THE MODUS OPERANDI OF PINK PANTHER ARCHIVE

The art of boxing cropped up elsewhere in Sellers’ work. One pounded painting depicts ‘the Archbishop of bleeding Canterbury’, of course. Sellers’ character has a unique approach to the medium: slathering paint on to his boxing glove and clouting the canvas. The thing with Danny is that he can’t give up boxing – or, at least, his modus operandi, as Moore mutters, is ‘action painting’, taking a swipe at the drippy strong men of Abstract Expressionism. It was when he was knocked down in a bout, Danny says, and ‘I’ve been on the canvas ever since.’ In a chat-show format, Peter Cook’s interviewer explores Danny’s decision ‘to leave the ring and enter the highly competitive world of portrait painting’. Your correspondent was particularly tickled to see a clip of a sketch from Not Only But Also from 1965, in which Sellers plays a ‘boxer-cum-painter’ called Danny, accompanied by his cornerman (or perhaps studio assistant, played by Dudley Moore).

THE MODUS OPERANDI OF PINK PANTHER ARCHIVE

The film is a bittersweet effort, which sews together archive footage from the actor’s films and his own home videos with new interviews, including with Sellers’ second wife (of four), Britt Ekland.

Rakewell enjoyed Peter Sellers: A State of Comic Ecstasy, a new BBC documentary about the life of the comic actor. Look out for regular posts taking a rakish perspective on art and museum stories Introducing Rakewell, Apollo’s wandering eye on the art world.

The modus operandi of pink panther