Peter Sellers, the mad magician - Roger Lewis

Peter Sellers, who died today in 1980, was like a tree filled with birds – all those accents and voices, sounds and imitations.

He began his career in the dubbing booth, playing Mexican bandits, Churchill, Humphrey Bogart, parrots – anything extraneous that needed adding anonymously to movie soundtracks. In the fifties, when he first made his name, he was an indispensable character on radio, appearing alongside Ted Ray and doing spots on Workers’ Playtime, making jokes about corsets.