and . . . I thought if I click
with the secretary, I’ll get through, right? So, I said [deep, resonant
voice], ‘Oh, hello hmmm, this is hmmm Ken Horn. Is Roy there?’ Once
she said, ‘Oh, yes he is, Ken,’ I knew that I was alright. So, I got on
there and Roy said, ‘Hallo, Ken! How are you?’ I said, ‘Listen, Roy, I’m
phoning up because I know that new show you’ve got on—what is it, Show Time or something? Dickie and I were at a cabaret the other night
and saw an amazing young fellow called Peter . . . Dickie, what’s his
name?’ [High-pitched twit voice:] ‘Uh, Peter Sellers! Sellers!’ [Resonant
voice again] ‘Anyway, it could probably be very good if you probably had
him in the show, you know. This is just a tip, a little tip.’ He said, ‘Well
that’s very nice of you.’ And then he came to the crunch, and I said, ‘Uh . . .
I, uh . . . It’s me, it’s Peter Sellers talking and this was the only way I could
get to you and would you give me a date on your show?’
“He said, ‘You cheeky young sod! What do you do?’ I said, ‘Well, I
obviously do impersonations.’ ”
Speer was correct. Peter Sellers was a cheeky young sod. In other
words, he was a natural comedian whose intense insecurity was armored
by the hide of a pachyderm. The child who’d gotten whatever he wanted
had become an ambitious twenty-two-year-old man who wrote the letters
and made the phone calls and white-knuckled his way through one
wretched audition after another in pursuit of the blazing career he was
convinced he was ordained to have. After his period of postwar malaise,
the young Peter Sellers became exceedingly persistent in seeking work
that would showcase his enormous talent, and he offended people all
along the way.
The piano player at the Windmill found him pushy. A disgruntled
Freemason claims that Peter joined the peculiar group in the late 1940s,
became an unrepentant social climber, and broke the sacred covenant of
secrecy—the code words and wacky handshakes and all the rest. “He bandied the phrases and signals about at the BBC,” the bitter Mason reports.
By doing so, he continues, Peter greatly embarrassed the good but gullible
Masons who had sponsored him in the first place.
Spike Milligan offered a more empathic explanation for his friend’s
peculiarities. Peter, Milligan once said, “was just a nice, very quiet, and very
complex simpleton. He was the most complex simpleton in the world.”
• • •
The BBC broadcast Peter’s Show Time program on July 1, 1948. A little
over a week later, Leslie Ayre, the radio critic for the London Evening News ,
gave Peter his first postwar review. It was a very good one with one highly
quotable nugget: “In Peter Sellers, radio brings us another really conscientious and excellent artist.” An overjoyed Peg framed the whole review
and kept it on the wall for the rest of her life. Dennis Selinger did something
more practical: He had it reproduced as a three-column ad and ran it in
the trades, complete with a glamorous-looking head shot of the suddenly
rising young star, the new master of funny voices.
The ad, the review, Selinger’s phone calls, and most of all Peter’s performances rapidly earned him a slew of variety show bookings and cabaret
engagements, not to mention more radio show appearances. Over the
course of the next twelve months, Sellers and his proliferating voices turned
up on the BBC on Workers’ Playtime , Variety Band Box , Ray’s a Laugh , Petticoat Lane , and Third Division . The seamless flow of dissociation his
multiple characters produced was remarkable. Men, women, old, young,
upper class, working class, the nasal, the clipped . . . Peter’s endlessly redoubling accents were so naturalistic that listeners had to remind themselves
that they were hearing only one man and not a crowd. And on the radio,
at least, whatever genuine Peter Sellers there was tended to get lost. “Well,
that’s me !,”
with the secretary, I’ll get through, right? So, I said [deep, resonant
voice], ‘Oh, hello hmmm, this is hmmm Ken Horn. Is Roy there?’ Once
she said, ‘Oh, yes he is, Ken,’ I knew that I was alright. So, I got on
there and Roy said, ‘Hallo, Ken! How are you?’ I said, ‘Listen, Roy, I’m
phoning up because I know that new show you’ve got on—what is it, Show Time or something? Dickie and I were at a cabaret the other night
and saw an amazing young fellow called Peter . . . Dickie, what’s his
name?’ [High-pitched twit voice:] ‘Uh, Peter Sellers! Sellers!’ [Resonant
voice again] ‘Anyway, it could probably be very good if you probably had
him in the show, you know. This is just a tip, a little tip.’ He said, ‘Well
that’s very nice of you.’ And then he came to the crunch, and I said, ‘Uh . . .
I, uh . . . It’s me, it’s Peter Sellers talking and this was the only way I could
get to you and would you give me a date on your show?’
“He said, ‘You cheeky young sod! What do you do?’ I said, ‘Well, I
obviously do impersonations.’ ”
Speer was correct. Peter Sellers was a cheeky young sod. In other
words, he was a natural comedian whose intense insecurity was armored
by the hide of a pachyderm. The child who’d gotten whatever he wanted
had become an ambitious twenty-two-year-old man who wrote the letters
and made the phone calls and white-knuckled his way through one
wretched audition after another in pursuit of the blazing career he was
convinced he was ordained to have. After his period of postwar malaise,
the young Peter Sellers became exceedingly persistent in seeking work
that would showcase his enormous talent, and he offended people all
along the way.
The piano player at the Windmill found him pushy. A disgruntled
Freemason claims that Peter joined the peculiar group in the late 1940s,
became an unrepentant social climber, and broke the sacred covenant of
secrecy—the code words and wacky handshakes and all the rest. “He bandied the phrases and signals about at the BBC,” the bitter Mason reports.
By doing so, he continues, Peter greatly embarrassed the good but gullible
Masons who had sponsored him in the first place.
Spike Milligan offered a more empathic explanation for his friend’s
peculiarities. Peter, Milligan once said, “was just a nice, very quiet, and very
complex simpleton. He was the most complex simpleton in the world.”
• • •
The BBC broadcast Peter’s Show Time program on July 1, 1948. A little
over a week later, Leslie Ayre, the radio critic for the London Evening News ,
gave Peter his first postwar review. It was a very good one with one highly
quotable nugget: “In Peter Sellers, radio brings us another really conscientious and excellent artist.” An overjoyed Peg framed the whole review
and kept it on the wall for the rest of her life. Dennis Selinger did something
more practical: He had it reproduced as a three-column ad and ran it in
the trades, complete with a glamorous-looking head shot of the suddenly
rising young star, the new master of funny voices.
The ad, the review, Selinger’s phone calls, and most of all Peter’s performances rapidly earned him a slew of variety show bookings and cabaret
engagements, not to mention more radio show appearances. Over the
course of the next twelve months, Sellers and his proliferating voices turned
up on the BBC on Workers’ Playtime , Variety Band Box , Ray’s a Laugh , Petticoat Lane , and Third Division . The seamless flow of dissociation his
multiple characters produced was remarkable. Men, women, old, young,
upper class, working class, the nasal, the clipped . . . Peter’s endlessly redoubling accents were so naturalistic that listeners had to remind themselves
that they were hearing only one man and not a crowd. And on the radio,
at least, whatever genuine Peter Sellers there was tended to get lost. “Well,
that’s me !,”
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