Soho office building for a reaquaintance meeting
with Dennis Selinger, who seems to have lost touch with Peter after parting
ways in Calcutta. After being demobilized, Selinger had returned to London
and launched his own theatrical agency. The two men may have been
friends in India, but Peg seized control of their reunion, insisting as only
Peg could that her son would make a fortune for the hungry young agent.
“I was more impressed with Peg than with Pete,” Selinger later declared,
which was only natural since Peter spent most of the meeting clearing his
throat toward no vocal end and fussing over the pristine crease in his pants
and the fine leather gloves he held in his nervous hands. Severe clothes
rationing, by the way, was still in force.
Selinger agreed to represent Peter, but it appears never to have been an
exclusive arrangement, since Peter had at least one other agent knocking
on doors for him at the time, and many others followed suit over the years,
either in concert with or apart from Selinger. Still, it was Peter himself
rather than his agents or his mother who landed the first audition at the
BBC. He’d written to request an audition in January 1948, was granted
one in February, and in March he appeared on British television on an
amateur hour called New to You . The act consisted of impersonations and
included this little jingle:
I’m glad you’ve heard my name—it’s Peter Sellers!
Peter Sellers can be gay as well as zealous!
And now it’s my due, from the program New to You ,
As one of Britain’s up and coming fellas—perhaps.
He needed a writer. In any event, the bit survives only because Peter himself
went out and bought a disk-cutting recorder, a rare and expensive machine
for the consumer market, simply in order to memorialize the occasion of
his BBC debut.
Peter did well enough on New to You , but he was not immediately
skyrocketed into stardom, and he still needed to find any work he could.
When the producer Hedley Claxton needed a straight man to appear with
the comedian Reg Varney in his Gaytime revue, Peter auditioned. The final
tryout came down to Peter and Benny Hill. Benny Hill won.
Peter set his sights, or rather his ears, back on the BBC—not television,
which was still minimal in Britain, but radio. After all, he’d been listening
to and mimicking BBC programming since childhood. Indeed, by this
point he could have trademarked his ITMA routines had Tommy Handley
himself not already done so. Besides Handley, Peter could do Neville
Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, and a host of precise but anonymous
American travelogue announcers. His renditions of any number of other
BBC powerhouses were flawless. And he could prove it.
The setup: In 1948, Kenneth Horne was the star of a hit radio show
called Much Binding in the Marsh . Set on an RAF base, Much Binding was
one of several war-themed comedy shows that were popular that year. The
patrician-sounding Horne played the commanding officer; the chirpy-voiced Richard Murdoch played his assistant. Roy Speer was a successful
BBC producer.
“I was pissed off—oh, excuse me!, fed up , right!—with getting nowhere fast,” Peter told Michael Parkinson on the BBC in 1974. “Roy
Speer was doing this show called Show Time. The compère was Dick
Bentley, and there were lots of new acts, you see? I’d written in I-don’t-know-how-many times to try to get in on the show. No reply. The secretary said that Mr. Speer ‘blah barumpfh hmpf.’ So I’ve got nothing to
lose, and I thought, well, I’ll phone up. We were doing these impersonations, and one of the big shows on the air was Much Binding in the
Marsh with Kenneth Horn and Dickie Murdoch. I just thought I’d do it.
You know, you do things at certain times. You’ve got to get ahead!You’ve got to [car noise] vrummmmm ! So I thought if I stay here I’m
dead, [and] even if he kicks my ass out of there it doesn’t matter as long
as I make some impression . So I phone up,
with Dennis Selinger, who seems to have lost touch with Peter after parting
ways in Calcutta. After being demobilized, Selinger had returned to London
and launched his own theatrical agency. The two men may have been
friends in India, but Peg seized control of their reunion, insisting as only
Peg could that her son would make a fortune for the hungry young agent.
“I was more impressed with Peg than with Pete,” Selinger later declared,
which was only natural since Peter spent most of the meeting clearing his
throat toward no vocal end and fussing over the pristine crease in his pants
and the fine leather gloves he held in his nervous hands. Severe clothes
rationing, by the way, was still in force.
Selinger agreed to represent Peter, but it appears never to have been an
exclusive arrangement, since Peter had at least one other agent knocking
on doors for him at the time, and many others followed suit over the years,
either in concert with or apart from Selinger. Still, it was Peter himself
rather than his agents or his mother who landed the first audition at the
BBC. He’d written to request an audition in January 1948, was granted
one in February, and in March he appeared on British television on an
amateur hour called New to You . The act consisted of impersonations and
included this little jingle:
I’m glad you’ve heard my name—it’s Peter Sellers!
Peter Sellers can be gay as well as zealous!
And now it’s my due, from the program New to You ,
As one of Britain’s up and coming fellas—perhaps.
He needed a writer. In any event, the bit survives only because Peter himself
went out and bought a disk-cutting recorder, a rare and expensive machine
for the consumer market, simply in order to memorialize the occasion of
his BBC debut.
Peter did well enough on New to You , but he was not immediately
skyrocketed into stardom, and he still needed to find any work he could.
When the producer Hedley Claxton needed a straight man to appear with
the comedian Reg Varney in his Gaytime revue, Peter auditioned. The final
tryout came down to Peter and Benny Hill. Benny Hill won.
Peter set his sights, or rather his ears, back on the BBC—not television,
which was still minimal in Britain, but radio. After all, he’d been listening
to and mimicking BBC programming since childhood. Indeed, by this
point he could have trademarked his ITMA routines had Tommy Handley
himself not already done so. Besides Handley, Peter could do Neville
Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, and a host of precise but anonymous
American travelogue announcers. His renditions of any number of other
BBC powerhouses were flawless. And he could prove it.
The setup: In 1948, Kenneth Horne was the star of a hit radio show
called Much Binding in the Marsh . Set on an RAF base, Much Binding was
one of several war-themed comedy shows that were popular that year. The
patrician-sounding Horne played the commanding officer; the chirpy-voiced Richard Murdoch played his assistant. Roy Speer was a successful
BBC producer.
“I was pissed off—oh, excuse me!, fed up , right!—with getting nowhere fast,” Peter told Michael Parkinson on the BBC in 1974. “Roy
Speer was doing this show called Show Time. The compère was Dick
Bentley, and there were lots of new acts, you see? I’d written in I-don’t-know-how-many times to try to get in on the show. No reply. The secretary said that Mr. Speer ‘blah barumpfh hmpf.’ So I’ve got nothing to
lose, and I thought, well, I’ll phone up. We were doing these impersonations, and one of the big shows on the air was Much Binding in the
Marsh with Kenneth Horn and Dickie Murdoch. I just thought I’d do it.
You know, you do things at certain times. You’ve got to get ahead!You’ve got to [car noise] vrummmmm ! So I thought if I stay here I’m
dead, [and] even if he kicks my ass out of there it doesn’t matter as long
as I make some impression . So I phone up,
Similar Books
That Thing You Do With Your Mouth: The Sexual Autobiography of Samantha Matthews as Told to David Shields
David Shields, Samantha Matthews
