In January of 1960, John Bassett arranged for the four stars of The Oxford Revue to meet for the first time, in a cafe close enough to University College Hospital for Miller to attend in his lunch break. The exact location of the cafe seems lost to history, as those in attendance would later recall it variously as on Warren Street, Goodge Street and Euston Road, as well as being both Italian and Indian. The one thing all agreed on in later years was that the food was terrible.

Miller's later recollection of the meeting was that the four "instantly disliked each other and decided that it might be a profitable enterprise", while Bennett's memory was mostly a "slight feeling that I was there under false pretences - a feeling that never really left me".  All, it seems, were somewhat apprehensive about the meeting, but it was Cook who first broke the ice, and the others would all in later years recall feeling somewhat daunted by the idea of trying to compete with Cook's stream of comic invention.  It was the Cambridge men, Miller and Cook, who did most of the talking, though Moore  made the others laugh with a Groucho Marx walk  in and out through the swing doors to the kitchen.

Regardless of of any apprehension among the four strangers, the rendezvous  confirmed to Bassett that he had assembled the right men for the job, and he therefore arranged for them to meet Robert Ponsonby at his London office a few days later.  Ponsonby shared Bassett's enthusiasm for the foursome ("I could see we were on to something, because they were sparking off each other just in conversation") and gave them the go-ahead to write and rehearse the show which was now called Beyond The Fringe. (It may be hard to believe now that it has become so indelibly associated with the show, but the phrase was not new; it had been in idiomatic use for well over half a century.) None of the four much liked the title, partly because it came from Ponsonby, who was generally liked by the foursome but seen as a bit "old guard", but they were unable to come up with a satisfactory alternative, so it stuck. One title bandied about was the cheeky and long-winded 'One of the Best Revues in Some Time - Bernard Levin, a reference to the Daily Express' theatre critic. As it would turn out, when Levin did get around to reviewing the show, his praise would be far more effusive.

But that was in the future. Before they could think about the reviews, there was a show to write. As Bassett had anticipated, much of the show was made up of the best existing material from the various members' earlier performances - some of it getting quite hoary. Cook  brought several items from his stack of Pembroke College favourites, among them "Old J.J." (a conversation conducted in initialisms - " BN, he's OK. Bit short of the old LSD. I saw TD the other day at the YMCA." "I thought he was with TWA in LA." "No, he's with BEA in NW3..."). Miller's contributions included "Radio Page", a version of his quickfire radio parody which dated back to 1954 and had been heard in "Under Twenty Parade" and "Saturday Night on the Light", plus a couple of suitably whimsical monologues of dubious vintage (the trouser monologue "The Heat Death of the Universe" had also featured in "Saturday Night on the Light). Bennett naturally provided his trademark sermon. Only Moore had difficulty - his solo spot was listed as "Highly Strung" in the Edinburgh running order, but he was not satisfied with anything he'd come up with until the nght before the opening, when he came up with his soon-to-be-famous Beethoven-style arrangement of Colonel Bogey, with its cadence that stubbornly refused to come to an end.

Script meetings were held in Jonathan Miller's digs at University College Hospital. Miller and Cook tended to dominate the meetings with their quick-witted improvisation. Bennett recalled, "I realised I couldn't actually provide material at the meetings, that I'd have to think of things beforehand and come along with them". Dudley Moore consistently claimed not to have contributed anything at all to the script, attributing it as two-thirds Cook, with the other third split between Miller and Bennett. "I felt totally constricted and overpowered," he recalled, "I was very out of place with the other three - totally out of place". Many years later, Cook admitted that "Dudley's suggestions were treated with benign contempt by the rest of us" and Moore himself confessed "I was always terrified that we'd get arrested for everything we did. I was very timid. And Jonathan, Alan and Peter treated that fear with total scorn, thinly disguised. It hurt me."

The team in an early publicity photo

There were, inevitably, disagreements about what was or wasn't funny, and how far they should go in their lampoons. Cook remembered Moore being "delightfully shockable", but it was Cook himself who was the main voice in favour of moderation - not so much because of any personal moral objection to the more biting material, but due to commercial concerns. As a proven writer with the greater part of a hit West End revue (Pieces of Eight) under his belt, Cook felt that it made sound commercial sense not to include material that might cause offence. Furthermore, the show would be subject to censorship by the Lord Chamberlain and thus anything too satirical was in any case likely to be cut. In fact, Cook underestimated - or overestimated - the Lord Chamberlain, who insisted on only one cut - to "Bollard" - and that minor (according to legend, he censored the stage directions, changing "Enter two outrageous old queens" to "Enter two aesthetic young men". In fact, the cut was to the dialogue, preventing the camp actors referring to each other as "dearie".) The sketch that caused the most concern to Cook was Aftermyth of War, a send-up of British war movies. A mere 15 years after the end of the Second World War, anything that might be considered mocking of servicemen and women was still a strong taboo, and though that was not the intention of the sketch, Cook feared that it could all too easily be taken that way. It took the combined powers of persuasion of Miller and Bennett to convince him that it should be included. Eventually, he contributed additional material to the sketch, which became one of the show's most memorable items.

During rehearsals, Cook was also approached to contribute material to the follow-up to Pieces of Eight, to be titled One Over the Eight. This production would not actually reach the stage until the following year, but as it was a professional engagement for Cook, and the sequel to a proven success, it had first call on Cook's new material. As a result, Beyond the Fringe lost sketches which would later be considered classics from the Cook canon, with Kenneth Williams getting to perform One Leg Too Few (eventually added to Beyond The Fringe in its 1964 revision) and Interesting Facts. Cook had also revived two sketches on a nuclear theme from Pop Goes Mrs Jessop, one a satire on CND titled Peace, the other a rather unfocused pro-disarmament sketch named Whose Finger On What Button?. Williams got the former while Beyond the Fringe kept the latter.

In contrast to the lavish Pieces of Eight, Beyond the Fringe was a low-budget production. Cook subsequently claimed, with tongue only partly in cheek, that he would have been "delighted" to have "a hundred dancing girls" on stage, but that the budget simply wouldn't stretch that far. (Likewise, Peter Cook supposedly wanted the then little-known Julie Christie to wander across the stage in the nude every now and again, just for the hell of it - though this seems to have been more of an idle fancy than a serious suggestion.) Just £100 was allocated to the project, and the performers had to pay for their own suits. The cut-to-the-bone staging made a virtue of necessity, and a bare minimum of props were used - some chairs, a hatstand, a globe for Cook to point to during the TVPM sketch. As a result, the revue at least looked different, so although the actual content might have worked equally well in an "old-fashioned revue" (such as Pieces of Eight, for instance), Beyond the Fringe had a raw energy that enabled it to stand apart as something with the appearance of the new. The trend in "art" theatre toward the end of the 1950s had been toward a minimalist style anyway - now with Beyond the Fringe, revue seemed to be catching up.

In rehearsal in Edinburgh

Despite its roughly-hewn nature, there was nevertheless a genuine excitement about the show. The coming together of four brilliant talents from Oxford and Cambridge was announced in the press months in advance and supported by publicity photos, rather unpromisingly shot on a patch of industrial wasteground on a drab day with the cast in their winter coats. The four performers appeared on the same bill for the first time on 28 April, as part of a benefit show for World Refugee Year held at the Royal Institute of British Architecture in Portland Place. (In purely geographical terms, a West End venue, which might be taken for a good omen if nothing else.)  However, they still hadn't actually written any ensemble material at that point, so they all did solo spots. Nevertheless, so great was the buzz that when Dudley Moore asked John Dankworth for three weeks off to prepare, Dankworth agreed, but already had "a feeling he wouldn't be back". Dankworth's instinct was right - Beyond the Fringe was going to be taking up a lot of Moore's time, not just for a week that summer, but for the next four years.

A week before the show was due to open, the four soon-to-be stars arrived in Edinburgh, taking "digs" at 17 Cornwall Street. It was here that the show was finally moulded into shape, and from this address that Alan Bennett, having performed his sermon on the BBC radio show Monday Night At Home  on 30 May, wrote to the BBC asking permission to use the sketch in the show. The BBC's Head of Copyright (no less!) wrote back to clarify that the BBC claimed no rights over the sketch and that it was his to do whatever he he liked with. And so he did.

Beyond the Fringe, officially produced by one "John Hammond" (a pseudonym for Bassett, who felt it might appear improper for the assistant to the Festival Director to be producing a show as well) opened at the Lyceum Theatre at 10.45pm on Monday 22 August 1960. As a late-night show, it had to bow to the demands of the Lyceum's main attraction, a production of Chekov's The Seagull which had both a matinee and an evening performance in the same theatre - the upshot being that the cast didn't even get to use the stage until the dress rehearsal, which was a shambles.  As a result the show was a bit rough on its first night (and as the lighting director had not even had the opportunity of a technical run-through, the lights went out in the middle of Alan Bennett's sermon), while a lack of publicity meant that the theatre was only a third full. But the show the four put on that night was sufficient to ensure good word-of-mouth the next day. The following evening and every evening after, the theatre was crammed beyond capacity. By the third night, the Edinburgh Evening News was printing extracts and declaring Beyond The Fringe ""the theatrical hit of the festival". A phenomenon had arrived.

 Read on... Part 4: Dancing about in the nude