Memories of Milligan

Apart from hearing the story of his birth a thousand times, we had a wonderful happy childhood. My father had been transferred to the Third Field Brigade Port Defence in Rangoon, Burma. I was born there in December 1925. We had a big house within the military grounds, and we had servants, including a gardener. My earliest memory of Spike was in 1930 when Rangoon was struck by a huge earthquake, the epicentre being in the north. It was evening and after the earthquake my mother and father had been expecting a major riot and looting. I remember, as we sat down to dinner, Dad had on his pistols. Mum had her .44 Winchester rifle alongside her, and Spike, being Spike, was upstairs having a cold bath. He too had a pair of pistols on the chair alongside the bath. As the first shocks arrived Father Milligan reached over and grabbed me. ‘Everybody outside,’ he shouted and rushed into the garden.

Everything was shaking. The noise was terrifying, added to by all the birds being shaken out of the trees. Up in the bathroom the double doors shook violently. Spike thought that rioters were breaking in and shouted, ‘Koowan Hai? Koowan Hai?’ (Who’s there?) Of course, no reply, so he picked up his pistols and fired through the doors. He soon realised it was an earthquake, threw a towel around himself and ran to join us in the garden.

The shocks subsided but the town to our north, by the epicentre, was totally destroyed. I was looking over my father’s shoulder directly at the Golden Shwe Dagon Pagoda. It was all illuminated and as I looked the umbrella crown at the top broke off and crashed to the ground. It contained a casket of jewels placed there by the last king of Burma in 1930. It’s extraordinary, but it was not put back until 1960, and I wondered if the jewels got put back up. Lucky for us this did not happen during the monsoon season. In the East, when the rainy season moves in, boy, does it rain. It’s like a solid wall of water hitting the ground, and it goes on and on. All social activity comes to a halt. The Burmese priests, called pungees, walk through it with giant umbrellas, in their saffron-coloured costumes. Then when the rain stopped, everything grew like crazy. All the little creatures came out of hiding: snakes, lizards, little furry things and insects by the million. Gorgeous butterflies and more . . . but back to the earthquake. There were many aftershocks over the following days, but it is surprising how quickly life returns to normality. Mum and Spike were soon playing on our tennis court or going on outings with his school, as if nothing had happened.

NORMA: In spite of the age difference, did you still play together as children?

DESMOND: Oh yes, life for us kids was heaven. Spike went to St Paul’s High School, run by the Brothers de La Salle, and I went to a tiny school run by Catholic nuns in the convent grounds. Father, as a military man, taught us to play soldiers and drill with our toy guns. We would have battles in the bits of jungle and three lakes that surrounded us. We made a flag and we called ourselves ‘The Lamanian Army’. Spike wrote an anthem, ‘Fun in the Sun’. We recruited three soldiers, Sergeant Taylor’s son, Haveldar’s son and our servant’s son – wait for it – Hari Krishna. It was here that the fun started, the lampooning of people and places where Spike’s stretching of reality began. He decided we needed a proper trench. We dug a big one right in the middle of Mum and Dad’s garden. My God, were we reprimanded.

Even the word Goon goes back to when we were reading Popeye cartoon strips in the English papers that we received. There were some blob-like characters in the strip that were called Goons, and that is where the word came from. When we were fooling around, we would impersonate these characters as we saw them. We would literally become them. I suppose one could say it was the beginning of The Goon Show. The world of the Raj gave us so much material for fun. For example, there was an Indian businessman who had dealings with Dad’s battery. His name was Percy Lalkakaa. He bought himself a bright red motorcar. There were very few privately owned motor cars in this little town at the time. But a bright red one! Wow! So Spike (we stilled called him Terry) wrote a song about him and his car. It went something like this:

Oh Percy Lalkakaa in his red motorcar,

Oh Percy Lalkakaa we see him from afar.

Oh Percy Lalkakaa he comes to see Papa,

He comes to see Papa in his red motorcar . . .

We loved the lakes that surrounded us. In the heat of summer they dried up and grass grew across them. The villagers grazed their cattle on them, but when the thundering monsoons arrived the lakes filled to the top. Then Spike came into his own. He would persuade his school friends to play truant and swim in the Chorcien lakes which weren’t exactly healthy, and Spike would develop severe tropical fevers. But he still kept on doing it.

Nothing daunted Spike. He decided to build a machan – a tree platform for shooting big game – but this one was to be in our garden. A homemade ladder gave access to the platform. I would dress up as a tiger and Hari Krishna as a deer. Spike would always have the toy gun and he would fire at us. We spent many happy hours playing this game and with all the kites we made. Spike always drew funny faces on his, and then we would vie with each other who could draw the funniest face.

Spike was about twelve when he joined the 14th Machine Gun Company as a cadet and drove Mum mad. He would dismantle a Vickers .303 machine gun and reassemble it about a hundred times. Possibly to stop this continuous practice Dad bought him a banjo and undoubtedly this started him off on his musical career, and from then on music was the order of the day.

Entertainment came right to our front door – snake charmers, dancers, the shoe repair man (the Mooche Wallah), the barber (the Nappie Wallah). There was no television or radio so as a family we entertained ourselves. Dad formed a concert party that toured the army camps performing everything from comedy sketches to Shakespeare. The Milligan boys were drawn into productions so this was a very good grounding for Spike.

But time was running out. The Great Depression had struck, the size of the army was cut down and the Milligan family came to London, in winter 1933, when Spike was 15 years old. I remember we were returning to England from Bombay on the SS Kaiser-I-Hind. A makeshift canvas swimming pool had been erected on the deck. I was about six or seven years old and was just learning to swim, or drown as Spike put it. I jumped into the pool and panicked, I was saved only by the squeaky high-pitched voice of a stick-thin four-year-old girl, saying to my father, ‘He’s fallen in the water!’ That memory never left Spike and it would later become one of the most famous catch phrases in The Goon Show.

NORMA: I never believed Spike when he told me that story. You have to remember, he would make up a story, swear it was the truth, then say, ‘Well, it made you laugh, didn’t it, so what the hell?’ The child is father to the man. [And although Desmond has confirmed that it was true, don’t forget that he is from the same stock.]

DESMOND: Returning to England in winter – cold, drizzling and windswept, a shock for us colonial-borns. Spike could never get used to the grey skies and drizzle. He missed all the magnificent colours of India. No more big houses with servants. Suddenly, Mum had to do everything. Cooking, cleaning, shopping etc. and we were stuck in one of those long lines of two-storey houses. And in London there were line after line of them going on for miles.

Spike wrote a poem, ‘Catford 1933’:

The light creaks

and escalates to rusty dawn

The iron stove ignites the freezing room.

Last night’s dinner cast off

popples in the embers.

My mother lives in a steaming sink.

Boiled haddock condenses on my plate

Its body cries for the sea.

My father is shouldering his braces like a rifle,

and brushes the crumbling surface of his suit.

The Daily Herald lies jaundiced on the table.

‘Jimmy Maxton speaks in Hyde Park’,

My father places his unemployment cards

in his wallet – there’s plenty of room for them.

In greaseproof paper, my mother wraps my

banana sandwiches.

It’s 5.40. Ten minutes to catch that

last workman train.

Who’s the last workman? Is it me? I might be famous.

My father and I walk out and are eaten by

yellow freezing fog.

Somewhere, the Prince of Wales

and Mrs Simpson are having morning tea in bed.

God Save the King.

But God help the rest of us.

We were no longer the Burragh Sahibs. We were just one of the crowd. It was a let-down for us kids, but we quickly adjusted to the working-class district we were living in. Dad was out of work for six months. Finally, an old army buddy got him a job with the American Associated Press in the news division. He became photo news editor in a very short time. Spike had odd jobs of no consequence, but was soon making his way with the local band groups, joining ‘Tommy Brettell’s New Ritz Revels’ playing at St Cyprian’s Hall, Brockley. By this time Spike had mastered four instruments: the banjo, guitar, double bass and finally the trumpet. So he was well in with the young band scene. But we spent lots of time together during the long cold winter nights, drawing everything you could imagine. I suppose this got me on the road to being an artist.

NORMA: [I told Desmond the remark Spike had made regarding the standard of his paintings, that they should be hung in the National Portrait Gallery. Desmond told me he had painted an extremely good portrait of Spike, parcelled it up and posted it to him from Australia. Spike opened it and returned it just as it had arrived; no acknowledgement, no comment, nothing. Desmond was quite clearly hurt by this appalling behaviour, but all he said was, ‘My brother at his worst.’]

DESMOND: As we became adults we tended to go our own ways. Spike was finishing High School and mixing with his mates, and then things changed dramatically. Mum, Dad and I emigrated to Australia and Spike stayed in England. He was just getting established, had written the first Goon Show, but was planning to follow – the rest is history. Of course, he visited us once, sometimes twice a year, and when he was with Mum, up at Woy Woy, he was always so happy. He did the odd television and radio show. That’s why so many people think he was an Australian. We wrote to each other very frequently. We worked together and I illustrated a couple of his books. We had our ups and downs as brothers.

NORMA: I’m sure you know that your brother, like your father, made up wonderful stories and he would swear they were the truth just to make you laugh. This is a wonderful opportunity for me to find out if the story about your father is true. Spike told me his name was to be Percy Alexander but he was baptised Leo Alphonso. The story goes that, on reaching the cathedral, the priest officiating at the baptism suggested he should be named after popes or saints, hence Leo Alphonso.

DESMOND: It does feel like something my brother could have written, but it’s absolutely true.

NORMA: When did you become aware that Spike was famous?

DESMOND: I remember going to local music gigs to listen to Spike playing his trumpet and realising he was mixing with a different set of people: artists and musicians. But I think my first visit to a recording of a Goon Show – to hear the laughter and applause – and thinking ‘my brother wrote that’. I knew then.

Eric Sykes

‘A piece of gold in showbusiness’ – Spike’s description of Eric Sykes, and to know him is to know the meaning of the word courage.

Early in the Seventies, Spike told me how Eric had tackled a burglar in his house and pinned him against the wall until the police arrived. ‘You know, Norm, Eric has the courage of a lion.’

As Eric’s manager for nearly thirty years I know him to have a different kind of courage. As most people are aware, Eric has been deaf for over forty years, but for the last fifteen he has been partially sighted until now he is almost blind. To a lesser mortal this would herald the end of six decades of a truly great laughter maker – director, writer and comedy genius – but not Eric. When Sir Peter Hall asked him to appear in his production of Molière’s The School for Wives in 1997, Eric was hesitant, until Peter mentioned the word vaudevillian. ‘Molière was a great lover of vaudeville and you are the last of the vaudevillians.’

Eric was hooked. He loved working with Peter and enjoyed the experience immensely. Then some years later Peter was back. He wanted Eric to play Adam in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. ‘That’s a bridge too far for me,’ Eric said, but I knew the persuasive charm of Peter, who invited us to lunch. My money was on Peter.

‘Do you know, Eric, Shakespeare appeared in only one of his plays and he chose the role of Adam. Don’t tell me you can’t do it, because I know you can.’

I encouraged Eric. ‘You have to do it. Shakespeare, for the first time, at eighty. After all these years we will be legitimate!’ Then came a gesture that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Sir Peter, the greatest authority on Shakespeare in the world today, recorded the part of Adam on to a cassette to enable Eric to learn the correct inflections. In Bath, on opening night in 2003, only one thing marred the evening for me – Spike was not sitting beside me to watch ‘his old mate’ perform Shakespeare. He would have been so proud. But I have no doubt he would be up there telling God, or anybody who would listen to him, ‘That’s my old mate. He has the courage of a lion.’

ERIC: I was in bed in hospital awaiting a major operation on my ear, and while I was enjoying the comfort of a proper bed and listening to the radio I heard a comedy half-hour. It had me laughing and I was so taken by it I promptly wrote a letter of appreciation, a whole two pages telling the writers what was admirable about it. It was a new type of comedy, and it was breaking new ground. Hearing it for the first time was like walking through clear air after being stranded in a fog, infinitely laughable and funny.

Next day I had the operation. It was a long job – about four hours. I was sitting up in bed with my head swathed in bandages like the Maharajah of Shepherd’s Bush. The door of my room opened and the nurses were coming in and out in a constant stream and I was coming in and out of semi-consciousness, and I saw two figures, little white faces peering at me, making ‘Psst Psst’ noises. I thought, ‘What the hell’s that?’ Then the matron came in and hauled them out. I learned later their reason for being there was to thank me for the letter I had written. It was Spike Milligan and Larry Stephens. I had briefly met Spike at the Grafton Arms and he had impressed me as a man with comic ideas, exploding from his mind like an inexhaustible Roman candle.

We met later and that meeting proved to be the seed which turned out, over the years, to become Hyde Park. I came to know Spike fairly well and a few weeks after that we rented an office, five floors above a greengrocer’s shop in Shepherd’s Bush. It’s difficult to believe we turned up every day in suits and collars and ties. We were almost a registered company and trying to behave like one. Spike and I, with Frankie Howerd, named the company Associated London Scripts [ALS]. The aim was to corner the market in scriptwriters. That office over the greengrocer’s shop saw probably some of the happiest days of my life. I was newly married and lived in Holland Villas Road which was just round the corner. It suited me down to the ground, and the office became the centre of attraction for many jewels of our profession – Gilbert Harding, Irene Handl and her two pet dogs, Gretzel and Pretzel. They were little things, one under each of her arms, and we could hear her stopping on every landing to catch her breath, or possibly it was the dogs that were tired.

NORMA: It was such a pleasure to see Eric’s enjoyment, recalling the obviously happy times he shared with Spike. They lunched together every day at Bertorelli’s which was just across the road. Shepherd’s Bush was a busy metropolis and crossing the road was hazardous so they took it in turns to limp, and the other one to help the limper across the road. The traffic always stopped and as soon as they got to the other side they marched to their lunch like members of the Household Cavalry. Next door to Bertorelli’s was a funeral director’s where, in a now legendary scene, Spike knocked on the door and then lay on the pavement and shouted ‘Shop!’

Eric at that time was writing Educating Archie and Spike, who had now progressed from Crazy People to The Goon Show, was busy with his new creation, but they were still in the same office, sitting back to back. Spike had a typewriter and Eric was usually on the telephone. They had a ‘hilarious time’, but you can’t spend all your life laughing. Spike was writing a Goon Show a week and the pressure was taking its toll. By this time, Eric noticed the change in Spike. He was very drawn and tired and he asked Eric if he would write some of the Goon Shows with him.

ERIC: I looked at him and I thought, ‘Yes, because otherwise Spike’s going to end up as the youngest death in the graveyard.’ So we wrote and it was amicable and I saw the colour come back into his cheeks.

But when you get two highly combustible people working together there’s invariably an explosion, and it came one day when Spike and I disagreed over one word. It was either ‘the’ or ‘and’. I said it was import ant to put ‘the’ in and Spike said it wasn’t, and I said it was. This got so heated that Spike picked up a paperweight and threw it at me. Now, had I been prepared I would have ducked, in which case I would be in the graveyard, but I didn’t. I stood there, frozen, and it missed me by about a foot and went through the window – remember we were on the fifth floor – to smash itself onto the pavement. When I collected myself I walked straight downstairs, picked up the pieces, came straight back and put them on the desk in front of him and I said something very banal, which was, ‘Remember what day this was.’ It was like a B-movie. It was silly, it’s like a sentence that would go down in history and he was a bit sheepish at the same time. Also he was wearing an open-neck shirt and I saw these red spots on his chest and neck that I hadn’t seen before and I realised that his manic depression was something physical. And so I said, ‘I’ll tell you what, Spike. You write one week and I’ll write another.’

So for a few Goon Shows that’s how we wrote, until one Sunday I went to the recording of one of my scripts and they were standing round looking gloomy, the three of them. Peter Eton was the producer and I said, ‘What’s happened?’ And Peter said, ‘It’s not funny,’ and the three of them were mute – Spike, Harry and Peter. Suddenly, I lost my rag and I said, ‘Listen! Whatever happens, it’s too late now to do anything about it so you’ll have to go on and do it tonight. And I’ll tell you something. I’ll never set foot in a Goon Show studio again.’ And with that I made my exit, better than made by Laurence Olivier.

Every Sunday night after the show we used to eat at the Czech restaurant in Edgware Road. I went and had dinner alone and when I came out a taxi pulled up and Peter Sellers got out. He came over and he was actually crying and he said, ‘That’s the funniest show we’ve ever done,’ and he flung his arms round me. Me being a Lancashire lad, thick and stubborn, said, ‘But remember what I said. I’ll never set foot in a Goon Show studio again.’ And I never did and I’ve never forgiven myself for that.

Spike and Peter, the three of us, remained friends after that. It was a friendship and I was relieved not to have the responsibility of writing the Goon Shows. After all, I was only copying Spike’s style and I didn’t want to paint the shoes of a choirboy on a Michelangelo painting. But when I think back to those days when we rented that office in Shepherd’s Bush, I think it was so natural. Spike and I were drawn together as if we’d been brothers. We just went together like bacon and eggs.

NORMA: Eric and Spike shared an office for fifty years. For Eric the Goon Shows are ‘golden nuggets that will last for eternity’. And thanks to Mary Kalemkerian at BBC Radio 7, Eric’s favourite radio station, they are still played frequently. Surprisingly, Eric admitted that he had not been the butt of Spike’s outbursts. He explained that from the moment they had first met it was understood tacitly that he was the governor. There was no way Spike would lose his stripes by behaving badly in front of him and he never expected it of him.

ERIC: That side of Spike had to be borne on your poor young shoulders, but for all those readers who are starting to grieve, you survived and so have I.

In a way I was a bit strait-laced and Spike was free of his corsets. I remember we went from Shepherd’s Bush, moved up into Cumberland House in Kensington. This was before the hotel was built opposite and I remember the Aldermaston marchers were marching past. Spike and I were both going through somebody else’s scripts and Spike looked up, saw them through the window and he dashed out and joined Father Huddleston and Michael Foot at the head of the procession and he walked with them to Trafalgar Square. I thought, ‘What a cheeky sod. Those poor devils have walked for miles and I bet when he gets to Trafalgar Square he’ll be breathing heavily as if he’s done the trip.’

Then from Kensington we moved to Orme Court. We spent the rest of our days as writers. And Spike was very fortunate – he met you. You and Spike came together when you were a green shoot and Spike was on the bottom rung of the ladder, and you moulded each other into a whole. You became his manager, his mentor and, if the occasion demanded it, his mother.

Spike led the life of a slightly retarded gypsy. He would sometimes lock himself away in his room with a notice on his door not to come in, but that’s polite. It was F.O. When you saw that on the door you knew that to enter you were taking your life, and even the building, in your hands. As far as writing was concerned I had gone my way and he’d gone his, but we used to get up to some real pranks. I remember one day Spike’s secretary came in with an envelope addressed to me. Our offices were only across the landing, five paces. I slit open the letter and it said, ‘Dear Eric, where do you fancy going for lunch?’ And I got my secretary to type ‘Dear Spike, I think Bertorelli’s would be very nice. But it’ll have to be about 2 p.m. Sincerely, Eric.’ And that was delivered and his secretary came back again with another letter. ‘Eric, why 2 p.m.? Sincerely, Spike.’ And I wrote ‘Because I’m in the middle of something and I don’t want to break the thread. Sincerely, Eric.’ Then the door opened and Spike came in and said, ‘We’ve got to go now.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ and he said, ‘Because I’m running out of paper.’ And so we both went to lunch.

On another occasion he came into my room and he was stark naked. He was carrying a script and he put the script in front of me and said, ‘What do you think of that?’ and I read it. ‘Well, that line can come out there,’ and I made certain criticisms. ‘The end is fine like that.’ Then Spike said, ‘You bastard! Here I am bollock-naked and you haven’t mentioned it.’ ‘Yes, but you asked me to read the script, not examine you.’

NORMA: Eric explained that Spike was ‘driven by his whims’ and could be unreliable. He remembered once Spike was in the car when his first wife (he thinks it was his first wife, not the one he eventually ended up with) was driving and they were having quite a row. They were driving in the Bayswater Road and Spike had had enough, opened the door and got out. They were doing forty miles an hour. That could hardly be called the action of a responsible person. Eric also remembered one time when Spike was due to appear on stage.