downturn. Having been loftily billed as “Britain’s answer to Gene Krupa,” Peter launched his set only to have the lights go wrong and the
accompanying band fall drastically off-tempo. The audience rebelled,
loudly. Graham Stark recalls Peter telling him about the fiasco, thoughfor Stark’s benefit Peter couldn’t help but turn it into a black comedy
routine: “As a story of absolute disaster it unfailingly reduced me to tears
of laughter,” Stark recalls.
With Peter suffering one thudding calamity after another, it’s little
wonder that he thought about disappearing into still another new identity.
At his mother’s urging, he considered adopting the stage name “Peter Ray.”
Hilda Parkin remembers it: “She wanted him to be called ‘Peter Ray’—it’s
in one of my letters. And I said to him, ‘You know, “Peter Sellers” sounds
much better. It sort of comes to the tongue better than “Peter Ray.” ’ And
there already was the star comedian Ted Ray.”
As it happened, he kept Sellers but dropped the drums. The big shining
car was gone now—who knows where it had come from, and who knows
where it went—and since Peter had, after all, chosen to master the most
unwieldy musical instrument this side of the piano, the lack of ready transportation made it difficult for him to get from show to show with his
cumbersome drum set. “I was playing with a little group called ‘The Jive
Bombers,’ ” Peter’s story goes. The band was booked in the industrial city
of Birmingham, about one hundred miles northwest of London. Peter got
there, along with his drums, by hitching a ride with the saxophone player.
The Jive Bombers were in mid-session when people began crowding around
Peter’s drums, helpfully making little percussive noises with their tongues
in the middle of his set. Peter’s tale concludes: “This fellow says to me, ‘Oh
say, can ya play “Any Umbrellas”? I said, ‘No, no, we don’t play that.’ He
says, ‘ Why don’t you play it?’ I was getting annoyed at this point, so I said,
‘Just ’cause we don’t play it, that’s all.’ So he looks at me and says ‘Shitface’
and walks away. I thought, ‘That’s it, inn’it? I’m out.’ ”
• • •
In March 1948, he was standing around Archer Street not knowing quite
what else to do when a press agent friend told him that a nearby strip
club was looking for a comic. The Windmill, just off Piccadilly Circus,
was run by a successfully sordid impresario named Vivian Van Damm.
Forbidden by the local morals code from gyrating, Mr. Van Damm’s
strippers made a show out of stationing themselves around the stage in
exalted tableaux of live neoclassical sculpture, each element designed,
however roughly, as a contemporary interpretation of a low-grade Venus.
The girls were essentially coarser and more modern Peg Rays without theslides and body stockings, and the audiences made do. Already frustrated,
the Windmill’s crowd was thus a tough one as far as any intervening
joke-tellers were concerned, and Van Damm, accordingly, was a harsh
auditioner. (Who wants to run a strip club with a clientele bored to the
point of rioting? Not Vivian Van Damm.) But Peter was funny enough,
and brave enough, to pass Van Damm’s test, and so Peter took the job of
legitimizing naked women for £30 a week.
Each night, after appearing in small roles in other acts, Peter briefly
held the spotlight by himself. He performed a selection of Tommy Handley’s ITMA voices followed by a song written for him by his father. The
audience seems not to have resented Peter’s intrusion on the Greco-nudie tableaux vivantes , and at the end of the appointed six-week run, Van Damm
was impressed enough to add Peter’s name to a bronze plaque on the Windmill wall. It was labeled “Stars of Today Who Started Their Careers in This
Theatre.”
• • •
Some time after the Jersey holiday camp fiasco, Peg had taken Peter by the
hand and led him to a
accompanying band fall drastically off-tempo. The audience rebelled,
loudly. Graham Stark recalls Peter telling him about the fiasco, thoughfor Stark’s benefit Peter couldn’t help but turn it into a black comedy
routine: “As a story of absolute disaster it unfailingly reduced me to tears
of laughter,” Stark recalls.
With Peter suffering one thudding calamity after another, it’s little
wonder that he thought about disappearing into still another new identity.
At his mother’s urging, he considered adopting the stage name “Peter Ray.”
Hilda Parkin remembers it: “She wanted him to be called ‘Peter Ray’—it’s
in one of my letters. And I said to him, ‘You know, “Peter Sellers” sounds
much better. It sort of comes to the tongue better than “Peter Ray.” ’ And
there already was the star comedian Ted Ray.”
As it happened, he kept Sellers but dropped the drums. The big shining
car was gone now—who knows where it had come from, and who knows
where it went—and since Peter had, after all, chosen to master the most
unwieldy musical instrument this side of the piano, the lack of ready transportation made it difficult for him to get from show to show with his
cumbersome drum set. “I was playing with a little group called ‘The Jive
Bombers,’ ” Peter’s story goes. The band was booked in the industrial city
of Birmingham, about one hundred miles northwest of London. Peter got
there, along with his drums, by hitching a ride with the saxophone player.
The Jive Bombers were in mid-session when people began crowding around
Peter’s drums, helpfully making little percussive noises with their tongues
in the middle of his set. Peter’s tale concludes: “This fellow says to me, ‘Oh
say, can ya play “Any Umbrellas”? I said, ‘No, no, we don’t play that.’ He
says, ‘ Why don’t you play it?’ I was getting annoyed at this point, so I said,
‘Just ’cause we don’t play it, that’s all.’ So he looks at me and says ‘Shitface’
and walks away. I thought, ‘That’s it, inn’it? I’m out.’ ”
• • •
In March 1948, he was standing around Archer Street not knowing quite
what else to do when a press agent friend told him that a nearby strip
club was looking for a comic. The Windmill, just off Piccadilly Circus,
was run by a successfully sordid impresario named Vivian Van Damm.
Forbidden by the local morals code from gyrating, Mr. Van Damm’s
strippers made a show out of stationing themselves around the stage in
exalted tableaux of live neoclassical sculpture, each element designed,
however roughly, as a contemporary interpretation of a low-grade Venus.
The girls were essentially coarser and more modern Peg Rays without theslides and body stockings, and the audiences made do. Already frustrated,
the Windmill’s crowd was thus a tough one as far as any intervening
joke-tellers were concerned, and Van Damm, accordingly, was a harsh
auditioner. (Who wants to run a strip club with a clientele bored to the
point of rioting? Not Vivian Van Damm.) But Peter was funny enough,
and brave enough, to pass Van Damm’s test, and so Peter took the job of
legitimizing naked women for £30 a week.
Each night, after appearing in small roles in other acts, Peter briefly
held the spotlight by himself. He performed a selection of Tommy Handley’s ITMA voices followed by a song written for him by his father. The
audience seems not to have resented Peter’s intrusion on the Greco-nudie tableaux vivantes , and at the end of the appointed six-week run, Van Damm
was impressed enough to add Peter’s name to a bronze plaque on the Windmill wall. It was labeled “Stars of Today Who Started Their Careers in This
Theatre.”
• • •
Some time after the Jersey holiday camp fiasco, Peg had taken Peter by the
hand and led him to a
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