To the editor
I got your email address from my good friend Julie Warren who I know has been communicating with you regarding her cousin Larry Stephens.
She put me in touch with you regarding Peter Sellers. For the last ten years I have been working on a Chronology of the career and work of Peter Sellers for which I have traced just about everything he ever did on stage, record, radio, TV and film!
I was fascinated to read your article in Pevensey Bay Life and would obviously like to know more and also offer help in piecing the story together. Here are a few of the facts I’ve managed to assemble:
The film sequence of Pevensey Bay from the Arena programme is not from 1961 but from around 1957. It includes footage of Sellers’ son Michael (born in 1954) and Sellers’ wife Anne looking pregnant with their daughter Sarah (born in October 1957)
The occasion at St Wilfrid’s Hall Pevensey Bay – Women’s Institute took place on Wednesday 25 June 1958 and involved a coach party of OAPs from Stepney
I look forward to hearing from you
Kind Regards
Mark Cousins
EDITOR COMMENT: Thank you so much for dating both the Peter Sellers home movie sequence and the date of his ‘famous’ (well here at least) performance at the old village hall which was demolished here, for your records, in 1968.
I have a first hand account of the nature of the performance by the son of the lady who ran the WI here at the time and, she, I understand, was the originator of the incident in terms of asking Peter Sellers if he could put in an appearance. I understand that he was asked to give out raffle prizes but stayed to put on the performance.
In the account I have been given, apparently the biggest joke was that some of the pensioners who were in the hall because it was wet, were somewhat confused about why they had been herded into the hall. Some of them did not even know afterwards that they had witnessed Peter Sellers with a performance. Perhaps Peter Sellers himself would have enjoyed that joke, something he might have enjoyed retelling to Michael Parkinson perhaps!!
Thank you so much for your note.
