up by his nan, because his father Alexander was a diplomat in Nigeria and his mother, Margaret, didn't want the young Peter growing up there.

As Peter Cook explained: "I was conceived in Nigeria but born in Devon because my mother had this obsession about newborn babies catching malaria in the middle of downtown Lagos. So I was reared in Torquay."

The Beyond the Fringe team, with Cook on the right

Cook himself was expected to follow his father into the diplomatic service but, as he said himself, "we ran out of colonies."

He was educated at Radley public school and then Cambridge University, where he became a star of the Cambridge Footlights review.

He went on to work with Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller in Beyond the Fringe and then opened London's first satirical nightclub The Establishment Club in 1961.

Then came his partnership with Dudley Moore in the TV comedy, Not Only, But Also. They created some of the best loved characters in British comedy - cloth-capped Pete and Dud, and Derek and Clive.

This was to be the best time of his career. Cook, who had a majority shareholding in the satirical magazine Private Eye, had problems with alcoholism.

Married three times, he admitted he lacked the will to pursue fame and fortune: "I think I ran out of ambition at 24," he once said.

"I am indolent to the point of doing absolutely nothing. In an ideal world, I would have liked to have been born enormously rich, working when I felt like it.

"I've always been lazy and disliked anything that's too much like hard work."

After Cook's death aged 57 in 1995, Dudley Moore said: "Verbally he was the most witty man that I have ever come across and strangely inventive."