Under the direction of Hal Ashby, in his first film since Coming Home, Sellers gives an impressively disciplined performance, always taut and under control. The difficulty with the film, however, is that the screenplay is basically a one-joke story.

Gently directed by Hal Ashby, this satire of a ruling class in which nobody knows anything is almost plausible, and certainly topical.

The result must be one of the boldest of commercial comedies, for the way it turns on passages of dead time, the dreadful pauses while other characters struggle to see the significance in each of Chance's cryptically meaningless remarks.

Peter Sellers gives a masterful, stripped-back performance in this memorable satire.