Hello, could you take me to Marylebone Station, please?
A lot of people nowadays are called comic geniuses,
but Spike Milligan really was a comic genius.
Where are you? Inside.
Inside? Yes.
Inside what? The elephant.
I'm inside the elephant.
I've never met a comedian in Britain
who doesn't acknowledge their debt to Spike Milligan.
He inspired a generation.
Walk about a bit.
Without Spike doing surreal, I wouldn't exist.
I don't think Python would have existed.
Oh, dear!
There was an edge to Milligan which I didn't realise at the time.
I just thought he was a genius.
Spike Milligan means a lot to me because my first job was as a comedian.
Not anything like as good as him but as a comic actor with Alan Bennett.
It was 1966 and On The Margin was a TV sketch show.
Sat at the feet of the master was a youthful...me.
Comedy? Well, that was good training for political journalism.
Now I'm going to retrace Spike Milligan's footsteps,
to find out where his comic genius came from...
talk to those who knew him intimately...
He must have been a nightmare to live with.
..and explore what writing endless comedy did to the mind of Milligan.
He went a bit mad. That's what happens.
Because you start looking for everything to be a joke and every situation.
That's how you force your brain when you're writing,
just looking for these humorous situations.
Sometimes you can't turn that off.
He made us laugh and he made us think.
And that's pretty good going.
60 years ago, I was one of millions of people
first introduced to Spike Milligan through the radio
and the legendary Goon Show.
Here it is. The Goon Show!
I want to start my journey around Spike
by returning to where, for me, it all began.
# I'm walking backwards for Christmas
# Across the Irish Sea
# I'm walking backwards for Christmas
# It's the only thing for me
# I've tried walking sideways
# And walking to the front
# But people look at me and say
# That's just a publicity stunt
# I'm walking backwards for Christmas
# To prove that I love you
I'm Walking Backwards For Christmas was typical of the surreal world
Spike conjured up in The Goon Show back in the 1950s.
It wasn't everyone's cup of tea,
but for people like me it became a way of life.
When you think about the Goons,
it's not just, 'Oh, that's a comedy show.'
No, it matters more than that.
It matters in terms of people's attitudes, where we were,
how we recovered from the War.
Why was it funny?
Why did we think it was particularly funny? Is it still funny now?
These are all the things that... I don't know, I want to look at.
This is where I was brought up.
My father was the vicar of Great Tew here in Oxfordshire.
We were here from 1948 to 1957.
Those were not only critical days in my childhood,
they were most important days for The Goon Show.
This is the house I grew up in with my elder brother and sister.
It still serves as the Vicarage to this day.
I'll just see if anyone's in.
Hello. John, come in.
Thanks very much for letting me come home.
Because it was here that I used to listen to The Goon Show.
I'm going to step into this room and step back 60 years.
I used to come in here with my brother.
Our parents didn't want to listen to The Goon Show.
Here we are. That's the old radio. 1950s radio.
And this is rather special.
I've got copies of the Radio Times from the 1950s.
So what's on?
And what have we got?
Well, The Archers. Bound to be The Archers.
The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes.
Nothing changes, does it?
But at 8:30, The Goon Show presents The Man In Black,
with Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan,
in The Canal.
(RADIO TUNING)
'This is the BBC Home Service.'
It's 8:30, it's October 1954.
I'm 10 years old and I'm listening in absolute bliss to The Goon Show.
(SCREECH) Thank you, Teddy.
(LAUGHTER)
Eccles!
Yah! Did my daddy call me?
Eccles, get your things out of Neddie's room. OK, Daddy.
Come on, now! Shoo! Shoo!
Memorable characters like Bluebottle and Eccles returned week after week
in evermore ludicrous storylines.
They were played with gleeful enthusiasm by Spike and his co-stars,
Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers.
I hear music and there's only Max Geldray there.
Like all great comedy, like all great farces, it's beautifully made.
Half an hour of a carefully organised story which has a logic of its own
but is just tipped away from normal, by about 30 degrees.
But it's kept at that level.
And so at all points, there's discipline within the madness.
When you think it's just a lot of old nonsense like my parents used to...
No, it's not.
It's very, very carefully constructed to make you laugh.
No, not tonight, dear!
(LAUGHTER)
It meant everything to me,
living in the middle of nowhere as I was then.
But the man who wrote the show which brought an audience of up to five million
came from a very different world.
(JAZZ DOUBLE BASS)
Spike Milligan was born in colonial India in 1918.
His father Leo served in the British Indian army,
but spent most of his time dressing up and entertaining the troops,
with his wife and sidekick Florence.
Could this be where Spike got his unique sense of humour from?
The only person who knows about those early years
lives 10,000 miles away in Sydney, Australia,
and that's Spike's younger brother, Desmond.
It's a chilly winter evening here in London
but in Sydney, it's a balmy summer's morning.
I'm going to ask Desmond about their theatrical roots.
Your father seems to have been very like Spike.
In a more subdued way, yes.
Yes, he was a wonderful performer.
He tap-danced like Fred Astaire on stage.
But what about his sense of humour?
Tell me about your father's sense of humour.
Was it like Spike's? He was a quieter humorist.
So he wasn't as zany as Spike was?
Oh, no, he wasn't as zany as brother Spike.
Spike was unique.
None of us was quite as mad as he was. (LAUGHS)
But when you hear people talking about Spike...
do you sometimes think you didn't know him very well?
He lived in his own world.
And so you didn't...
As a teenager, he was out of the house a lot of the time.
So, you know, he tended to come in almost like a stranger.
So do you think in some way he was, even to you, a bit of a mystery?
Yes, he did appear a bit of a mystery to me.
Talking to Desmond has been revealing.
Clearly even in childhood, Spike lived in a world of his own.
The Milligan family's colonial posting eventually came to an end.
The family were forced to move to London in 1933.
Spike adapted to his new surroundings,
performing in clubs and pubs his beloved jazz.
But world events were about to change his life forever.
(AIR RAID SIREN)
Soon after the outbreak of the Second World War,
Spike joined the army and his first posting was here on the south coast.
In his memoirs, he described those difficult times
with characteristic spirit.
It was a proud day for the Milligan family as I was taken from the house.
(MILLIGAN'S VOICE MERGES) 'I am too young to go!' I screamed,
as military policemen dragged me from my pram, clutching a dummy.
at 4:30, June 2nd 1940,
on a summer's day, all mares' tails and blue sky,
we arrived at Bexhill-on-Sea where I got off.
It wasn't easy - the train didn't stop there.
When Spike arrived here, times could hardly have been worse.
This was the moment when there was
a real threat of invasion across the Channel.
Dunkirk had happened, the army had retreated.
France had fallen.
And we all know from Dad's Army
what could be done to save the south coast.
Well, in Spike's case it was, 'Don't worry, I know I'm coming.'
I want to find out what it felt like to be stationed here in 1940.
One person who remembers those grim days
and knows something of Milligan's experiences here in Bexhill
is John Izzard.
This was a key invasion coast for the Germans.
I mean, from here, you can see, it looks good,
right round to Eastbourne.
Its shallow beaches and so on.
And on the beach, we had a vast array of scaffolding poles.
So that was what to stop...?
Stop people coming ashore.
You can't do much with a scaffolding pole.
That's all they had - scaffolding poles.
That didn't fill you with confidence I wouldn't have thought. Not at all.
John was just seven years old when Spike first arrived in Bexhill.
Defending the inhabitants of the town was the first chapter
in a war that would ultimately come close to killing him.
He was wounded in action
at the battle of Monte Cassino in Italy in 1944.
John Izzard became a big fan of The Goon Show in the Fifties,
and was thrilled when he heard of Spike's connection with Bexhill.
It was very unusual...
because nobody that we knew of any repute had got a Bexhill connection.
(LAUGHS)
We are literally walking in Spike Milligan's footsteps.
John is taking me up Galley Hill
to show me where Spike was on duty during the War.
It was Spike's job to look out for invading Germans.
And he later produced a drawing,
proudly showing his observation point.
Yes, I've looked for it several times.
Galley Hill is where we are...
John and I are on a pilgrimage.
Quite right, yes.
We're looking for the concrete slab on which Spike's gun was mounted.
I think John's found it.
Well, it's the only bit of heavy concrete around here
and I can't see what else it would be used for.
Well, I think we've discovered it.
Let me just show you the picture.
Right, have a look at that.
As far as we know, this is it. There's Gunner Milligan.
He's got his gun and he's ready to take on the entire German army.
'My first confrontation with the enemy
was an early autumn evening at Galley Hill observation post.
The light was going and a mist was conjuring itself up from the Channel.
I heard the unmistakable sound of a Dornier bomber.
Suddenly below me, coming out of the mist, was the Dornier,
flying low to avoid radar and customs duty.
What should I do? A pile of bricks.
I grab one, and as the plane roared over me, I threw it.
Blast! Missed!
But in that moment envisaged glorious headlines.
Lone gunner brings down Nazi plane with lone brick.
And the Germans? Mein Gott!
If dis vot ze can do vid bricks,
vot could they do vid guns?!'
(LAUGHS)
Spike made fun of his experiences in Bexhill
in a volume of wartime memoirs.
It wasn't published until 1971.
It shows how the War went on providing him
with rich and funny material.
But it was The Goon Show where Spike first revealed his determination
not to take the War too seriously.
'The Terror Of Bexhill-on-Sea, or...
The Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler.'
The story takes place during the War,
but it's not the Germans that are threatening the town's inhabitants.
It was a batter pudding.
'..Elderly gentlefolk of Bexhill-on-Sea
still took their evening constitutions.
Argh!
Oh, Henry! I've been struck down from behind by the...'
John might look a little familiar.
He became immersed in Goon Show humour over the years
and transmitted this obsession to his sons.
One was so inspired by what he heard,
he became a comic himself.
Why is it called a deer stalker? You know, you don't...
Anyone stalking a deer in that, the deer would go... (GUFFAWS)
In my search for the source of the genius of Spike Milligan,
I'm meeting the comedian Eddie Izzard.
He famously described Spike as the godfather of alternative comedy.
What was so special about him?
Without Spike doing surreal, I wouldn't exist.
I don't think Python would have existed.
We just wouldn't have got anywhere.
But where did this talent come from?
What does Eddie think?
'Minnie's been hit with another batter pudding.'
'Well, that's nothing new.'
Spike grew up in a colonial outpost,
far away from the influence of the old British music halls.
Is that why his material was so fresh and original?
'Taxi!' (BAGPIPES DRONE AND FADE)
'Yes, sir? Hooray for rule Britannia, poor ol' Marilyn Monroe, poor ol' Joe!'
'The Bexhill Gas Works, and step on it!'
'Very good, sir, hooray, here we go!'
(BAGPIPES DRONE BACK TO LIFE)
'Listeners may be puzzled by a taxi sounding like bagpipes.
The truth is, it is all part of the BBC new economy campaign.'
When I read some of this, I just think he got on a roll
and he just went for it and then stopped and went, now what do I do?
Taking you in directions you didn't expect.
That's where the fun comes, doesn't it? Yes.
And also adding...
Juxtaposing ideas. A batter pudding hurler...and Bexhill-on-Sea.
You've got Bexhill-on-Sea where they might have batter puddings but no-one would hurl them.
You wouldn't hurl batter puddings anyway.
There is a... That part of what came from Spike,
just juxtaposing ideas that are just stupid until you hit funny is something that really did affect me.
For many people, Spike's humour has its roots in the madcap creations
of artists such as Magritte and Man Ray in the 1920s,
when surrealism was born.
It makes you stop and think.
And now I'm going back to where Spike first developed
his own brand of comedy.
People like me, brought up in the 1950s,
were often referred to as the Post-War Generation.
But in fact, we were very affected by the War.
Places like this, there were bomb sites nearby...
The war seemed just to have passed
and The Goon Show was a release from all that.
And this old pub in the heart of London,
once known as Grafton's after the family that ran it,
was where The Goon Show was born.
The publican, a former army officer, Jimmy Grafton,
first introduced the war-weary Goons to each other in the late 1940s.
The members of The Goon Show would meet here in this pub to rehearse
and Spike Milligan lived here, right at the top in an attic
for six months, with a monkey.
These days, the pub is a forgotten shrine to Spike and the Goons.
But back in the 1950s,
Jimmy Grafton had some of the most illustrious clientele in the capital.
And they were all here for one thing.
To see the very first performances of a new group of comics
that would become the Goons.
This was the Cavern Club of the comedy world.
And Dave, the current publican is going to show me where it all began
for 30-year-old Spike.
So what went on, on this floor?
This was where they did their rehearsing.
They got people from the pub to come and watch them rehearse.
And so it was that these young men,
desperate to move on from the War,
wrote and performed uproarious sketches
to a small, select group of people, hungry for laughter.
Yeah, so that's where the audience are.
And then we've got to come round here...
That's right. And this is where they would perform at the back there.
Right. So there we are.
It's amazing, isn't it? Yeah.
Just in this little space here,
you've got a bit of history being made. Definitely.
This is the start of The Goon Show... Yeah.
And we've got it here.
Along with the beer crates. Yeah.
And now the bit we've really been looking forward to:
Spike's hideaway, up in the attic.
This really is going up to the attic, isn't it? Yes.
This is where the great picture of Spike and the monkey was taken.
By all accounts, the publican's wife was mad.
Animal mad, that is.
Well, it's sort of eerie, isn't it? Yes.
Gosh.
So Spike would have this bit. Yeah.
This was his section.
This was partitioned off. Yeah. The monkey had this bit.
Spike had the smaller bit. Really? Yes.
But you've got to look after the monkey.
And Spike can look after himself. I'm sure that's what they thought. Yeah.
I want to get a sense of what it was like in this pub 60 years ago.
James and Sally Grafton, the son and daughter of the landlord,
were here from the very beginning.
I was sort of seven going on eight. James was six.
So we weren't very old.
And where did Spike fit in to all this?
The bar staff I think called him the mad Paddy in the attic.
The mad Paddy in the attic. But he was Uncle Spike to us.
If you remember, it was rationing still, of certain things.
Especially sweets. And so...
an extra supply of sweets was always welcome.
And this is one thing Spike did.
He would hide them, so that we could find them.
He got through to you partly with sweets, then.
And telling us stories.
And he was very kind.
I think he sort of loses interest in people once they grow up.
The last time I spoke to Spike was in 1988, I think it was.
He said, 'I'm not talking to you anymore.'
So I said, 'Why is that?' He said, 'You've grown too tall.'
Yes. And that was it. I never spoke to him again.
He wanted you to be children, didn't he? Yes.
I think what's interesting there is we're capturing Spike when he was in his thirties relating to children.
And of course, that's what he did at his best throughout his life as a comic.
He's trying to create that world
where all sorts of absurd and silly things happen.
And that childlike, not childish, world would soon become famous with the Goons,
who exchanged their smoky room above a pub for national radio.
The Goon Shows were recorded live on stage in front of an audience in London's Camden Theatre.
It's a nightclub now, but I've always wanted to know
what it was like to actually be in the audience.
TV legend Esther Rantzen used to go regularly.
We used to get there early, obviously, schoolgirls as we were.
Queue up and...
Harry Secombe used to arrive in his Rolls-Royce.
And Peter Sellers used to arrive in his Rolls-Royce.
And Spike Milligan, who wrote it, who created it,
and who created some of the best characters of all
arrived on his bicycle because he did not have the income.
But you knew as you were going through here that it was going to be fun.
Oh, so exciting! So exciting...
It's extraordinary to think that Esther, as a teenager,
long before she became famous,
was queuing up week after week
to see the shows being recorded that I was listening to at home.
How much do you think, by being here,
you got the Goon Show that I got, listening to it,
but how much extra did you get by actually seeing it on stage?
It was probably 100 times better. Oh, no!
Sorry! Ruining everything!
Sorry, sorry, sorry. Was it really?
Yeah, yeah.
Gentlemen...
This is the Goons recording one of their very first programmes back in 1951.
What's the time now? Two o'clock.
Don't worry, boss. I'll ring Jake.
As a radio listener, of course, you heard everything but saw nothing.
You didn't know how the sound effects were made.
(NEIGHS)
But seeing this on stage brought another layer of comedy to the shows.
The sound effects which...
I didn't realise but I was going to have to create sound effects...
myself professionally later when I worked in the radio...
were ground-breaking.
Your favourite sound effect that you had to do?
Oh, a pterodactyl.
I did a pterodactyl. I was a jolly good pterodactyl.
How did you do that? You got an umbrella?
(LAUGHS) Has anyone got an umbrella?
Anyone got an umbrella?
Ever so ta. OK, right...
So, you need an umbrella. Yeah.
Can I have a mic, please, a little bit closer?
(UMBRELLA REPLICATES FLAPPING WINGS)
I'm going to go away from you.
Then I'm going to go right across.
Swooping low over the prehistoric marshland.
Real prowess. This is just magnificent.
There's a double layer with radio.
One is what you're hearing, which is what the Great British public hears,
but there's also the lunacy of seeing someone flapping about with an umbrella.
If you magnify that a thousand-fold,
that's what was happening on that stage.
You were hearing what the audience was going to hear
but you were seeing the way it was created.
And the best jokes are in-jokes and you were in on it. Absolutely.
And the relationship between the four of them.
Hadn't you better make sure? All right, just a minute.
(BANG) He's dead.
With the demands of a brand-new Goon Show to write every week,
Spike needed a base to work from.
He formed a cooperative with fellow writers Eric Sykes,
Ray Galton and Alan Simpson.
It was soon described as the Fun Factory.
But for Spike, who had to deliver a 30-minute script every Friday,
it was anything but fun.
Amongst the team of talented writers was the playwright John Antrobus,
who, when the workload got too much for Spike,
co-wrote some of The Goon Shows.
Antrobus got to know him well.
What was he like?
He was...a genius.
But you see, as a genius, he doesn't have to match up
as the perfect, lovable celebrity character, which he wasn't, you know.
Somebody once said about him that he never learned how to be charming.
He should have done more. No, he had no need to be charming.
He was raw.
He was like an undisciplined child, really.
He had a love/hate relationship with the audience.
He sort of needed them but he hated that he needed them.
He had a need to make them laugh.
And he could make them laugh with sublimely funny, beautiful things.
But at the same time, he would make them laugh with crass jokes
and he would say, 'Eff them. It doesn't matter.
You've just got to make them laugh, that's all.'
'A big crowd of people here today.'
'I know. We let them in for the animals to look at, you see.'
(LAUGHTER)
'Trouble is, we have to lock the boa constrictors up
so the kids don't get at them, you know.'
'What do you call those little creatures in the penguin pool?'
'Well, I call that one Jim. That one's Terence.
And that's Penny-Lou over there.'
Spike loved animals and children.
It was just the adults he had problems with.
He once dreamed up a sketch where a group of out of work actors
were given jobs standing in for the animals in the zoo.
I think that tells you a lot about Spike's feelings towards his fellow man.
Do you think I look realistic?
Yeah, you do actually look completely absurd.
It's a lovely picture.
I think this roll you've got to get right. Penguin roll.
You're very good at that, yeah. Can we move in here?
I think so. I could live here. I could live here better than my home.
'It's fallen in the water.'
(LAUGHTER)
After the success of The Goon Show on the radio,
one of the key questions was whether this wonderful, surreal, crazy humour
could be transferred to the screen,
to film and television.
The director Richard Lester was the first to approach Spike.
He said it won't work. There's no argument.
'Television will kill...surrealist comedy,' he said,
'because I can write somebody going down the tube
and they'll come up out of an igloo.
And you can't do that, can you?'
I said, 'Probably not.' Probably not.
And he said, 'No, so go away.'
Nevertheless, Lester didn't give up.
He had an ally in the shape of Peter Sellers,
and together they eventually succeeded in persuading Spike
to join them on a small film project.
Really, all the ideas were Spike's.
He's the driving force. A few of them were mine, but not many.
All of us just did it for fun.
And through one way or another,
it ended up at the Edinburgh Festival and the San Francisco Festival
and then it had an Academy Award nomination.
And I thought, 'My God, I'm a film director now!'
Made for just £70 and featuring Peter Sellers and Spike amongst others,
this 11-minute short did what Spike himself thought wasn't possible,
bringing his brand of surrealism to the screen.
There's Spike putting up a tent. Yeah.
He's happy in front of the camera, though, isn't he?
Oh, always. Yes, absolutely.
This is one of my favourites...
..because there's a certain logic in this.
(MUSIC PLAYS JERKILY)
Not only was the running, jumping, standing still film
nominated for an Oscar,
but it also caught the eye of an up and coming pop star.
John Lennon was very influenced by Spike.
I think one of the reasons that we got on well
and why I was able to do as much with The Beatles as I did
was because we shared that love of Spike's work.
Lester was chosen to direct The Beatles' first feature film.
Released in 1964, A Hard Day's Night was an immediate hit
with the Fab Four's millions of fans.
There's no doubt that I put bits into the script of Hard Day's Night
to have a surrealist bent to what was a fictionalised documentary.
So it's fair to say that what became famous as The Beatles' sense of humour,
particularly in America, a lot of that is due to Spike Milligan.
I think without a doubt.
You can sing. No, we need money first.
(LAUGHTER)
Spike's humour injected vigour and freshness
into British culture in the 1960s.
His influence can still be felt now
among comedians young enough to be his grandchildren.
Great. New cereal.
Noel Fielding is a funny man who claims
Spike Milligan is a major influence.
But their characters are completely different.
The only thing that does surprise me about you being keen on him
is that you're much sort of nicer, aren't you?
(LAUGHS) I mean, you're...
You're much more charming. Seemingly!
You may dress in black and you may sort of at first glance look sinister
but you're not. You're more... I'm much more...
But you're meant to be nice, aren't you?
I think I try and make friends with the audience.
Noel writes a lot of his own material.
I want to understand what it must have been like for Spike,
working under so much pressure.
Obviously Milligan was writing it which is, for me...
that's the most impressive thing, to be able to write.
And he wrote a lot, didn't he, on his own? Absolutely.
He went a bit mad. That's what happens.
Because you start looking for everything to be a joke and every situation.
That's how you force your brain when you're writing,
just looking for these humorous situations or ideas or abstract thoughts.
Sometimes you can't turn that off.
Spike struck gold with The Goon Show.
But with endless deadlines, bouts of debilitating depression,
and catastrophic rows with his first wife
and many of the people he was working with,
his private life was often a shambles.
I'm about to meet the one person who held it all together.
Norma Farnes started as Spike's secretary in 1967.
And even now, ten years after his death,
she still runs Spike Milligan Productions.
When it comes to everything Spike, Norma is the boss.
Thanks a lot.
By the time Spike moved here, to Orme Court, Bayswater, in 1962,
The Goon Show had finished and he'd started writing his memoirs and children's books.
Hello, Norma. Hello, John. How nice to see you!
How very nice to see you. How are you?
Norma's office is a treasure trove of all things Milligan.
The old Goon Shows, the hundreds of books, both by him and about him.
The personal memorabilia and the photographs.
Friends, colleagues, family.
Sitting next to youthful Norma is a key figure in Spike's life.
We've got Spike's mum.
She must have been very proud of Spike.
Yes. You say that slowly.
(LAUGHS) Yes, she was. She must have been.
Yes, she was.
They were very, very alike.
Very strong. Very, very strong woman.
The first time I met her I said to Spike...
'If you had a vision of a woman that built the British Empire,
that would be your mother.'
And I really do believe they had this love/hate relationship with each other.
Well, he seemed to have a love/hate relationship with everybody.
(LAUGHS) Yes. You and he had a love/hate relationship.
That's right, that's right, but...
How much love, how much hate?
50/50. Really? Yeah, 50/50.
After the Goons, Spike became less productive,
suffered longer bouts of depression,
and became more difficult to manage.
That was Spike's office. And this is Eric's.
He shared the first floor with Eric Sykes,
and I want to see the famous door
behind which Spike slaved away at his typewriter.
So that's Spike's... That's Spike's office.
And often the door would be closed, wouldn't it? Yes.
But sometimes, when he, A, was having a mini-tantrum,
or B, when the black dog had him, it would be locked.
Sometimes he would be locked in there for two days or three days or four days.
This is on the door. N - that's me - Norma.
'I'm not in. I'm very, very ill.
Don't let ANYBODY go in my room.
D: I've had enough - Jesus had it easy.
E: I'm at home.' Yeah.
Some people are going to say, 'You know what? She loved him.'
Oh, I did love him. There's no question about it.
If I didn't love him, I wouldn't be here, you know.
I was never IN love with him, because had I been in love with him,
he'd have tore me to pieces in the first two or three months and I'd have gone.
I loved him like my father.
Before I go, I'm treated to some home movies.
Spike had three wives and four children.
But Norma was the one constant in his life,
and she still holds much of his personal archive.
That's June. That's Spike's first wife.
She's very, very, very pretty. Yes.
I thought she was very pretty.
Spike's marriage to June, with whom he had three children,
lasted the entirety of The Goon Show years.
But by 1960, they were divorced.
This is his second wedding to Paddy. His second wedding.
Yes, to Paddy. Isn't she lovely?
She was absolutely gorgeous.
Spike's actually attractive, isn't he? Very attractive.
I never... You know, a lot of women think he is. I never saw it.
So you never fancied him, then? Oh, God, no, no, no.
Why did he have to have all these marriages? Cos he's difficult to be married to.
I would think impossible. I mean, can you imagine living with Spike Milligan?
It must have been a nightmare.
The cameras are on, he's doing his bit.
He's doing his bit and going underwater.
You're not getting paid for it, Spike! Finish it! (LAUGHS)
Almost a decade after he finished writing The Goon Show,
Spike shifted his attention from radio to television.
But he no longer had the field to himself.
The Goons fans of the Fifties
had become the TV comedians of the Sixties and Seventies.
JOHN CLEESE: Monty Python's Flying Circus!
And the magic word this week is:
a tree fell on her.
A tree fell on her.
Like me, Michael Palin grew up listening to the Goons.
We've met up to talk about some of Spike Milligan's television work.
You ready, dear? I'm ready.
What worried Spike about television
was that seeing something, not just imagining it,
wouldn't be anything like as funny.
But in March 1969, he changed his mind with his comedy sketch show, Q5.
And...they're off.
He's coming up the inside lane.
(LAUGHTER DROWNS COMMENTARY)
I remember Terry Jones and myself watching that and saying there are some wonderful things in this.
How much were you consciously writing in the same vein as Spike Milligan?
Well...
It was very similar to what the Goons were writing
and Spike was the writer, of course.
Yeah, there was an edge to Milligan which...
I didn't realise at the time. I just thought he was a genius.
But I certainly found when I was writing stuff for Python,
it didn't take long to write.
I just had to click into a kind of...
The Goon Show, Spike way of saying
anything that comes out can be funny.
Don't censor yourself, don't stop anything. Let it all...
everything come out and rearrange it on the page.
I always felt that that was the way Spike approached things. It was very instinctive.
And now for something completely different. It's...
Monty Python's Flying Circus!
Just six months after Milligan's Q5 was broadcast,
an entirely new programme hit the television screens.
Well, that was fun, wasn't it?
And they're off! They're off!
Monty Python, in a way, is sort of what Spike could have done or should have done?
I think Spike felt that.
He did feel there was a bit of plagiarism going on. Really?
Yeah. It was a slightly difficult atmosphere.
Spike could be one thing one day - say you're wonderful.
'I love this,' and all that. And then, 'All my best jokes. It's me. I did all this ages ago.'
Which was, of course, true, but I think...
..we were flattering him, in a way.
And he said something to me once which I thought was a rather nice comment.
I asked him about the Goons and I said, 'What was it like doing those programmes?'
He said, 'It was like...
..it was like one good summer.'
It was just a beautiful image. It rather moved me, actually.
Just like one good summer.
And that was what it was in his life, you know.
This is the Elfin Oak in Hyde Park.
It's an ancient tree stump, populated with magical characters
which delight children.
It caught Spike's eye in the early Sixties,
when he championed its restoration.
Norma Farnes still makes frequent visits.
I visit here...
26th February every year.
Why is that? This is the day he died.
I came a few months ago and it was pouring down
and there was nobody around.
And so I started to talk to him.
Said, 'Say hello to Pete and Harry. I hope you're all right.
Hope you're behaving yourself.'
And he used to adore seeing the children playing round here. Yes.
And children looking and laughing and throwing in pennies and things.
He got joy from that.
I think he achieved that childlike quality all his life.
I've decided to end this film where I started:
in my childhood home, here in the village of Great Tew.
I've come back to my old primary school
to see if today's children find The Goon Show
as funny as I did 60 years ago.
Probably never heard of The Goon Show have you?
ALL: No. Never heard of The Goon Show, right.
Have you ever listened to plays on the radio?
(MORE NO THAN YES REPLIES)
Right, OK. Have you ever heard of someone called Spike Milligan?
Yes. You have heard of Spike Milligan.
The poems are quite funny. Yes, OK.
Right, OK, off we go.
HARRY: Act I is the highly esteemed Goon Show!
(FANFARE)
Now, Mr Greenslade, put down that Radio Times,
cast off that bamboo kilt and give the listeners the old posh chat there.
PETER: Oooooh, 'twas the month of February in 1955,
when the valuable floating pier at Westminster suddenly took a dive.
(BUBBLING AND DISASTER MUSIC)
Good morning. Good morning, sir.
Good morning, buddy.
So you think you can raise the pier, eh?
Oh yes, yes! We can do it! We've done it many times!
Splendid. Now, what is your profession?
Ooooh!
We're oyster sexers.
Oyster sexers? Yes.
I'm sorry, but I'm not interested in oyster sexing.
Ah, but you're not an oyster, are you?
Mr Crun...
Well, that DOES seem to have worked!
After some doubts, every child in the class was laughing.
Not bad! Good old Spike!
So after my voyage around the moon with Spike Milligan's fan club,
of all shapes and sizes,
what's my conclusion?
It's simply that, directly or indirectly, he's affected us all.
Or as he might put it - infected us all.
Spike lives!
SPIKE: Thank you, good night!
Hallelujah!
That was The Goon Show. A recorded programme
featuring Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan,
with the Ray Ellington Quartet and Max Geldray.
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