Sometimes people  get things right.

Whenever people are asked to pick the best of something, we're reminded of how popularity rarely translates to quality. Let folks vote on where to get the best hamburger, and an amazing number will pick McDonald's or Wendy's or Burger King. I worked in Southern California for 20 years, and my newspaper was based in city with a majority Latino population. There were plenty of places to get great Mexican food, but in our annual "Best of the Valley" survey, Taco Bell finished<em> second</em> in the competition for Best Taco.

It's the same logic that always puts "Star Wars" high up on the best movies of all time list.

[caption id="attachment_1339" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The legendary Peter Cook"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/princess-bride2.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1339" title="princess-bride2" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/princess-bride2-300x164.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="164" /></a>[/caption]

So when I saw there had been a survey to select the best comedian of all time, I was half expecting to see Dane Cook or Larry the Cable Guy at the top of the list. But when I learned that it was a survey in which only comedians were allowed to vote, I had higher hopes.

Imagine my surprise -- and my joy -- to find that this group of comedians from the United States and Great Britain had <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/peter-cook-voted-best-comedian-by-fellow-humorists-486818.html">selected</a> the late Peter Cook as the funniest man ever. It isn't exactly fresh news. The survey was taken in 2004 and announced at the beginning of 2005.

It's definitely slanted toward English humor -- only six of the top 20 were Americans, and probably the greatest omission from the top 20 is George Carlin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJNPL8v-DfQ

If you're not familiar with Cook, this wonderful nine-minute clip from the 2005 show demonstrates why he has been so revered. My own initiation to his work was the hilarious 1967 film "Bedazzled," which he did with partner Dudley Moore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8tA1wH3cck

"Bedazzled" was one of the funniest, darkest comedy of the '60s, and the shame of it is that far more people saw the execrable 2000 Brendan Fraser remake than saw the original. By 2000, we had lost enough of our sense of humor that a wonderful film that poked fun at religion, politics, relationships and almost everything else had almost all that stripped out of the remake.

Cook of course was far more than just the few films he did. He was part of the legendary '60s revue, "Beyond the Fringe," and its successors, and his later work with Moore as the scabrous Derek and Clive is some of the funniest stuff ever to come out of Britain.

He died too young, of course. So many of the great funnymen do, and Cook was just 57 when he died in 1995 from liver damage, the result of a lifetime of drinking.

He's not as well remembered as some of the names after him on the list, names like John Cleese, Woody Allen, Richard Pryor and Steve Martin, but listen to his albums or watch what's available on video and he can more than hold his own with any of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbnkY1tBvMU

"One Leg too Few," from the original "Beyond the Fringe," is perhaps Cook's best known comedy routine.

Amazingly, he wrote it as a teenager.

A truly funny guy, and I'll bet 90 percent of American comedy fans under 40 have no idea who he is.

Once a

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