Memories of Milligan. Norma Farnes
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used to go together to wine auctions at Beaver House in the City. Spike became very interested. We’d buy these very old wines, a case, and split them up, four each. I’d been introduced to these auctions by a publican in Sunbury. Spike was a great wine drinker.
RAY: Fantastic stuff!
ALAN: 1874 Chateau Lafite – things like that. Dirt cheap in those days.
RAY: We got some amazing bargains, including three bottles of genuine 1812 cognac. Absolutely gorgeous! Someone nicked a bottle from my cellar and the third one leaked through the cork.
ALAN: It was like caramelised treacle.
RAY: Good days. I remember when we were all having lunch at Bertorelli’s on the particular morning Spike had received an income tax demand. He suddenly got up from the table and sat on the pavement outside with his cap turned upside down, asking the public for donations to help him pay his tax.
ALAN: He fancied himself as a trumpet player. I don’t think he was very good, but Larry Stephens was a brilliant modern jazz pianist. Up in Spike’s office there was a piano and Larry would strum away with beautiful little riffs and then break into ‘Once in a While’ . . .
RAY: We’d be enthralled . . .
ALAN: . . . then Spike would join in on his trumpet. Compared with Larry he was an amateur. The only thing that used to drive me up the wall was that he never finished anything. It was very sad that Larry died when he was in his thirties. He was very talented. He wrote Hancock’s stage act. One thing I always feel is that Spike was unkind in his treatment of Larry Stephens because he used to call him ‘the highest paid typist in the business’. Very unfair, because I think Larry contributed quite a lot. He certainly contributed a lot to Hancock’s stage act and I think he contributed a lot to the Goon Shows. But the thing that used to amuse me was that Spike fancied himself as a trumpet player but he wasn’t very good, whereas Larry was a brilliant modern jazz pianist.
RAY: I remember when Spike and Eric appeared with Tony on stage. It was at the time when the Russian Army Choir used to tour the world. So Tony was the conductor of the British Army Choir and Spike and Eric were in it. Well, you can imagine what chaos they caused, singing terrible songs badly – the pathetic British Army Choir as opposed to the wonderful, very professional Russian Army Choir.
ALAN: We had a lot of laughs in Orme Court. There would be a knock on the door and on answering it you would expect to come face to face with someone. But, no. There was this dwarflike figure with his head on the floor. ‘Telegram from Lilliput.’ That’s one of my memories of Spike. [He chuckled.]
We had one similarity. We both typed the same way – thumpers, with two or three fingers and a thumb for the space bar. But the similarity ended there. We could hear him thumping away on his portable. He was very noisy. We never got into electric type-writers.
RAY: We were quite concerned about the waste of paper. His bin would overflow and the floor was a sea of discarded, screwed up bits of paper. When he didn’t like what he had written, instead of crossing it out, he simply pulled the paper out of the typewriter and chucked it.
ALAN: Absolutely right. Ray and I were meticulous and took time over everything. Spike rattled away and when he couldn’t think of a line he’d just put ‘Eccles: fuck!’ Then later he’d go back and re-do the ‘fuck’. Sometimes he would do seven or eight drafts before he would be satisfied with a script. Eric used to write by hand, enormous great writing, and he’d finish up with a huge pile. When it was typed out it would be no more than two or three pages. He’d say, ‘I’ll sort it out when I get to the studio.’ We all had our different ways of working.
When I think about it, all my memories of Spike are good. And there’s one other – he was fiendishly good-looking.
RAY: Very handsome.
ALAN: And talented.
RAY: Definitely.
Liz Cowley
If to plumb the soul of a man it is necessary to share his bed then Liz Cowley, once the producer of what is still regarded as the finest of daily current affairs programmes, BBC’s Tonight, fronted by the seemingly affable Cliff Michelmore, can claim to be the ultimate authority on Spike Milligan. I watched them closely for almost forty years, both of them taking other lovers but then without rancour, resuming their relationship over intimate dinners, absorbing conversations, anointed by sharing his bed in Room 5 at 9 Orme Court. Others came and went, but Liz remained the constant in his life. There was something special between them.
Liz, small, very attractive and rippling with an innate sexuality that would be the envy of the boob tube generation, still continues to bed her lovers, but it is obvious that the one dearest to her was Spike. In my opinion she was the perfect partner for him – bright, witty, funny, warm and a great conversationalist, one of the few people who, when he was depressed, actually phoned me to find out how he was. She didn’t want anything from him, she just cared about his well-being. All she would say was, ‘When he’s better, tell him I phoned.’ A caring person. Very rare.
We have remained friends. She calls us ‘The Ladies Who Lunch’ and I always look forward to our lunches because I know it will be a couple of hours of nostalgia and laughter.
LIZ: I first met Spike when I was working for an old army newspaper, Reveille, which is now defunct, and the editor said, ‘This Goon Show thing. What’s it all about? I don’t understand it. Go along and interview them.’ So I did and there was this dreadful man, named Peter Sellers, who was very rude. And a lovely fat Welshman who was so sweet you wanted to hug him and put him in your handbag, if indeed he had shrunk a bit. And then there was this very gauche, gangling, sexy, tall, skinny man named Spike. And I thought to myself, ‘That’s why he’s called Spike, because he looks like a spike.’ And damn it, I didn’t pay much attention to him. I got my story on the Goons.
The next day the telephone rang. ‘Spike Milligan here.’
‘Sorry, who?’
‘I think you interviewed me yesterday. Would you like to go to a party with me tonight?’
I thought, ‘My goodness! A Goon inviting me to a party.’ Sounded good. ‘Yes, please.’
‘It’s at Tom Wiseman’s house.’ My Lord! He was a very well-known journalist at that time.
‘You’ll be all right. He’s a scribbler and you’re a scribbler, so you’ll get on and I’ll get on because you’re getting on.’
But neither of them did. It was dreadful because, as I suspected, everybody was terribly, terribly smart, witty and drinking goodness knows what. Spike stood in the corner, very shy, humble and gauche. And I stood in the corner feeling very shy, humble and gauche, and I couldn’t wait to get home and very soon that’s what I did. And I thought that was the end of that, but the next day he rang again.
‘Did I understand you to say you had a university degree when you were talking to someone at the party?’
‘A Canadian BA, with honours.’
‘Ah, well, I can’t consort with you. You’re educated. I’m not.’
‘Well, let’s try, shall we? Let’s try consorting.’
Consorting meant going out to an Indian restaurant and talking, talking and talking. And for years, consorting, that was all that was involved.
That would be in the Fifties. So roll on the Sixties. I got married and Spike got married and divorced. But in between all those bits, and during them, we had our Indian meals. And finally, in about 1964, I said, ‘To hell with all this. Let’s go to bed!’ And he said, ‘Oh well. What shall we do it to?