Long-lost Peter Sellers footage unearthed | For new radio documentary © BBC

Long-lost Peter Sellers footage unearthed

For new radio documentary

 

Rare Peter Sellers footage that vanished from the BBC vaults is to be broadcast as part of a new radio documentary.

The comedian’s daughter Sarah fronts the new show for BBC Radio Solent, featuring archive footage, and extracts from papers from the Corporation’s internal archives.

In researching the show, producer Richard Latto managed to track down long-lost recordings of a two-part documentary that Sellers and comedy historian Mark Cousins made about impresario Ralph Reader, best known for creating the Gang Shows for the Boy Scouts and then wartime service personnel, giving Sellers an early break.

The tape was missing from the archives of both the BBC and the Scouts, and although Ralph's son Bob had a rough copy, it was ‘barely viewable’, Latto says. Eventually he secured a copy from Gordon Blackburn, who works with the Gang Show in Edinburgh. He had it on an old video format called Philips 1700 – but didn’t have the equipment to play it.

‘Apparently the tape was a copy taken directly from the master film print and had sat on his shelf for nearly 40 years,’ said Latto, who had the film converted for the broadcast.

Latto’s documentary has been made to mark the 35th anniversary of Seller’s death, and 90 years since he was born in Southsea, Hampshire, in a flat above a corner shop, now a Chinese restaurant.

His parents were travelling music-hall entertainers and when their baby was only a few days old they took him onto the stage of The Kings Theatre, where his cries were met by a round of applause and raucous laughter.

In the documentary, Peter Sellers: From Southsea To Stardom, Sarah hears stories from old colleagues, including actors, writers and even the producer who punched him, Joe McGrath.

He told Sarah that the incident happened on the set of Casino Royale, in which her father had asked for Orson Welles to play the villain opposite his James Bond. ‘Lo and behold when Orson Wells arrives Peter says he doesn’t want to be seen in the same scene as him,’ McGrath recalls, saying Sellers insisted their exchanges be shot separately as close-ups. The producer accused the former Goon of acting like a spoiled child, so Sellers hit him – and McGrath responded in kind.

Sarah said: ‘I hope with this documentary it shows the variety of my father’s work, he was involved in so many different areas of entertainment and I would hate for any of them to be forgotten.

‘When I see my father performing, I don’t think of him as doing impersonations. He really becomes a character, and he was very sensitive to what made people tick.

‘He had a unique ability to really become someone. He did it form the inside out, rather than the outside in.’

The hour-long show airs at 2pm on Saturday and will be available on iPlayer afterwards.

Published: 21 Jul 2015

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