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PETER SELLERS AT SEA (320kbs-m4a/125mb/54mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 8th & 9th September 2025
In 1973, Peter Sellers persuaded his friend, film director Peter Medak to direct a pirate comedy he'd developed with Spike Milligan.
Yet he went on to sabotage the production with tantrums and cancelled shoots.
Not forgetting the terrible weather, drunken captains, near fatal illness and missing actors.....
Starring Jack Klaff and Kerry Shale.
Bob Sinfield's two-part comedy drama about a disaster movie that wasn't meant to be a disaster.
Peter Medak .... Kerry Shale
Peter Sellers .... Jack Klaff
Carolyn .... Kathryn Haywood
Spike Milligan .... Bob Sinfield
Other characters played by members of the cast.
Producer: Julian Mayers
A Yada Yada production.
PETER SELLERS AT SEA - 1. DREAMS (320kbs-m4a/62mb/27mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 8th September 2025
PETER SELLERS AT SEA - 2. DISASTER (320kbs-m4a/64mb/28mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 9th September 2025
It's 1973. Will Peter Sellers - or the ship - make it to the end of filming?
Sellers and Milligan attended a private screening and left in total silence:
"We all just wanted to kill ourselves."
PETER SELLERS SINGS (320kbs-m4a/122mb/53mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 10th September 2025
Peter Sellers made a number of musical comedy records.
Ed Stewart talks to producer George Martin, and musical director Ron Goodwin, about the process for recording.
Featuring classic performances like:
* Balham - Gateway to the South
* Goodness Gracious Me
* A Hard Day's Night - the Beatle classic with Sellers as Lawrence Olivier's Richard III
Producer: Elizabeth Funning
First broadcast on BBC Radio 2 in June 1997.
ARCHIVE ON 4 - SELLERS IN THE ATTIC (320kbs-m4a/130mb/57mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 8th September 2025
Comedy writer and historian Glenn Mitchell examines rare and lesser-known recordings of Peter Sellers, presenting a deep insight into the life of the comic legend.
After Peter Sellers died in July 1980, the initial rush of glowing eulogies swiftly made way for often highly condemnatory accounts of his personality and behaviour. Some of these are, admittedly, accurate, others take incidents in isolation without regard for context. Other instances are based on inaccuracies and misassumptions.
There was more perspective among subsequent chronicles but the trend continued to portray Sellers's personal life as one with few, if any, redeeming features.
As regards his work, many accounts have concentrated on the obvious aspects - the 'Panther' films, 'Dr Strangelove' and 'The Goon Show' - but Peter Sellers left far more than that.
The writer and presenter of this programme, Glenn Mitchell, collected Sellers material from an early age. In this personal take on the subject, he chronicles Sellers' career in parallel with his own lifelong interest in the actor's work.
The programme, originally made to mark the 30th anniversary of Sellers death, also explores the softer, compassionate side to the actor's nature, the aspect of the man which once led to him talking a complete stranger - who was perched on a high bridge - out of committing suicide.
Among Mitchell's personal finds is a private recording Sellers made for a television producer whose daughter lost her sight. The recording, not broadcast prior to this documentary, reveals a remarkable and malleable side to his personality, catching him at a very relaxed moment in his life contrasting with his often cited volatile nature.
Mitchell's focus is on the lesser-known Sellers material he has amassed, including home-movie prints, soundtracks, rare interviews and out-takes. The programme also features written archives from his first BBC TV and Radio auditions, and gems like his 1970 performance of the macabre music-hall monologue 'The Ballad of Sam Hall', recorded at Wilton's in East London.
Producer: Stephen Garner
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2010.
