Peter Sellers' centenary - How the comedy genius is fading from public memory

Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther Strikes Again (Image: Getty) Burt Kwouk as Cato in the Pink Panther

As his centenary approaches, screen icon Peter Sellers is fast becoming the forgotten man of film comedy, according to writer Robert Ross.

An experienced and successful celebrity biographer, Ross wants The Pink Panther and Goon Show star to be “celebrated” again as a true comedy genius.

He thinks negative stories about the actor are destroying a “hero” to millions.

“About eight months ago,” said Ross, “I saw a thread on social media saying, ‘We shouldn't be celebrating Peter Sellers in his 100th year in 2025 because of this, that and the other,’ and all the stuff that's been written about Sellers. And I thought, ‘Well, yeah, that did happen. But he was my hero and I love my heroes to have feet of clay because they're all human beings after all.

Ross believes that “this comic genius of the man needs to be reappraised and revaluated”.

His book, Best Sellers, has “detached the actual work from the human being that made it”.

Author Robert Ross wants to celebrate the actor's comedy work (Image: Robert Ross)

Right now, the actor’s centenary will pass almost without recognition.

The Seller’s family – there are three living widows and three children -- plan no retrospective at the BFI or Bafta, or any public celebration of the undoubted talent that Sellers possessed.

Married four times, including to model Britt Ekland and finally to Lynne Frederick, Sellers died at the young age of 54 in 1980, after suffering coronary problems all his life including one episode in which he had 13 heart attacks.

His son Michael wrote about his father: “He had been there: starred in the movies, married the young women, driven the fast cars, taken the drugs, drunk the wine, made all the cash, spent the cash and let down all those people who had ever really cared for him.”

Michael inherited only £800 from his father.

He himself died of a heart attack in 2006.

Family life in the Sellers household was clearly challenging.

One of Sellers’ issues, according to Robert Ross, was that the actor took his work home.

“Several of the ex-wives say that Sellers would continue to live with his characters, whether it was Fred Kite [his film I’m Alright Jack, 1959], or Inspector Clouseau [Pink Panther], arguably his most famous creation. This could cause problems for those around him.

“Sellers had a famous quote about it, ‘There was no me. I had it surgically removed!’”

Ross believes something else was underlying his behaviour.

“I talk about the ‘comedy of madness’ for comedians like Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Tony Hancock, that there was a sort of thread of insanity without which the work wouldn't have been as rich.

He concedes, “I never met Sellers but I'm sure this tendency made him quite difficult to live with.

“You know he lived for comedy, and the comedies are the stuff that rises to the surface, and that's what's left behind when all the agonies and the ecstasies that made it happen have been long forgotten.”

Born in Portsmouth in 1925, Sellers first appeared in the Goon Show in the Fifties with Spike Milligan, Michael Bentine and Harry Secombe.

This gave him a platform to launch his film career appearing in almost 30 movies, with a striking ability to use different accents.

Said Ross: “He was basically a blank canvas. Sellers could take on anything.

“He also wanted to promote the idea that he was a complete actor. His great hero was Alec Guinness, and he wanted to be this proper thespian. He worked with him twice in films, once at the very start of his film career, and The Lady Killers, an Ealing comedy in1955 and right near the end of Peter's life in 1976 in a Neil Simon crime pastiche, Murder by Death.”

For many critics, his performance in Stanley Kubrick's Doctor Strangelove (1964) was considered his greatest triumph, for which he got a $1m fee.

Said Ross: “Kubrick went on record as saying, ‘It was three performances for the price of six’.”

Sellers was an ostentatious buyer of things. He had a habit, said Ross, of buying homes on the spur of the moment. “I think he had as many homes as wives!” His favoured marque in cars was the Rolls Royce.

His Pink Panther films (1963-1976) made Sellers a small fortune, as well as winning him millions of fans globally.

Said Ross: “They were absolutely massive. You might say they were the comedy equivalent to the James Bond films. They were the big summer or Christmas film for that year. They came out and they made huge box office, too.

“The Return of the Pink Panther (1974) which was the first one that he’d made in 10 years -- he made two of them in the Sixties -- then came back bigger and better in the mid-Seventies.

“I spoke to Mike Grady, a brilliant comedy actor who appears in the Pink Panther series. He told me, ‘by that point Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers just weren't talking to each other. They had made so much money they were giving it away -- Cadillacs to friends as gifts.”

The success of the film allowed Sellers to fund his own pet project Being There, in which he played Chance, the gardener.

Said Ross: “I think it's probably his most complete performance.

“I think he got a little bit frustrated that people expected him to do those crap falls and the slapstick of Clouseau films. But Being There was the film where he was just allowed to completely inhabit that character.

“I think it really did break his heart -- what was left of it -- when he didn’t win the Academy Award that year. Because I think he really was expecting it. It was one of his dreams that he didn't fulfil.”

He had to settle for a Golden Globe instead.

Sellers was nominated three times for an Academy Award but failed on each occasion. He did win a Bafta, however, for his role you know I'm Alright Jack.

Although he had great success in Hollywood, he always counted Britain as his home.

“He was always an Englishman, through and through. He would always want to come back.

“In an interview towards the end of his life he said, ‘You know you do one or two dud films, Hollywood just forgets you and turns its back on you’.

Ross continues: “Whereas in England, we always loved him for the Goon Show. If you're famous in England, you're always famous.”

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His critical triumph, Being There (1979), playing Chance, the gardener (Image: Getty) SUBSCRIBE Invalid email

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It was Dudley Moore, according to Robert Ross, who took over the mantle vacated by Peter Sellers.

“I think people forget in the Seventies, just before he died, he was the number one comedy actor. He could turn down 9 out of 10 scripts because he was offered everything. When he died, basically Dudley Moore took over.”

Goons’ fans will be delighted to know the Sellers even considered a reunion in 1980 the year he died.

“They were planning a reunion,” said Ross, "and potential new episodes.

“The three of them we're discussing maybe doing some stuff for TV again.

“He lived for comedy right to the very end.”

Best Sellers is available now, at gnbooks.co.uk