Friend of Peter Cook and committed political eccentric

Rainbow George Weiss, the friend of Peter Cook and serial fringe candidate in UK elections, has died at the age of 81.

A  free spirit dubbed the ‘godfather of Hampstead eccentrics’, he lived in the same North London street as Cook, who was a frequent visitor for late-night drinking sessions.

Weiss started his political ‘career’ as the potential Minister for Confusion in the What Party, which Cook formed as a joke (the comic’s girlfriend at the time, Ciara Parkes, was Minister for Lifts, her mum was Minister for Ladders)

He then formed the one-man Captain Rainbow's Universal Party (Crup) and once stood against Michael Portillo, polling 48 votes to the Tory Minister’s 16,000. Policies included solving the problem of the Orange marches in Ireland by allowing events for Blue men, Purple men and Yellow men as well.

Other parties included the Vote For Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket, the Paradise-Pursuing People-Powered Party, and the Make Politicians History Party. The highlight of Weiss’s political career came at the 2005 general election when he stood in 13 constituencies at once – polling 1,289 votes across them all.

Cook would often pop round to Weiss’s home in Perrins Walk, where Weiss sometimes recorded their rambling conversations. More than 100 hours of tapes exist, spanning the period 1984 to 1987.

After the comic died in 1995 at the age of 57, Weiss fell out with Cook’s widow Lin over the right to make them public.

Plans to air some of the material on Radio 4 in 1999 were scrapped when Chong threatened to sue. A CD of some of the conversations – mixed with a few spoof phone calls Cook made to LBC Radio pretending to be a Norwegian fisherman called Sven – was eventually released in 2002 under the title Over At Rainbow’s.

Weiss would also call in under pseudonyms such as Sterling Silver, but was subsequently banned from the air.

A 1999 Observer profile of Weiss said he ‘could have been one of Cook's absurdist creations… a cross between the extraordinary and the tedious, the wonderful and the worrying’. But it also suggests Weiss was serious about his fanciful ideas for creating a political utopia, while Cook saw it all as a joke.

A former diamond dealer, he squatted in his mews house after he stopped paying rent in 1984. His landlord vanished and and after the required 12 years, he acquired the deeds.

After he sold the property for £850,000 in 2004, he said he would use the  money to set up an independent record label to revive the pop career of singer Ronnie Carroll, then 69, who represented Britain in the 1962 Eurovision Song Contest with Ring-a-Ding Girl. Most the CDs he produced went unsold.

Just four years after the house sale he had just £50,000 left.

His other stunts included hiring the Camden Palace for a concert that was 1p to get in but £3 to leave and pumping £50,000 into a John Otway world tour to allow the rocker to hire a jet to take 250 paying fans with him.

And in August 1989, he caught up in a tabloid sting where he was filmed exchanging 100 tabs of LSD for £150.

In his diaries, Michael Palin recalls Weiss collaring him in the street to complain about how hard it was to get publicity for his political campaigns – so decided to get himself arrested by walking int Hampstead police station with a huge spliff.

Weiss also befriended Ian Drury, Charles Saatchi, Alex Higgins, Newcastle legend Jackie Milburn and Russell Brand, appearing on the comedian’s Radio 2 show several times.

However, Brand ultimately told Weiss to stop exploiting their association after he placed advertisements in his local paper about the star. One – which promised a performance on Hampstead Heath of a play starring Brand as the Messiah – was rejected by the publisher.

The Times today recalls how Weiss also once persuaded William Hill to let him change a bet. In 2008, he staked £333 at 3,000-1 on aliens arriving during the Olympics opening ceremony but came to realise that was stupid.

‘It would disrupt the whole event and the aliens wouldn’t want to do that,’ he said. So he got the bookie to let him change his bet to extraterrestrial contact coming during the closing ceremony instead.

Paying tribute in local paper The Ham & High this week, former Culture Club drummer Jon Moss said Weiss ‘separated the type of people in Hampstead – those who knew George and thought he was great, and then the others who just thought he was a weirdo’.

Weiss died peacefully in his sleep at a Highgate residential home last Wednesday.

Published: 9 Dec 2021