The new arrival was sickly and stunted, his left leg withered; according to Moore’s biographer Barbra Paskin, his mother shrieked, “This isn’t my baby! This isn’t my baby!”, when she held him for the first time.Moore spent much of his first seven years in hospital undergoing a series of operations, the only child in a ward full of badly wounded soldiers. The only moment of tenderness he could later recall was a goodnight kiss from a kindly nurse. “In many ways my entire life is based on recapturing that single moment of affection,” he confessed later.To avoid bullying at school on account of his stature, he turned to comedy His natural musical talent was also prodigious. The combination of humour, musical skill and his need to be loved was to prove a highly compelling mix.Moore won a music scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1954.

After graduating he was a couple of years into a career as a jobbing jazz musician when the invitation came in 1960 to take part in a professional Edinburgh revue called Beyond the Fringe. His collaborators, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett, were all – in their different ways – dazzling. Moore had been selected as an amusing pianist who could contribute a line or two, and he was miserably aware of the fact: “I felt totally constricted and overpowered. I was completely mute in front of these intellectual giants.”Beyond the Fringe swept all before, demolishing traditional variety theatre in both London and New York, and catapulting Moore almost by default to international renown The Queen, Harold Macmillan and John F Kennedy were among those who came to pay homage. When boredom and claustrophobia finally undermined the partnership in 1964 it was Moore who was plucked out and selected for television stardom by the BBC. The corporation’s old-fashioned philosophy had briefly bent but never buckled under the hurricane blast of Beyond the Fringe – they wanted Moore because, of the fashionable quartet, he was the one who could smile and sing.But a curious thing had happened during the final year of The Fringe. While Miller and Bennett had quietly endured their on-stage boredom, confining themselves to the occasional green-room squabble, Cook and Moore had begun jointly to improvise their way around ennui, creating variations on the script that frequently left their frustrated colleagues saddled with now meaningless next lines.

The Cook-Moore relationship had gradually developed, prospered, knitted and, finally, begun to verge on the symbiotic. Offered a pilot for his own television series in early 1965, Moore felt unable to go ahead without Cook.Thus was born Not Only. But Also, the most successful sketch show of its age, if not of all time. Every sketch was memorable, but none more so than the Pete and Dud dialogues, semi-improvised conversations between the cloth-capped, working-class Cockney alter egos of the two performers. Cook played the stupid one who thought he knew what he was talking about, who set out to educate Moore, the even stupider one. The scripts were transcribed from rehearsal improvisations, led mainly by Cook.

The Dagenham milieu was entirely autobiographical, and was furnished by Moore. The whole country seemed transfixed by the duo’s brilliance.The two dove-tailed as neatly as Jack Sprat and his wife. Cook presented an icy calm, Moore was fidgety and often helpless with laughter; Cook’s humour was mainly verbal, Moore’s principally visual; Cook on screen was aloof, even cold, while Moore attracted the audience sympathy his partner couldn’t, coming across as eager, anxious and warm; Cook was well-bred, Moore wasn’t; Cook was tall, Moore was short. Perhaps most important of all, Cook was a natural leader and Moore was a natural follower, an aspect of their relationship that was as significant in real life as it was on screen.Cook was a creative loner with a strong idea of what he wanted, so only someone prepared to defer to him could have stayed the course successfully. “I followed him around like some sort of chihuahua,” Moore admitted later.