While the late actor Peter Sellers is known primarily for his roles in film comedies such as the Pink Panther series, he first became a British celebrity as a member of the cast of The Goon Show, a satirical British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) radio series. Originally aired in 1951, the show teamed Sellers with fellow comedians Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. The program was a shocking departure for listeners accustomed to urbane humor from the  BBC-the Goons combined a zany blend of odd characters in sketches that poked fun at every aspect of English society. Sellers used mimicry skills honed as a stand-up comedian in London striptease bars to create a number of distinctive characters with equally memorable names: Grytpype Thynne, Bluebottle, Willum Cobblers, and Major Bloodnok. The show acquired a cult following with BBC audiences around the world and helped launch Sellers's film career.

     Goon Show influences can be traced to equally eccentric British television progeny, such as Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Benny Hill Show. The Goons, led by Sellers, created a distinctive media genre that combined Kafkaesque humor with hilariously stereotypical English characters. This new genre paved the way for the Pythons and others to follow in the 1960s and 1970s.

     In 1979, Peter Sellers appeared in Hal Ashby's production of Being There, a film version of Jerzy Kosinski's satirical novel on the cultural influence of television. In the film, Sellers played Chauncey Gardiner, a none-too-bright gardener who is forcibly thrust into the outside world after the death of his benefactor. Sheltered in his employer's home. Chauncey's world­ view is entirely shaped by the television shows he watches on sets scattered throughout the house. After being cast from this TV-defined Eden, Chauncey and his childlike innocence are challenged at every turn by the harsh realities of the outside world. In one memorable scene, he is menaced by members of an inner­ city street gang as he urgently presses a TV remote control to make them "go away." In another scene, Sellers kisses a passionate female character played by Shirley MacLaine as he mimics a televised love scene that he is watching over her shoulder.

Being There reflected Kosinski's jaundiced view  of the influence of television  on  modern culture and the tendency to confuse actual events with their symbolic media representations. In Kosinski's sardonic world, the innocent jabberings of a moronic child-man are mistaken as profound wisdom-at the end of the film Chauncey is feted as a presidential candidate. This story resonated with Peter Sellers at first reading, and he pursued Kosinski for seven years for the film rights. During the making of the motion picture, Sellers became Chauncey Gardiner-so  much so that friends were alarmed at his 24-hour-a-day transformation. The result was one of Seller's funniest and most poignant screen roles. He was an innocent man cast adrift in a world full of duplicitous people and contrived mediated images. The film, like Kosinski's novel, is one of the most trenchant indictments of the role of television in society yet mounted in fictional form. The film was a fitting end to a career built on Seller's own unique mimicry skills. He contrived a number of quirky illusory personas-a diverse world that included such memorable characters as Grytpype Thynne, Jacques Clouseau, and Chauncey Gardiner.