Face Masks, Dining with Ghosts and an Actress with No Knickers. Peter Sellers Would Have Loved My Film of His Life... ; As a Controversial Movie About the Late Comic Genius Opens in Cannes, His Biographer Defends His Portrayal of a Tortured Soul 'He Turned Into a Madman...'

Summary

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Who'd have thought, when I was toiling on his biography in Normandy a decade ago, in a falling-down farmhouse with rain pouring through the roof and bailiffs pounding on the door, that one day I'd meet Peter Sellers and his parents on the set of a movie costing millions?

Last summer at Shepperton Studios, the junk-filled Finchley flat of Sellers' parents had been rebuilt, as had, at mad expense, a full- scale replica of the top floor of the Dorchester Hotel, complete with bedrooms, bathrooms, corridors and balconies with panoramic views of Hyde Park.

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Face Masks, Dining with Ghosts and an Actress with No Knickers. Peter Sellers Would Have Loved My Film of His Life... ; As a Controversial Movie About the Late Comic Genius Opens in Cannes, His Biographer Defends His Portrayal of a Tortured Soul 'He Turned Into a Madman...'

It was here, in his lavish suite, that Sellers had seduced Britt Ekland and what I'd once had to imagine was being brought to life by Oscarwinning actors.

The real Peter Sellers died in 1980, of course, choking into his Dover sole at the Dorchester, going blue in the face, and succumbing to a heart attack at the age of 54. His parents had died in the early Sixties, though that hadn't stopped their brilliant and wayward son conducting spectral conversations with them through spirit mediums.

What had always intrigued me about Sellers was his haunted, h...

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