Avoiding Peter Sellers’ Bad Luck
Peter Sellers, we knew, because our mother told us, did not like green.
In fact, he would leave the set if anyone wore green,
And would fire the director if they persisted in doing so.
So green was verboten in our own lives, even when green was necessary.
That graduation gown, for example,
Or the garden we had paved with crazy paving,
Because why not be effing literal as well as figurative?
Our mother wasn’t risking Peter Sellers’ bad luck
Even for graduation,
Or the very little beauty we might have managed on our rundown estate.
Common sense and familial harmony did not come into it.
Peter did not like green.
So you can imagine what happened when she discovered he hated purple, too.
And then there was the small matter of Orson Welles.
Peter loathed Orson Welles.
So that was my film education buggered,
At least until I left home.
And, of course, I’ve been on a diet ever since.
But, you see, the thing is —
The thing I wish we could have told her then,
And the thing that can’t help but occur to me now —
Is that, if she really did believe we’d do well
By avoiding Peter Sellers’ bad luck,
She might have paused for a moment
To notice
That it wasn’t green or purple or Orson Welles that got him in the end.
