Memories of Spike (part two)

If you missed Part one you can find it here.

Radio

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During the Second World War Spike served as a signaller in the 56th Heavy Regiment Royal Artillery, D Battery, as Gunner Milligan, 954024. He rose to the rank of Lance Bombardier and was about to be promoted to Bombardier when he was wounded in action in Italy. Subsequently hospitalised for a mortar wound to the right leg and shell shock, he was demoted by an unsympathetic commanding officer (identified in his war diaries as Major Evan 'Jumbo' Jenkins) back to Gunner.

After his hospitalisation, Milligan drifted through a number of rear-echelon military jobs in Italy, eventually becoming a full-time entertainer. He played the guitar with a jazz and comedy group called The Bill Hall Trio in concert parties for the troops. After being demobilised, Milligan stayed on in Italy playing with the Trio but returned to England soon after. While he was with the Central Pool of Artists (a group he described as composed "of bomb-happy squaddies") he began to write parodies of their mainstream plays that displayed many of the key elements of what would later become The Goon Show.

Milligan's professional entertainment career (after being demobbed) was on the radio. He appeared in – but more importantly wrote for a number of shows. His big break came in 1951 when he got the opportunity to write for a new show originally cowering under the unwieldy title Crazy People, featuring Radio's own Crazy Gang - "The Goons" subsequently truncated to simply The Goon Show.

Broadly speaking the Goons engaged in 'sound cartooning'. The kind of things that you would expect in a Tex Avery cartoon would happen on the show, holes could be picked up and carried to where needed and doors drawn on walls would open afterwards. The Wikipedia entry on The Goons is quite detailed and I would recommend you read the section on Surrealism. As a lead in to my favourite sketch I'll reproduce the section on transference of time:

If time causes calendars, calendars can cause time. If you drop a bundle of 1918 calendars on German troops in 1916, then they will all go home, thus shortening the war. (World War One (aka!), 22nd episode/ 8th series.) Two other shows with extreme examples of time transference are The Treasure in the Tower, 5th episode/8th series; and The Mysterious Punch Up the Conker, 19th episode / 7th series. (The famous 'What time is it Eccles?' scene.)

It was a huge success with the fans but not with the powers that be. From 1952 to 1956 alone, the producer, Peter Eton, faced thirty separate attempts from within the BBC to have the show taken off the air. Why?

Secombe, Bentine, Milligan and Sellers

Although The Goon Show did not deal explicitly in political satire, it was widely regarded at the time as subversive, both by the BBC hierarchy and the chief scriptwriter, Milligan. Among the prime objects of Goon humour were authority figures and officialdom generally, and the show specialised in sending up a whole host of hallowed British institutions. Privilege, patriotism, the parliament, the military and the Empire were all frequently lampooned. – Stuart Ward, British culture and the end of empire, p94

One has simply to look back on Milligan's life to see where all of that came from. Don't let the Irish-sounding name fool you, Spike was actually born in India, the son of a working-class military family in the dying days of the British Raj; he was fifteen before he returned to England, to Catford specifically, a stark contrast to India, and then a few years later he was off to war. He has said in so many words:

If all my youth had been spent in Catford, there would have been no Goon Show. . . I wasn’t consciously aware of it, but I had had enough of the British Empire. The Goons gave me a chance to knock people my father and I had to call ‘Sir’. Colonels. Chaps . . . with educated voices who were really bloody scoundrels.

Really what Milligan was doing was taking the anarchic comedy of the Marx Brothers and giving it his own peculiarly British twist. This is not to belittle him as an innovator but simply to point out that everyone builds on what has gone before; they develop it or react against it and Milligan did a bit of both.

When he began writing for the BBC, British radio was very mannered and polite and its shows were driven by catchphrases, as was the case the many music hall routines. The Goons maintained this tradition at least, one of the most popular being Little Jim's only line in most episodes (voiced by Milligan) where he simply exclaims: "He's fallen in the wah-taa!" Wikipedia has a section on The Goon Show running jokes here. Catchphrases from The Goon Show form the longest index entry in the 2002 publication of The Oxford Dictionary of Catchphrases.

Just as in a cartoon there are loose rules that exist in the gooniverse. Broadly speaking they're rules of convenience and conventional logic does not apply. To my mind the best example of this is the 'What Time is it, Eccles?' sketch from the Goon Show episode 'Mysterious Punch-up of the Conker'. The voices are Spike Milligan (Eccles – an amiable, well-meaning man with no wits or understanding) and Peter Sellers (Bluebottle – a young, lustful boy scout with a squeaky voice who normally gets blown up in each episode – shades of Kenny from South Park there):

Bluebottle:	What time is it Eccles?
Eccles:	Err, just a minute. I, I've got it written down 'ere on a piece of paper. A nice man wrote the time down for me this morning.
Bluebottle:	Ooooh, then why do you carry it around with you Eccles?
Eccles:	Well, umm, if a anybody asks me the ti-ime, I ca-can show it to dem.
Bluebottle:	Wait a minute Eccles, my good man...
Eccles:	What is it fellow?
Bluebottle:	It's writted on this bit of paper, what is eight o'clock, is writted.
Eccles:	I know that my good fellow. That's right, um, when I asked the fella to write it down, it was eight o'clock.
Bluebottle:	Well then. Supposing when somebody asks you the time, it isn't eight o'clock?
Eccles:	Ah, den I don't show it to dem.
Bluebottle:	Ooohhh
Eccles:	[Smacks lips] Yeah.
Bluebottle:	Well how do you know when it's eight o'clock?
Eccles:	I've got it written down on a piece of paper!
Bluebottle:	Oh, I wish I could afford a piece of paper with the time written on.
Eccles:	Oohhhh
Bluebottle:	'Ere Eccles?
Eccles:	Yah
Bluebottle:	Let me hold that piece of paper to my ear would you? - 'Ere. This piece of paper ain't goin'.
Eccles:	What? I've been sold a forgery!
Bluebottle:	No wonder it's stopped at eight o'clock.
Eccles:	Oh dear.
Bluebottle:	You should get one of them tings my grandad's got.
Eccles:	Oooohhh?
Bluebottle:	His firm give it to him when he retired.
Eccles:	Oooohhh
Bluebottle:	It's one of dem tings what it is that wakes you up at eight o'clock, boils the kettil, and pours a cuppa tea.
Eccles:	Ohhh yeah! What's it called? Um...
Bluebottle:	My granma.
Eccles:	Ohh... Ohh, ah wait a minute. How does she know when it's eight o'clock?
Bluebottle:	She's got it written down on a piece of paper!

Now, it's funny on paper. But it's hysterical live:

Years later this inspired a poem:

Twelve O'Clock, Union City


(for Spike Milligan)


I wanted the time
so a nice woman
wrote it down for me.

It was eight o'clock
and it was true then
and twice a day it

becomes true again
but then it isn't
so true anymore.

What goes round comes round.


9th May 1997

The Prince of Wales was a huge fan of The Goons (he even made his own Goon-esque skits) so either the show didn't live up to biting social satire that Milligan claimed he was aiming for, or Charles just didn't get the joke. Milligan caused a bit of a kerfuffle by calling him a "grovelling little bastard" on television in 1994 when he received the British Comedy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Milligan later faxed him, saying: "I suppose a knighthood is out of the question?" A knighthood (honorary because of his Irish citizenship) was finally awarded in 2000.

Poetry

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Milligan wrote nonsense verse for children, the best of which is comparable with that of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, and (while depressed) serious poetry. His most famous poem, On the Ning Nang Nong, was voted the UK's favourite comic poem in 1998 in a nationwide poll:

<On the Ning Nang Nong

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go Clang
What a noisy place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!

This is not the poem that I remember best, however. It is a simple four-liner called 'Rain':

Rain

There are holes in the sky
Where the rain gets in
But they're ever so small
That's why rain is thin.

While still at school I parodied this poem:

The Irish

There are holes in their heads
Where their brains get in
But they're ever so small
That's why they are dim.

Spike was not beyond a parody himself:

I must go down to the sea again

I must go down to the sea again,
To the lonely sea and the sky;
I left my shoes and socks there -
I wonder if they're dry?

Or just taking the mickey:

A Silly Poem

Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I’ll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?

Although best known for his nonsense poetry, Spike also wrote serious poetry. You can listen to him read some of his poems about depression here. But here are a couple of gentler pieces.

Love Song

If I could write words
Like leaves on an Autumn Forest floor
What a bonfire my letters would make.
If I could speak words of water
You would drown when I said
‘I love you’.

When I Suspected

There will be a time when it will end.
Be it parting
Be it death
So each passing minute with you
            Pendulummed with sadness.
So many times
I looked long into your face.
            I could hear the clock ticking.

Film

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Probably Milligan's best known film role was an accident. While the Pythons were filming The Life of Brian it just so happened that Milligan was on holiday in Tunisia where the filming was taking place – he was visiting his old World War II battlefields. The Pythons were alerted to this one morning and he was promptly included in the scene that just happened to be being filmed.

In an interview in Australia he remembers the occasion:

Do you know what they never told me? They said, 'we want you to make up a speech to the followers of the slipper, a Biblical little speech to these people, with your back to them'. And so I said.

Surely they that goeth away do not seek the sun, they that cometh unto us do wee the serpent, and the apple of eel. We that go, therefore, wherefore, and though shall see, therefore, and thou shall cometh again. Surely as the day is red ...

I went on talking this shit, all the while, they're being told to move away. So when I turned, there was nobody there. They hadn't told me. That's why I walked sideways off the screen. – 'I think I caught up' with Spike Milligan, Union Recorder, v75 no 5

He disappeared again in the afternoon before he could be included in any of the close-up or publicity shots for the film.

After The Life of Brian, the main film that I associate Milligan with is The Bed-Sitting Room which he wrote along with John Antrobus. It started off as a one-act play which was adapted to a longer play in 1963 revived in 1967 and finally filmed in 1970 featuring such luminaries of the day as Ralph Richardson, Arthur Lowe, Rita Tushingham, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Michael Hordern, Marty Feldman, Harry Secombe and Milligan himself.

One critic memorably described it as being "like Samuel Beckett, but with better jokes".

The play is set in a post-apocalyptic London, nine months after World War III ("the Nuclear Misunderstanding"), which lasted for two minutes and twenty eight seconds – "including the signing of the peace treaty". Anyone who has read my novel, Stranger than Fiction, will recognise my nod to Milligan there.

Michael Coveney describes it as:

a Cold War farce three years after "the next war", a ragbag of sketches, visual jokes and satirical barbs limed in a premonition of radiation-infused doom which climaxed in a cannibalistic ritual and, literally, the last dance, the extermination waltz. – The Independent, 23 June 2009

The whole Independent article is worth a read because it details Milligan's pretty much forgotten stage career, something I knew next to nothing of.

Here's the first ten minutes of the film. You'll note that the credits are in order of height.

One other point of note. If anyone is interested in what Jonathan Payne (the hero of my first two novels) looks like then take note of the short, bald man in the underground train; that's Arthur Lowe and he was the model for Jonathan.

This, of course, was not the only time we see Milligan on screen. Most people would assume his first screen role would have been in 1952's commercial flop Down Among the Z Men which drew heavily on his work for the Goons and in fact starred all four of the original members, but there were two appearances before this, in 1951, in Let's Go Crazy and Penny Points to Paradise along with Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe.

The only film I'm aware of in which he was involved as a writer – as opposed to an ad-libber – was The Great McGonagall, which featured Peter Sellers as Queen Victoria although he did 'write', and feature in, the sixth segment of The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins, 'Sloth' which is a series of silent film clips showing people not being active. I seem to recall his part involved him standing under a tree with his hands in his pockets waiting for an apple to drop.

Health

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Spike had his first major nervous breakdown in late 1951 (just after the start of Series 3 of The Goon Show) and spent two months in hospital. The pressure of writing the shows is given as a major contributing reason for the breakdown and the break-up of his first marriage. He was eventually diagnosed with manic depression as it was known then (bipolar disorder) and battled it for the rest of his life.

On one occasion, Peter Sellers had to lock his door against a knife-wielding Milligan; on another, Sellers and Harry Secombe broke into Milligan's dressing room, fearing he was suicidal. Over the years he did in fact attempt suicide. Eventually lithium was found to be the most effective treatment. He suffered from bipolar disorder for most of his life, having at least ten mental breakdowns. He was hospitalised more than once. His major coping strategy for this seems to have been his endlessly prolific writing which he states he absolutely had no choice but to do in order to extricate himself from the terrible blacknesses he fell into. Eventually, in 1994, he collaborated with Anthony Clare and they brought out a book, Depression and How to Survive It.

Summary

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Reading back over all of this I feel it is such a cursory portrayal of the man. I've mentioned nothing of his infidelities, his large family, his work for animal rights or his charity work. For a man who started his career late in life (he was 33) he achieved so much. In trawling through the Net looking for stuff to include here I discovered for example that from the 1960s onwards Spike was a regular correspondent with the writer Robert Graves. Milligan's letters to Graves usually addressed a question to do with classical studies. Now, I would never have imagined that. Nor would I have imagined him being passionate about archaeology but it seems he was.

What I can say is that my life has been indelibly marked by its contact with him. Like all my heroes he wasn't perfect. He had a bad temper. He even shot a boy with an airgun for coming onto his property once. But then who's perfect? Language was never the same for me after him. He was every bit as important in my development as a writer as Philip Larkin and William Carlos Williams were.

He was a professional amateur, a dabbler; he was having too much fun to treat what he was doing too seriously and so there are rough edges everywhere with him but that is a part of his charm. He had no airs and graces. And when he died the papers gave him the most coverage anyone had had since the death of Winston Churchill. If you've enjoyed anything I've touched on here I would heartily recommend you follow up. At the very least treat yourself to a copy of Puckoon.