Memories of Milligan. Norma Farnes
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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,