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At the end of the month was a more notable milestone. On Thursday, January 28, 1960, nine years’ and ten series’ worth of Goon Shows drew to a close. The series was still immensely popular, but it had played itself out, and, for the time being, at least, it was time for the threesome to say farewell to one another. In “The Last Smoking Seagoon,” the worn and torn but still farcical Milligan, Secombe, and Sellers gamely worked their way through one of Spike’s lesser works, the tale of Nicotine Neddie’s attempt to quit smoking. Milligan and Secombe were famous, but Sellers was now a flashy star, a fact acknowledged in the final show:

(Sound of screeching limousine)

SECOMBE: Heavens! A ninety-five-foot-long motor car covered in mink! It must be Peter Sellers!

SELLERS: No, he hasn’t heard of this one yet.

Crun and Min, Grytpype-Thynne and Moriarty, Bloodnok—Peter’s key antiheroic characters all turned up for the last hurrah, along with an unnamed Hindu man who carries on an incomprehensible shipboard conversation with Eccles. The saga ends with Ned blowing himself up while smoking a ninety-foot-long cigarette, landing in the hospital, and running off screaming amid the unscripted laughter of his fellow Goons. “Yes, that was the last Goon Show,” the particularly weary-sounding announcer Wallace Greenslade says in the final seconds of the program. “Bye, now.”

• • •

Life at Chipperfield, as with Peter’s life as a whole, was alternately social and amusing, isolated and strange. Given the immensity of the place, Peter was now able to vanish completely into his photographic and filmmaking hideout, Peter’s answer to a Cold War bomb shelter. According to Anne, he “actually had a whole wing with a darkroom and a little cinema.” Michael was carted off daily to whatever private school Peter had installed him in—he himself attributes the decisions to his father—and nannies took care of Sarah. Peter was often in London filming, or recording, or broadcasting. Anne was increasingly secluded.

At the same time, Peter loved having his friends come for an afternoon, or evening, or two, or three. He was at heart much more comfortable being a friend than a husband and father. David Lodge was such a frequent guest that he kept a stash of supplies at Chipperfield: “There was a toothbrush and pajamas there all the time, and a razor. I was unmarried and spent most of my time there when I wasn’t working.” Max Geldray was also a regular: “He used to call me a lot—very often in my voice. He would ask me to come over and play. This was one of the phrases that he used—‘Will you come over and play?’ Like two kids—‘come and play.’ It meant he had gotten two tape recorders. He would borrow them from stores, or he would buy them, and he would give them back, and he would buy something different. It meant photography, different cameras, not liking this camera and going to get another one. It meant a three- or four-day weekend.”

Peter’s mood-driven sociability was genuine. He was intensely loyal to his friends, and he loved having them around, but his affability was becoming faintly spiced with a sense of lordliness that crept into his personality to go along with the real estate. He was telling the press that he wanted to maintain a certain distance from his new neighbors: “As a matter of fact, I’m trying to build a legend that I’m a mad actor who rides a black mare across the fields at night with a hook on my hand. Then maybe they’ll leave me alone.” But David Lodge describes a rather different Peter: “Being the squire of Chipperfield, he behaved like the squire of Chipperfield, certainly when he was in front of the people of the village.”

Picture a piece of home movie footage of a snowball fight between Anne, Peter, David, and the two kids. It’s a domestic scene that could have been played out in any family’s backyard in wintertime. As recorded on celluloid, Chipperfield on that day looks like a landscape of fun, family, and friendship. The subjects, running and laughing, dodge icy cannonfire