Thank you to Peter Evans for writing this book about the very brilliant late Peter Sellers.

Peter Sellers was a very talented mimic and all round actor. He had a wicked sense of humour and was married multiple times. These were the things we saw as the public but there was a lot going on behind the scenes and in his head. When I picked up this book I expected to read about the many gorgeous women he’d taken on dates and the many parties he’d been to and how successful he knew he was. I had conflicting emotions when picking up this book, on the one hand I was ambivalent about when I ‘knew’ I was going to read about and on the other hand I really wanted to find out more about the man. I got so much more than I bargained for. Peter Evans was a close friend of Sellers and he managed to give us the man warts and all, there seems to be more warts than anything else. In this book Sellers is depicted as being very hard to define as he doesn’t know how to be himself, he apparently came very close to playing himself as Chance, the gardener in Being There.

He was very dogmatic and superstitious, consulting a clairvoyant at key times and non-key times. Very hard to be work with, if he saw the wrong look in your eye he insisted you be sacked and that happened on far too many occasions.

The book starts with his death in 1964 and then ends with his death in 1974. They managed to revive him the first time but it made no difference, he didn’t change his ways. It’s a very sad book, to start with the death of a much loved actor, I felt as if from them on we were reviewing everything from that point of view. There is much about his time with Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe in The Goons. We also get to read about his exploits in the army and how he masqueraded as an officer on many occasions, even drinking in the officers’ mess with real officers and fooling them completely. Sellers came from a theatrical family, both his parents and at least one grandparent were in the business, his mother was very much in control and remained an enormous part of his life even after her death.

I loved this book as it showed us someone I’ve loved and admired for a very long time. We see him in all his glory and see how he went from being a mediocre actor to being one of the best there have ever been. I’m sure there are other ooks out there about Peter Sellers and one day I might read them but this one will do for the present.