I see Neil Simon has died. I must say I had assumed he died decades ago but by coincidence last week I watched Murder By Death, a spoof whodunnit with an all-star cast.

Truman Capote is the eccentric millionaire who invites the world’s five greatest literary detectives to stay the weekend in his spooky mansion and solve a yet-to-be-committed murder.

There is David Niven as an upper-class English gentleman detective, Peter Falk as a hardboiled private eye in a raincoat, James Coco as a fastidious Belgian called “Perrier”, Alec Guinness as a blind butler…

And, regrettably, there’s Peter Sellers, playing a Chinese detective, complete with slanted eyes, comedy accent, Fu Manchu facial hair and funny name (Sidney Wang).

A thinly veiled send-up of Charlie Chan, he’s fond of idiotic proverbs in broken English (“Treacherous road like fresh mushroom…”, “Conversation like television set on honeymoon: unnecessary”) and is accompanied by his adopted son (Willie Wang) who is, for comedy purposes, not Chinese but Japanese (in this case played by a Japanese actor).

The Sellers character’s name is Mr Wang largely so that Simon can write a series of “hilarious” lines deriving humour from his name (“You’re wrong, Wang”, “You’re in the west wing, Wang” etc).

It’s thoroughly politically incorrect (but no more so than bumbling Inspector Clouseau) and most of the jokes are groan-worthy but I laughed like a drain (in an ironic way of course). I wonder whether it will be mentioned affectionately in the obits.

RIP Neil Simon