Memories of Milligan

ERIC: I think with Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe. Something upset him and he locked himself into his dressing room. They couldn’t get him out and he wouldn’t go back on stage. This again doesn’t stoke up a CV of reliability. Peter and Harry had to go on to fill in. It’s very difficult to tell an audience that Spike will not be appearing as he’s locked himself in his dressing room, because that would take away some of the steam.

Although he was unreliable, he was trustworthy. And I say this, because if you left a thousand pounds on your desk and he came in, it would still be there when he left. And also you could leave your children with him knowing he would enthral them and entertain them with his stories and poems. Which reminds me of a hilarious Christmas Eve. His wife had left him and rather than spend a lonely festive season we invited him to spend Christmas with us in Weybridge, which he accepted because he had no intention of cooking the turkey. The four children, two of ours, Kathy and Susan, and his two, Laura and Sean, got on like a house on fire. They were all the same age, five or six years old.

Spike was the sole organiser. It was pitch black and my wife Edith had given him empty jam jars that he filled with candles. He dotted them all around the lawn, those flickering little lights. He told the children they were fairies, then speaking through a tube from the Hoover, through a little gap in the window behind the curtains, he said, ‘Ho! Ho! Ho! This is Father Christmas speaking. Now where exactly are you staying tonight?’ and they were all whispering they’d heard Father Christmas himself and he was coming to see them. Spike’s energy was boundless. He was creating things for the children and I realised he’d hit the bullseye. I envied him this because I was less attentive to my brood, I knew Edith would bring them up properly. The children loved it. It was a very happy Christmas Eve.

We saw the children into bed and filled their stockings. As usual on the Christmas morning Edith and I, and the four children, were up early and we were all unwrapping our presents. I had lit the fire so it was cosy, with a big cardboard box to put the wrapping in, but where was Spike? What had happened? Had he left? We went up and searched all the rooms. He wasn’t anywhere. Perhaps he’d been kidnapped, although I didn’t think he was worth a lot in those days. About 11.30 in the morning a rejuvenated Spike came into the room. He had locked himself in the attic and spent the night there so he wouldn’t be disturbed. I thought he had missed the best time of a child’s life, when they are opening their presents. It was rather typical of the man.

NORMA: One of the qualities Eric admired in Spike was his extraordinary generosity.

ERIC: He would give you his last halfpenny. If he saw what he thought was a cause he would probably mortgage his house in order to swell the charity coffers. He was a very generous man. If he saw a man limping in the street I would know he’d buy him a pair of shoes. He was impulsive – he lived on impulse half his life. Money didn’t mean anything to him. It ran through his fingers like lukewarm water.

NORMA: Eric spoke of Spike’s love of jazz and the wonderful times he spent at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club. It was a real home from home and he used to go there three or four nights a week. For both Spike and Eric, Ronnie was a hero.

ERIC: Spike was such a friend to Ronnie, and then came startling news in 1983 that Spike was getting married again and was about to move to the wilds of the country, temporarily at first in Ticehurst, then in Rye, East Sussex. Now, it is my belief that the Thames separates one part of London from the other and never the twain shall meet, and on this occasion Spike was in a foreign country miles out, so that his new-found wife had cut him off from all that was familiar and all that he loved, including his beloved Ronnie’s. And sadly I regret I never went to see him for the simple reason I didn’t have satnav or enough petrol to get there, but that’s where he ended his days. For me it was like I’d lost a brother.

NORMA: Spike once said to me, many years ago, ‘Eric had a sister in Hattie and I’ve got a brother in Eric.’ As Eric prepared to leave (to film an episode of Poirot with David Suchet, one of his favourite actors, he was so looking forward to working with him), I asked him if he had heard this quote. Such a look of sadness came over his face.

ERIC: Do you remember the story I told you at the beginning about Spike knocking on the funeral director’s door, shouting ‘Shop!’? I was lucky. It took fifty years for them to answer. I used to think, ‘When our time comes I hope we go together. I would hate to live in a world where he wasn’t.’

On 26 February 2002, one of the jewels fell from the comedy crown. It was the day Spike Milligan, with whom I’d shared an office for over fifty years, passed away. I use the phrase ‘passed away’ for that is exactly what he did. Spike will never die in the hearts of millions of us who were uplifted by his works. For me and you, Norma, he still prowls the building in unguarded moments. He will always be welcome. As Hattie was my sister, so he was my brother. Rest in peace, Spike, and say hello to Peter and Harry.

Ray Galton and Alan Simpson

On my way to meet Ray and Alan, I reflected on the early days at Orme Court. The building pulsated with talent: Spike, Eric Sykes, Johnny Speight, Terry Nation, Frankie Howerd, Tony Hancock and his two scriptwriters – Ray and Alan – who played such an important part in making him the nation’s favourite comedian. At six foot four, Alan topped Ray by an inch. Not much else separated them.

The year was 1966, only a few months into my induction, and Milligan was having what I later termed a mini-tantrum. I hadn’t quite got used to ‘the wild Milligan’, in his own words. He had been working all day on a television script. After several re-writes and accompanying outbursts, heard by everyone in the building, the day’s work was thrown into the wastepaper basket. I heard him shout, ‘I’m gone. I’ve binned it. I didn’t realise I could be that unfunny.’ Over the years to come I must have heard that a thousand times.

The door banged as he charged out of No. 9. I retrieved his ‘unfunny’ efforts, as I would do many times, and tried to make sense of what he had written. It was late and I thought I was alone in the building when the door opened. Alan, who had obviously heard the outbursts, poked his head round the door. ‘Why don’t you go and work in a bank?’ After the tension of the day I burst out laughing. It was pure Hancock from The Blood Donor – that famous line, ‘I’ll do something else. I’ll be a traffic warden.’

A few days after Spike’s outburst he had another one. This time I was better prepared. There was the usual shouting and ranting. ‘Right,’ I told him. ‘I’m going home. I’ll deal with it all tomorrow.’ Unknown to me, Ray was in the hall and had heard what I said. He looked at me. ‘I think you’ll stay. You have that Scarlett O’Hara attitude.’

All the writers in Orme Court at that time had different methods of working. Ray and Alan were very disciplined. They would arrive every day about ten, have tea or coffee and start writing. Eric didn’t come to the office every day, mainly because he was appearing in theatre or filming. Johnny mostly wrote at home. He didn’t have an office in Orme Court but would visit Eric once or twice a week.

Spike wrote when he felt like writing. He was in the office every day. From the late Sixties right up until the early Eighties he had a bedroom in Orme Court and he would sleep there Monday to Friday. So if he felt like writing late into the afternoon this is what he would do, and work into the early hours of the morning.

I knew that meeting Ray and Alan again would be a pleasure. They’re both oenophiles and lovers of fine food, and I was so looking forward to seeing them. Then an embarrassing memory flashed through my mind. After Spike introduced me to Ray I said to him, ‘Isn’t he gorgeous? So beautifully dressed and so sophisticated.’ (Back in the Sixties I’d never heard of anyone having their shirts handmade by Turnbull & Asser.)

Spike wasn’t interested and I thought he hadn’t taken any notice of what I had said until later that evening, in a crowded hall when everyone was going home, he shouted, ‘Ray! She’s got hot pants for you!’ I could have killed him. I was young and naïve and I thought I would die of embarrassment.

I met Ray and Alan together at Ray’s beautiful Queen Anne house where he has collected one of the most extensive private libraries in the country. Peter Eton, a producer of The Goon Show, told me many years ago, ‘It’s one thing having a fine library, but unlike most people Ray has read every book in it.’ As the car turned into the drive Ray appeared in the doorway, a slight stoop now, but as charming as ever, and Alan with that wide, kind but knowing smile that always makes me feel he knows exactly what’s going on in my mind before I realise it myself. He has filled out over the years. Ray is as slim and gangly as ever – still beautifully dressed.

Equally well read, Alan is enormously knowledgeable on almost every subject. He is philosophical about most things, having suffered tuberculosis that after the war put him in a sanatorium, where he met another patient, Ray. Their sense of humour sparked a relationship that has survived the years and brought laughter to a nation, first with their memorable scripts for Tony Hancock and later with Steptoe and Son. It was after their enormous success that Alan decided he would retire – and did. Ray was disappointed, but this decision never impaired their friendship which, to me, seemed to strengthen after they both tragically became widowers.

Ray showed me into the drawing room. There was a beautiful Christmas tree fully decorated. It was late February! ‘Why,’ I asked, ‘is the Christmas tree still here?’ Ray’s reply: ‘It’s so lovely, I didn’t want to take it down.’ Alan didn’t seem to think there was anything extraordinary about this. Enter the world of Galton and Simpson. And believe me you have to be sharp to live in it. Alan has a phenomenal memory and was in no doubt when they had first met Spike.

ALAN: We hadn’t been in the business very long when we went to a Goon Show recording, about 1953. We would be in our early twenties and like almost everyone else in that age group we were great fans. Someone introduced us to him and we were really thrilled. We thought no more about it. At the time we were working from my mother’s house in Mitcham. Months later, probably in 1954, the phone rang.

‘Spike Milligan here.’ Christ! Spike Milligan! What’s he want with us? What he wanted was to find out whether we had an agent. No, we hadn’t. ‘Well then,’ said Spike, ‘Eric Sykes and I haven’t got one either and we are being picked on by an agency called Kavanagh’s.’ That was the big showbusiness scriptwriting agency.

Spike said he and Eric were looking around to find writers who were still free from agents so they could team up and form a group as a bulwark against being picked off. We were obviously flattered that they had even considered us. We went to meet them at this really dreadful office above a greengrocer’s shop in Shepherd’s Bush. We were the new boys on the block so we listened and then said, ‘Yeah. We’ll come in with you.’

Finally, after a couple more meetings we had a main meeting to decide on the set-up. It was agreed we needed a secretary, someone to organise the office. We said we knew a girl who was doing our typing – very efficient. Beryl Vertue. It was agreed we should approach her. Well, she said, she had a good job in advertising and to leave she’d need twelve pounds a week. ‘Gawd Almighty!’ said Spike. ‘Twelve pounds a week!’ Wait a minute, we pointed out, that’s only three pounds a week each. ‘That’s true,’ they agreed. So Beryl came on board.

[Beryl Vertue later formed her own company producing successful films and television series, including Men Behaving Badly.]

What were we going to call ourselves? I suggested Associated British Scripts. Fine! But the Board of Trade said we couldn’t have that name. What about Associated London Scripts? Yeah. We could have that. And that’s how it all started. I think our first client was a man called Lew Schwartz, sent by Dennis Main Wilson or somebody like that from the BBC. Frankie Howerd got a script from someone called Johnny Speight and suggested he should go and meet the lads above the greengrocer’s shop. He was the next one in. Then there were lots of others – Terry Nation who invented the Daleks, and his mate from Wales, Dick Barry. It gradually filled up from there. Ray can add to that I’m sure.

RAY: Well, I don’t know about adding to it. I agree with most of it, but I don’t think we were as unknown as you have said. I don’t think Spike would have bothered with us if we had been that unknown. But that wasn’t the first time we met Spike. I think it was at his house. He called us and we went to meet him. That lovely man Larry Stephens was there [he wrote some of the Goon Shows with Spike]. They were obviously sending us up like mad because they both pretended to be drug addicts. Do you remember this, Alan?

ALAN: No, I don’t.

RAY: I think the real reason Spike invited us over was to see whether we would contribute or write one of the Arthur’s Inn scripts [a successful radio series].

ALAN: You’re going to get this all the time, Norma. In fact Gail Frederick [BBC] commissioned us to do two things. One was to write Arthur’s Inn and the other was to write a pilot for Wilfred Pickles. We found out afterwards that there was never going to be a pilot for a Wilfred Pickles sitcom. Gail was just giving us a chance to earn some money.

[They wrote an episode for Arthur’s Inn and had Graham Stark playing Sir Humphrey Planner, a Shakespearean actor.]

RAY: But Spike must have been writing it.

ALAN: Maybe. I don’t know. I know Sid Colin, a radio scriptwriter, was involved with it. [Colin co-wrote some of the Educating Archie scripts with Eric Sykes. He was also a brilliant jazz guitarist and composer.] That was long before we had the meeting above the greengrocer’s shop. We started in the business at the end of 1951, so it must have been just before Hancock’s Half Hour started. And we wrote at my mother’s place, but after the meeting we travelled to the greengrocer’s shop in Shepherd’s Bush every day. We had a room on the fourth floor. Spike and Eric worked on the floor above us and Beryl had a room to herself. We stayed there until 1957. We needed to move to more salubrious offices and I think it was Stanley Dale who found a block on the ground floor of Cumberland House in Kensington High Street.

RAY: They were really prestigious. And we occupied a large part of the ground floor. Two property dealers, Jack Rose and his brother, bought the property then discovered that we were on the ground floor and paying only eight quid a week rent. Jack didn’t like that. He was living with his wife and children in a beautiful flat on the fourth floor. He used to bash into our office unannounced and say, ‘You’d better get used to the idea. I’m going to get all of you out of here.’ We became quite friendly with the guy. I used to go up to his flat – really beautiful – and have a drink with him. He never mentioned getting us out of the building then. He wanted to talk about laughter, but his wife only wanted to talk about somebody’s barmitzvah she was arranging and whether she should put so and so next to Charlie Clore or whoever, or perhaps on second thoughts it would be better to keep them apart, so on and so on. He ignored her and kept on talking to me about humour. He and his brother wrote a book about how to be property dealers.

Then one day he came into our office and said, ‘Right! Come along! Put your coats on. I’m going to show you something.’ We asked, ‘What’s all this about?’ ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I’m going to show you something.’ We followed him up Millionaires’ Row, across the Bayswater Road and into Orme Court. ‘Look!’ he said. ‘Number 9. It’s the only one that’s got planning permission for business use. During the Blitz everybody got bombed out of London and the City so this house is the only one along here that has got planning permission.’

He already had the key and took us all over the building. We could see it was a wonderful place. But how much? £26,000, he said. God Almighty! Where were we going to get £26,000? Don’t worry, he told us. He would get us a mortgage. And he did. So he had his wish – getting us out of Cumberland House – and the four of us owned No. 9. It was a great office. Still is.

NORMA: About early 1968 there was a problem when you, Johnny Speight and some others agreed to a deal, negotiated by Beryl, to join the Stigwood organisation. [Robert Stigwood was an enormously successful international impresario.]

RAY: We thought about buying Spike and Eric out, but what was the point? It would just be a drag so we sold out to Spike and Eric.

ALAN: They made an offer to us and we made a bigger counter-offer to them. But we realised it would be too much hassle, and they were staying in the building so we sold out to them. We’d bought it in 1961 for £26,000, between the four of us, and we sold our half for £52,000 in 1968.

RAY: I believe Eric owns the whole bloody lot now.

NORMA: He does. Spike decided to sell because he thought the place was filthy. He was having one of his bad times and had spent the weekend scouring the basement floor with Brillo pads . . .

RAY: . . . and on the Monday he told me he wanted to sell his half of the building. He said to me, ‘I’m nothing more than a fucking janitor.’

NORMA: Spike’s accountant and solicitor told him not to be a bloody fool, but he wouldn’t listen. He insisted on selling his half. I asked him plaintively, ‘But where will you go?’ He replied, ‘Go? What do you mean where will I go?’ I told him, ‘You’re selling the building. Where are you going to go?’ To which he replied, ‘Fucking marvellous! I bring you in and now you want to get rid of me!’ I told him, ‘Well, I wasn’t exactly in the gutter.’ [Ray and Alan laughed.] Spike asked, ‘Why would I want to move from here? As from today I’ll pay rent.’ He scowled at me and then said in exasperation, ‘Well, fuck off, all of you!’ So he stayed, and paid rent.

RAY: I’d like to explain about going to Stigwood. Beryl had overtures from him and most of us saw the sense of going with him. He wanted half the company, that’s all, but in return we would get very good offices at his place and benefit from all his connections. All the writers, with the exception of Eric and Spike, could see the sense in it. We took a poll and every one of them decided to go with Beryl to join Stigwood. We put it to Eric and Spike, but they said they weren’t interested. We knew that what Beryl was doing was the right thing because Stigwood had the money and the contacts to get our work sold to America.

[Beryl successfully negotiated the sale of Johnny Speight’s scripts of Till Death Us Do Part, and Galton and Simpson’s scripts of Steptoe and Son, to an American television network. Till Death became All in the Family and Steptoe became Sanford and Son.]

ALAN: I don’t think Spike was interested in the business side.

RAY: And he didn’t want to move out of the building. I remember a meeting of the writers’ co-operative. One day I said, ‘We haven’t had any meetings.’ So we looked at Spike and said, ‘We’d better have a workers’ meeting,’ and all the chairs were put out and all the writers came into our office. Spike was there but I don’t know if Eric was. The first question came from John Antrobus who was provoked by Johnny Speight. He wanted to know why we two, and Eric and Spike, didn’t pay rent while the other writers did. Spike walked out, slammed the door, went to his room and started to play his trumpet. That was really the end of the workers’ co-operative.

ALAN: First and only meeting.

NORMA: Why did he walk out?

ALAN: He was outraged at the effrontery and attitude. It’s the same attitude he adopted to you when you asked, ‘Where are you going to go?’ The cheek of it. Basically, his motives or morals were being questioned by a lot of idiots. We never had a row with Spike but I think we were very unsympathetic about his mental problems. We ignored them. When he threw a tantrum we’d tell him to fuck off. I suppose they were bipolar problems.

RAY: We didn’t really understand. My missus had clinical depression and I don’t think we had any sympathy for that sort of thing until then. Alan and I had spent three years in a bloody sanatorium with tuberculosis [that’s where they met Beryl]. People with colds and things – it was a case of ‘Piss off.’ We weren’t au fait with mental problems in those days.

ALAN: Spike used to lock himself away in his office and we let him get on with it.

RAY: Tantrums.

ALAN: We took the view that when he was ready he would come out. And, of course, that’s what happened. After two or three days he would come out as if nothing had happened. Others in the office would run round him like blue-arsed flies, kowtowing to him. Ray hit the nail on the head. After three years in a sanatorium we didn’t have much sympathy for that sort of thing.

RAY: Having said that, we used to watch his eyes. You’d be talking to him and somebody would bring him a piece of bad news – well, bad news to him. The wife had left the tap on and he had to call the plumber.

ALAN: His eyes would go – dah! That was it.

RAY: He’d lock himself in his office and that would be it. He’d stay there for days sometimes. People would walk around on tiptoe so as not to upset him. We used to think that was showbusiness taking over. I don’t think we understood. We just got on with the job.

ALAN: Having said all that, we both had great admiration for him because of his talent. And when he was in a good mood we got on extremely well. He was great company.

RAY: While we were unsympathetic, we admired his work. Wonderful! We used to go to the recordings of the Goon Shows. Lots of laughs. And we would have lunch with him at Bertorelli’s in Queensway. More laughs! I don’t know how we managed to get away from lunch to get back to work. We should have been on the floor pissed out of our heads. Here was a guy who wrote on his own – used to come into our office and ask, ‘What do you think of this?’ We never asked anybody what they thought of our work.

NORMA: As a person, do you think he was reliable?

ALAN: Well, we didn’t have to rely on him. We all did our own work and Beryl and others looked after the business side. The thing that kept us together was that we were a mutual admiration society. Spike was very generous about our work, more so than Eric. She was a great fan of Tony [Hancock] and I think he appreciated what we were doing for him.

NORMA: He called it ‘a perfect marriage’.

ALAN: That’s the right word for it . . .

There was a junk shop nearby run by an old man, decrepit, wore terrible clothes, and Spike and I would look in to see what we could pick up. Sometimes the shop seemed empty and then we would hear a rumbling and out of a cupboard would pop the proprietor. We loved to drop in there.