Me digress

Alistair Cookie introduced viewers to a spot of culture while relaxing in a well-stuffed armchair. Though seemingly more sedate and urbane, Alistair Cookie is still a Cookie Monster, devouring baked goods, props—and in the revamped opening in the 1990s, noisily consuming cookies over the theme, while offering judicious comments on the texture. He used to appear smoking a pipe and then eating it at the end of each piece.

In a 2004 Chicago Public Radio interview, David Rudman (who performs Cookie Monster) referred to Cookie Monster’s occasional use of more advanced phrases, such as “It a bit esoteric,” as his Alistair Cookie side: “He throws out these words like, you know, ‘Me digress.’ It’s his whole Alistair Cookie side… It’s a whole ‘nother side of Cookie, where he’s just kinda, you know, laidback and intellectual, but he still has that ‘Me Alistair Cookie,’ and it’s just such a funny contrast.”

Alistair Cookie is generally a detached party who simply serves as a frame for the “Monsterpiece Theater” spoofs. Occasionally, however, the participants take their grievances directly to Alistair Cookie (“Twelve Angry Men”, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”), crash into his sanctum (“The 39 Stairs”), or otherwise disrupt his hosting duties. On rare occasions, Cookie Monster himself stars in the sketches, as in “Twin Beaks,” invariably winning rave critical reviews from Alistair Cookie.