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They were not destined to be a stay-at-home family, and swinging London in 1965 was not a stay-at-home kind of place. With Victoria only a few weeks old, Peter and Britt left her in the care of her nurse, where she was to remain through much of her childhood, and turned up at the Cool Elephant, a private nightclub, to hear a performance by Mel Torme. Princess Margaret joined them. The comedian Dudley Moore was there, too; he got up on stage at one point and played the piano for Mel. London being essentially a small town of hipsters, mods, models, international stars, and the Beatles, all of whom knew one another, it was not surprising that relationships were becoming notoriously intertwined. Also present at the Cool Elephant that night were David Frost and his girlfriend, who happened to be Peter’s ex-girlfriend, Janette Scott, who happened later to marry Mel Torme.

The jet set was, in a word, flying. In April, Peter and Britt skipped over to Blue Harbor, Jamaica, where they visited Noel Coward. (“Peter Sellers and his wife came over to lunch the other day and were sweet,” Coward wrote in his diary.) They were back in London in time for the queen’s thirty-ninth birthday bash, hosted by Princess Margaret at Kensington Palace. The evening began with everyone—Elizabeth, Philip, Margaret, Snowdon, Peter, Michael Bentine, and Harry Secombe—attending a performance of Son of Oblomov, a West End comedy starring Spike Milligan. The actor Peter Eyre remembers that particular night all too well:

“Basically, the play was Spike Milligan humiliating a lot of actors, of which I was the youngest. (It was a straight play, but it began to go wrong in rehearsals. They didn’t know what to do, so they began adding gags.) On the Queen’s birthday, the Royal Family all came to the theater. Princess Margaret and Snowdon brought Peter Sellers along, and he did a sort of double act from the stalls with Spike Milligan on the stage.” The other performers, including Eyre, found themselves upstaged not only by the show’s erratic star but by a member of the audience. Eyre resented it, though the audience itself seems to have been delighted. Still, Eyre may have a point: “I thought that Milligan was, like most comedians, totally selfish. Comedians want it to be just them and the audience. They don’t want other people.”

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Peter and Britt were traveling in a closed circle of celebrities and growing rather used to hanging out with the royals. One of Peter’s young fans used to call him at the office. Hattie Stevenson remembers answering the phone and finding the teenage Prince Charles on the line: “You’d suddenly get the heir-apparent on the other end of the phone talking Bluebottle at you.” Charles was a guest at Peter’s estate, Brookfield, as well.

And the royals reciprocated. Peter and Britt were invited to Windsor Castle to go pheasant shooting, an occasion that provided Peter with the opportunity to outfit himself with a new £1,200 Purdy 12-bore shotgun and a fine hunting costume topped by a deerstalker. With practice, Peter wasn’t a bad shot. It was thrilling to watch birds drop out of the sky at his instigation, and the congratulations of Princes Philip and Charles didn’t hurt either. Peter and Britt also enjoyed teatime with Elizabeth II. The queen arranged the cups and saucers; Britt discussed Sweden; Phillip, Peter, Margaret, Tony, Charles, Princess Anne, and the Duke and Duchess of Kent put their two pence in. After tea was finished, they all played charades.

They were hanging out with the Beatles, too. George Harrison became a particularly good friend to Peter over the next few years; they shared an interest in Eastern religions. At first, Peter’s fame was such that even the Fab Four were daunted by him. “We met him at numerous parties and different things,” Harrison later said, “but at that time we were more in awe of him because of our childhoods and the Goons. We just loved the Goons. It was the greatest thing we’d ever heard. I remember thinking that we’d met all these film stars and presidents and kings and queens.