Peter Sellers - Visions in the Crypt
The Café in the Crypt, in St Martins-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, is a different venue. I confess to not knowing of its existence before, having blithely dashed past the imposing Anglican Church, hurrying to the National Portrait Gallery or some other West End attraction. But, after a leisurely lunch with Sarah Sellers, the eldest daughter of the comic genius Peter Sellers, I can fully understand why she picked it for our interview. It is different. The one word that she used to sum up her father. And Sarah certainly had a unique childhood, the royalty, celebrities and icons of the 1960s and 1970s beating a path to her father’s door.
We were meeting to discuss the photography exhibition that Sarah and her daughter Emily have organised to commemorate what would have been Peter Sellers’ 90th birthday this year. Emily, who works for Harrods organising photoshoots of beautiful things, has her father’s eye for photography. Just as her mother Sarah has his eyes – deep brown wells of barely concealed amusement. Emily has a degree in photography and delved into the archives at Vogue when she worked there as an intern. It was news to me – and perhaps to you too – that Peter Sellers, famous for his role as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau, was also a photographer, producing 30 photos for Vogue, including covers and fashion and lifestyle spreads, as well as photos for The London Evening Standard and the Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph Magazines.
Sarah believes the exhibition – to be held at a pop-up gallery in Beauchamp Place, Knightsbridge, 26 October to 1 November, is the perfect way to remember him. “I saw the exhibition as a positive way to celebrate dad’s life in his 90th Year. I wanted to do something with integrity. Something that he would be proud of,” says Sarah. “Everyone loves him – fans, old friends. There’s a Peter Sellers Appreciation Society, a newsletter and FB page.” And Sarah loved him, despite her unusual childhood and her father’s often erratic and restless behaviour. Peter Sellers had bouts of what was once referred to as “The Black Dog” and is now often diagnosed as bipolar. It’s the dark side of many a creative person, comics included; Tommy Cooper and Stephen Fry (who is expected to attend the exhibition) to name a few. But Sarah likes to focus on the many positive things he brought to her life.
“How many dads out there are perfect dads? Let’s remember him for what he was good at and not for what he wasn’t good at. He loved us a lot. He took us out. Beautiful people like Sophia Loren came to the house and we always went to the film sets and on holidays with dad. He could be an awful lot of fun. In the last five or so years he was abroad a lot. So every now and then we’d get a call to say he was going to be in England. And you’d never know what would happen. He was never normal. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. It was just different. I don’t much like routine – so I think it’s stuck with me.”
How different is a pop-up prince in your own home? “Prince Charles came to our house at Elstead. I had the day off school, but I hid because I was too shy. Princess Margaret came a lot – but I used to hide from her too. You had to curtsy when you saw her, she was quite formal. We did spend a lot of time with them, though.”
Maybe that early reticence marked her out? Sarah readily admits she didn’t hanker for the limelight: “I was never really interested in that life. If I had of been, I could have had a different life. I was more interested in being a person in my own right.” Sarah has an antiques business, specialising in teddy bears, which she lovingly restores. Her grandmother was a knocker – someone that went from door-to-door looking to buy antiques – so perhaps a little of the family business is in her blood, if not that relentless search for the next beautiful thing which was one of her father’s traits. Photography, however, is the one art form that the three generations share. So you can understand Sarah’s zeal to organise the exhibition.
“The starting point was when my daughter Emily did a photography degree so I gave her my Olympus camera – the camera given to me by dad. Dad did an ad for the company in the 70s – and he gave me a whole set of Olympus cameras and that was nice, because it was something we could share – our love of photography. So when Emily did this degree it was quite fun, because there were three generations of Olympus users.”
Olympus is one of the major exhibition sponsors, alongside Camera Press, which owns a lot of Sellers’ photographs.
The exhibition promises to provide a fascinating glimpse into a glamourous past, when the pool of celebs was much smaller and, arguably, all the better for that. As well as his beautiful co-stars, Sellers’ married some stunning women, including Britt Ekland; a ‘wicked’ stepmother in the modern interpretation of that word. “Britt is great,” says Sarah. “She was lovely to us and she has always been supportive. She helped with the exhibition, particularly with the publicity.” A selection of framed photographs will be on sale, with all the proceeds going to the British Heart Foundation.
Anne Howe, Sarah’s mother, was also an actress and fell for Sellers when he was a tubby unknown. “Mum said that when she saw dad on stage, that’s what did it for her.” They stayed friends after the divorce, with Peter often joining them on family holidays and at the Elstead house he bought with Britt. Sarah and her brother Michael were made to feel at home at the house. He later sold it to his friend Ringo Starr. And it would seem the house – or possibly the Sellers effect – sparked some creativity among his friends.
“Dad let Ringo use his yacht one summer and the captain used to work for Jacques Cousteau [the renowned undersea explorer and filmmaker]. Ringo asked him about under the sea and he described an octopus’s garden. So there came the song.”
Stephen Stills, of the band Crosby, Stills and Nash, also found inspiration in the Sellers’ home. He bought Elstead from Ringo and based his song Johnny’s Garden on Elstead’s gardener John. Interestingly, Sellers played a gardener in his last film, the critically acclaimed Being There about a simple-minded middle-aged man who learns about life via the TV. The film is one of my favourites, together with The Party and The Millionairess, but Sarah picks one of Sellers’ more obscure films – The Optimist of Nine Elms – as her favourite. It’s about a down and out vaudeville entertainer with a performing dog, living and busking on the streets of London. “There’s a lot of him in it,” says Sarah. And, having looked at a clip (see below), there’s also a lot about London life in the seventies; the film was released in 1973. “There’s a lot of his heritage in there,” says Sarah. “Little references. Often in his films he referenced things from his real life. He takes a dog to the Dog Cemetery in Hyde Park, [a hidden Victorian gem which can still be visited] and there’s the Dorchester [very much part of his life and where he died of a heart attack]. He plays the ukulele. It’s all very personal.”
And the exhibition will be just that. Very personal. Among the photographs of the great, good and glamourous – including President Gerald Ford’s Daughter Susan Ford and the heart transplant pioneer Dr Christiaan Barnard, a personal friend – will be photos of Sarah, Michael, Britt and her daughter Victoria and, of course, Peter, with family and friends.
For a man who often played the bumbling outsider – from the clueless Inspector Clouseau, to the bashful Indian doctor overwhelmed by the attentions of the amorous Millionairess played by Sophia Loren – this shows a different side to a comic legend. The man behind the camera.
Oh, and the venue. Nearly forgot! It was very busy when we met – 1pm – but it didn’t take long to queue up and be served. There are plenty of tables and plenty of atmosphere in this bustling eatery, with its 18th Century brick vaulted ceilings and tombstones. And the home-cooked food is good. Sarah had the celery soup of the day and I had chicken and bacon in a toasted onion bap. Tasty, unpretentious fare – just £6.95 for the food and under £10 including two pots of tea. The Café in the Crypt feels like a secret place to slip away to – it’s not always as crowded, according to Sarah, and oozes heritage. Outside there’s a bust of Oscar Wilde and a stone declaring: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”. I don’t think Sellers senior would have taken issue with that.
Credits: All photos from the Sellers Family Collection, apart from the first one of Peter Sellers by Adrian Flowers for the Olympus ad and the second of Sarah Sellers at the Cafe In The Crypt by me.
Peter Sellers – Behind the Camera.
19 Beauchamp Place, Knightsbridge, London SW3 1NQ. 26 October to 1 November. (Entrance Free).
Towner Gallery, Devonshire Park, College Road, Eastbourne, BN21 4JJ, from 11 February to 9 March.
Café In the Crypt, St-Martins-in-the-Fields, north-east corner of Trafalgar Square,WC2.
