The worst patient in a Victorian lunatic asylum would be better off than PETER SELLERS

A brilliant new biography of the Pink Panther star reveals his inability to enjoy life and worsening mania, which tipped from eccentricity into frightening and prolonged insanity, before his early death aged just 54

- By Roger Lewis, Sellers' Biographer

PETER Sellers, born a century ago next month, wouldn't be allowed his career today. All those racial stereotypes of his the caricatured Frenchmen, Italians, Jews and goodness-gracious-me Indians would be in clear breach of today's codes of political correctness. Nevertheless, Sellers continues to obsess audiences.

And he remains hysterical: whether as the deadpan Clouseau falling into ponds and out of windows; or as the President of the United States in Dr Strangelove, trying to explain down the phone to a drunken Russian leader that, unfortunately, a nuclear holocaust is imminent.

There was a mythic dimension to Sellers' story. He had everything fame and riches - but it wasn't enough. He was a comedian with a tragic inability to enjoy life. He was world famous and desperately lonely.

At the height of his fame as Inspector Clouseau, Sellers' personal eccentricity tipped over the edge to become a genuine, and frightening, prolonged bout of insanity.

Blake Edwards, director of the Pink Panther franchise, said: "If you went into a Victorian lunatic asylum and saw the worst patient in the place, he'd be better off than Peter Sellers."

Sellers was famous for his phobias about green and purple, apparently the colours of death. A bathroom at the Crillon Hotel in Paris was bricked up because the tiles were green. Publicity girls were sacked if they wore purple. A casino scene in Vienna was re-shot because the billiard table had a green baize. Sellers had a castle in Ireland, which he abandoned because it was surrounded by green grass.

Other strange behaviour included tearing down a film set because Sellers' mother had appeared in a dream to say it was unlucky. And a pirate comedy had to be re-dubbed because Sellers' character, Scratch, was a nickname for the devil - the role had to become Scratcher instead.

Sellers would only sleep with his head pointing polar north. He had a phase of eating nothing but hard boiled eggs.