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Interview
Peter Temple
Peter Temple is co-starring in Ying Tong at the New Ambassadors, where he plays Peter Sellers, one of the comedy radio broadcasting team, The Goons. Paul Webb went to the Covent Garden hotel to meet him. The Goons were very big in their time, but are they still remembered by people other than the older generation? "Very much so. Anyone who was a Good fan will have subjected their children to them as they grew up, so in terms of audiences I've found that plenty of younger people know about, and enjoy, the Goons as well as people who listened to them when they originally broadcast on the radio in the 1950s." Is Ying Tong following in the footsteps of Round The Horne at The Venue? "No, it's a very different production. Round the Horne is essentially a recreation of a radio broadcast, but Ying Tong, though it does have extracts of Goon Shows, is very much a play, in which Spike Milligan's mental illness, and his creative relationship with fellow Goons Harry Seacombe and Peter Sellers is explored." What's your take on Peter Sellers? "He was a very gifted, very selfish and often unhappy man, whose happiest time - as he himself often said - was with The Goons, in the 1950s. This despite the fact that most of his fame and fortune occurred in the 1960s, when he became a film star." I remember Harry Seacombe saying, after Seller's death, that Sellers had not been very lucky with his lady friends. But he certainly had a number of them, and usually very attractive, so he must have been an attractive figure to women. "He was - he was famous, he was highly intelligent and he was very funny. But he did sometimes fall in love with the wrong people. He fell in love with Sophia Loren, for example, and when he left his wife and children he was heartless enough to say, when one of his children asked whether that meant he didn't love them any more, "Of course I love you, but I love Sophia Loren more!"" Did you ever meet any of the Goons? "I once met Spike Milligan, at an awards ceremony, and we chatted for a while. He was an extraordinary man, often very funny and, as the play makes clear, a major influence on 20th century British comedy." Ying Tong has a huge amount of energy - is it a very physical play, as far as the actors are concerned? "It is, and we have a lot of quick changes, for example, in a very small backstage area, as the New Ambassadors has a fairly small stage. Which suits the play, as the audience are drawn into the action..." How would you describe it to someone who was thinking of seeing it? "A very warm show, that naturally has a lot of comedy, but also brings a lump to your throat at times." Is this your first major West End role? "Yes, which is great fun. I've acted a lot in London but mainly in interesting fringe venues like the Bridewell. I also do a lot of voice-over work, which I can do during the day, and that also gives some variety to my working life - as well as being fairly well paid!" You catch Sellers very effectively on stage - the comedy, the intelligence, the love of good clothes, the ambitions - he doesn't really like meeting at the slightly grotty pub where Spike Milligan lives in an upstairs room. What do you think drove him? Why was he so apparently unsatisfied? "It's largely because he was so ambitious, so driven. He didn't just want to be funny, he wanted to be the funniest in the world. He was a perfectionist, which can sometimes be difficult to work with, and he seemed to clash with his film directors - and he could be a bit of a drama queen. Although he was an astonishingly watchable comic actor, and his films still give a lot of pleasure, especially The Pink Panther, he was happiest working in radio, where he was much more in control than he was when working in films."By Paul Webb
Thursday February 24
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