Peter Sellers
The news of Peter Sellers's illness set me thinking about the rich profusion of his talents. Then I heard the new LP record which he and his fellow-spirits Harry Secombe and Spike Milli- gan have just produced with the title How To Win An Election. Sellers's virtuosity as a mimic permits him to move easily between the exact reproduction of his subject's vocal mannerisms and the potentially more devastating activity of caricature. On this record in a few brilliant seconds he conjures the amiable, un- concerned tones of Sir Alec out of the air: then, in a slower, more elaborate parody of Mr. Wilson in his Plain Man vein, he creates a riot of verbal confusion which Mr. Wilson would never perpetrate, but which somehow hits the nail on the head no less effectively. Not every- thing on this record is exactly hilarious, by the way. It is surprising how often jokes about politics do not quite come off. Surprising, be- cause the political life (or so I think) is full of comedy. Perhaps that is the difficulty: Nature outdoing Art.
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