Peter Sellers first rose to prominence on the British radio series The Goon Show alongside fellow comedians Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, and Michael Bentine. American audiences, of course, remember him best as bumbling Inspector Jacques Clouseau in the original Pink Panther films. Sellers wasn’t just known for making people laugh on-screen, though; the versatile comic actor also had a bit of a reputation for being a prankster when the cameras weren’t rolling. 

One time, to get his tailor back for painting a fake scratch on his car, Sellers pinned a kipper to his engine that would start cooking whenever the engine heated up. He once pranked his friend, Michael Caine, by imitating the actor’s voice on his answering machine as well:

The Pink Panther star apparently wasn’t content with just getting laughs while he was alive, either. When Sellers’ Goon Show co-star, Spike Milligan, asked him if there was a special song he wanted played at his funeral, Sellers shared with Milligan his plan to pull one last prank on his friends and family during his send-off. The song he chose for the occasion was Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood,” an upbeat tune you’ve no doubt heard before. Take a listen below if you’re not familiar with it by name.

According to Michael Bentine, Sellers couldn’t stand the song because he’d played it countless times in his early days as a drummer. Sellers’ son, Michael, remembered his dad once telling him that “In the Mood” was “wonderfully inappropriate—hence, wonderfully appropriate—for solemn occasions,” and fulfilled his final wish by playing it as requested. 

Roger Lewis, who wrote The Life and Death of Peter Sellers in 1995, believes that Sellers inadvertently started the trend of people playing unexpected songs at funerals. Harry Secombe even took a page out of Sellers’ book years later by getting his son to play a prank on his behalf at Milligan’s funeral. Secombe had sung at Sellers’ service in 1980, after which Milligan told him, “I hope you die before me because I don’t want you singing at my funeral.” Although Secombe passed away the year before Milligan, a recording of him singing was played at Milligan’s 2002 service as payback for his earlier comments.