The New York show was over. The UK version, with a replacement cast, was still running, but on 15 April 1964 was transferred to the Mayfair Theatre (with a capacity of 310, the only West End theatre smaller than the Fortune) and eventually closed in September 1966 after 2200 performances.  By that time, the originators had moved on.

In the summer of 1964 the team reunited for one last gala performance, which was filmed for the BBC. On 10 December, the new cutting-edge TV channel, BBC2, broadast a cut-down one-hour version of the show, but happily the complete, unbroadcast two-hour version (long thought to have been junked) was redicovered in 2005 and has since been released on DVD, offering a chance for future generations to witness the glorious foursome in action. Of course that wasn't the main intention at the time, when the show served another purpose altogether as a curtain raiser to one of the most celebrated comedy shows of the sixties.

All four Beyond The Fringe cast members had done well out of the show and seen their individual reputations rocket. But the one who truly emerged from the show as a star was Dudley Moore. He was an actor, a clown, a genuinely talented musician and composer, and what's more, he had that indefinable quality that made him irrepressibly likeable. And so it was that Moore walked out of Beyond The Fringe straight into his own starring series. Though what made it a solid gold success was his insistence on bringing Peter Cook along too.

Not Only... But Also, starring not only Dudley Moore but also Peter Cook, debuted on BBC2 in January 1965, and when its initial run ended there, it was immediately repeated on BBC1. It would return for a second series the following year and a third run in 1970, providing many cherished comedy moments. In the years that followed, Cook and Moore remained the most visible members of the Beyond The Fringe foursome, Cook settling into a life as the grand old man of comedy and Moore becoming an apparently unlikely Hollywood star. The two made a triumphant return to the stage with their 1973 show Behind The Fridge (the title came from the waiter in an Italian restaurant where the cast would often eat during the US run of Beyond The Fringe, who could never pronounce the name of the show correctly) which included a revival of the perennial favourite, "One Leg Too Few". They would subsequently take the show to America, once again teaming up with Alexander Cohen who changed the title to Good Evening, under which banner it proved another phenomenal success.

Bennett's first post-BTF engagement was acting in a revival of the 1925 farce A Cuckoo In The Nest - playing a vicar. It was little wonder that Bennett would feel typecast, and he retreated into academic life for a while, continuing to put together his never-published biography of Henry II, before returning to comedy via an invitation to write for, and appear on, the new satirical show from the TWTWTW stable, BBC3. With several of the other BBC3 cast members, he went on to appear in the one-off satirical film My Father Knew Lloyd George. A sketch series, On The Margin (alas, wiped) , followed, and in 1968 he debuted his first stage play, 40 Years On. From there he gradually moved toward becoming one of the greatest masters of what today might be called "comedy drama"... and a national treasure.

Miller finally seemed resigned to the derailment of his plans for a medical career, and took a job with the BBC as producer of the arts programme Monitor. He would continue to straddle the worlds of art and science, but gave up performing.

There was one last, aborted, project for the original Oxbridge Revue group. Based on a Peter Cook idea, the team got together to start work on a film with a distinctly Goon Show-like premise of a 19th century Prussian plot to destabilise British scoiety by flooding the country with fake Queen Victorias. But without an outsider to impose some discipline, the writing sessions fell apart. (Said Cook, "I don't know if it was successful but it made us all take up smoking again.")

The satire boom itself had all but fizzled out, Private Eye's circulation had slumped, The Establishment had been wound up (albeit largely as a result of bad management rather than changes in public taste) and the glory days of TW3 were only weakly reflected in successors like Not So Much A Programme (which included Bennett among its cast) and the basically non-satirical The Frost Report. But all involved in the original satirical stage hit came out of it with their heads held high. The original quartet's diverse career paths could hardly have been guessed in 1960 when John Bassett first brought them together, but all continued to contribute to British cultural life - indeed, the two surviving members, Bennett and Miller, do so to this day.

Even if the legacy of Beyond The Fringe had only been to launch the careers of its four principals, it would still have been a remarkable show. But its influence spread further than that. Satirical or not, the attitude it adopted was fresh and exciting, and served as an inspiration to a generation of young comedians who would go on to create such landmark projects as I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again, The Goodies and Monty Python's Flying Circus. And whether the cast liked it or not, the show's success also marked the point at which satire truly entered the mainstream and deference went into terminal decline. No doubt it would have happened sooner or later anyway: the TV current affairs show Tonight, launched in 1957, had already taken steps in the right direction under producer Ned Sherrin, who went on to create That Was The Week That Was and is perhaps more deserving than anybody of the title "father of the satire boom". But if Sherrin and Tonight set the fuse, it was Beyond The Fringe that truly lit it. Some people say that the sixties didn't really begin until 1963, the year of "Please Please Me", Doctor Who, TW3 and the Kennedy assassination. Be that as it may, between 1960 and whenever it was that the sixties "really" began, Beyond The Fringe was laying the groundwork. Not in isolation, of course, because it was as much a product of its time as it was a signpost to the future. But it was  - to mix the metaphors even more - a landmark all the same.

As if to acknowledge the importance of Beyond The Fringe to those who came after, in 1976 an all-star cast was assembled to perform a fundraising comedy show for Amnesty International. The film of the show was released in the USA as Monty Python Meets Beyond The Fringe - a cheeky title, not least because as a matter of fact neither of those groups was fully represented, Eric Idle and Dudley Moore both being absent (Moore lent his support by narrating the BBC documentary of the event). But all the same, it showed quite clearly how Monty Python followed in the tradition of Beyond The Fringe - and the latter's influence was further demonstrated by the appearance of stars from The Establishment, plus The Goodies and Neil Innes. Toward the end of the show, Cook, Bennett and Miller performed "So That's The Way You Like It" with Terry Jones deputising for the absent Moore. It was the last time all three would perform together.

Beyond The Fringe itself has been subjected to sporadic revivals through the years. It was a show which was completely of its time, and its impact now could never hope to match that it had back in the early 1960s. The references have dated, the thrill of the new is long gone - but at its heart, it remains simply a very funny show. The reason for its success then, and enduring appeal now, was summed up best by Alan Bennett in a letter written to Dudley Moore in 1964, when the former was resting in the Isle of Man and the latter was still performing the show on Broadway. Beyond The Fringe had been such a hit, said Bennett, becuase "it was true when we did it and some of it [is] true always. So it could stand by itself and made for itself a place in which it could stand." Half a century later, it still stands in its own special place - as a monument, an inspiration, a social document, but above all, a jolly good laugh.