John and Peter Sellers

According to Fred Seaman, as his and John's visit to Bermuda was nearing
its end, the news of Peter Sellers' death sent John into a funk.  Lennon
had idolized Sellers since his teens.
Seaman says that Lennon mused that, if Sellers had not made it in show
business, he'd have died "in the nutty bin."  "if you're nobody and
you're crazy as he is," Lennon said, "they lock you up.  But if you're
famous, you're considered merely eccentric."
"At least," Lennon continued, "he went out with a hit," in reference to
Sellers' leading role in the film Being There, which was based on Jerzy
Kosinski's 1971 novel.
Was Sellers crazy?  In the footage I've seen in which Sellers is not
playing a role, he seems merely shy.
In the 1960s, Roman Polanski had interacted with Sellers and found him
lonely.  Polanski and Sharon Tate had embraced Sellers as a friend, and
introduced him to Mia Farrow.  Sellers and Farrow became close in a
platonic way, bonding over their mutual love of late 1960s culture,
including mysticism and astrology.  Farrow was also lonely at the time,
having lost her marriage to Frank Sinatra, who had been outraged by her
nudity in the Polanski-directed Rosemary's Baby.  Sellers seems to have
been one of the few men in Farrow's life who was content to be her
friend -- i.e., he didn't put the moves on her.
Anyway, I sense that, in deeming Sellers crazy, Lennon was confusing the
roles Sellers played with the actual person.