Jim Haberman is the guy who fingered Peter Cook as the interviewer in that great Woody Allen video. He's sent me a message he titled, "My closing arguments on the Woody Allen interview." Here it is…
Never expecting to stir up so many conflicting opinions on Woody Allen's interviewer's identity, I did what any borderline OCD comedy nut might do and scanned all 300+ comments on the piece over the last 4+ years on YouTube, then checked out each candidate mentioned as well as I could in every way online. About 2/3 of those offering an opinion there voted for Peter Cook, but the others split between Russell Harty, Derek Granger, two others each with a lone vote — and the man I'm now a bit embarrassed to admit probably was the actual culprit.
After poring over bios and carefully listening to the available audio on all the suspects, it's fairly evident that the 2nd-place vote-getter in those YouTube comments, Barry Took, was likely Woody Allen's interviewer there. Took had been a stand-up comic, sitcom writer, TV host (in Brit-speak, presenter) and finally, the TV exec apparently responsible for assembling the Monty Python group, reason alone for immortality right there. Videos of his Point of View BBC commentaries in the '80s a la Andy Rooney reveal a vocal style quite similar sounding to Cook's natural speaking voice but with softer undertones and a more rapid-fire tempo, both in evidence in the Allen interview. Like Cook, Barry Took was also quite active in London media in and just before 1971, including doing lots of interviews and hosting.
I'll also admit my first analysis was based mainly on the more subdued first half of the interview, and on closer inspection of the latter part, it was troubling to hear so much noisy giggling from the interviewer, not a Cook trademark at all. And since Barry Took had strong comedy roots, it's very plausible that he, like Cook, would have been capable of pulling off the kind of deadpan send-up done here. So although none of your respondents actually mentioned him, I now change my plea to 80% probability that it was Mr. Took asking the questions, and will beg for humble mercy from the court. And suddenly I'm very worried about the fate of "Geoff's sister" as well.
I still have no opinion on any of this but am glad to have encouraged one more round of pointless Internet argument about a trivial matter. Those of you who are irate about me pointing out what a rotten president George W. Bush was, please note how much space I devoted to this as opposed to that. Thank you.