Norma Farnes - Memories of Milligan

NORMA:I never believed Spike when he told me that story. You have to remember, he would make up a story, swear it was the truth, then say, ‘Well, it made you laugh, didn’t it, so what the hell?’ The child is father to the man. [And although Desmond has confirmed that it was true, don’t forget that he is from the same stock.]

DESMOND:Returning to England in winter – cold, drizzling and windswept, a shock for us colonial-borns. Spike could never get used to the grey skies and drizzle. He missed all the magnificent colours of India. No more big houses with servants. Suddenly, Mum had to do everything. Cooking, cleaning, shopping etc. and we were stuck in one of those long lines of two-storey houses. And in London there were line after line of them going on for miles.

Spike wrote a poem, ‘Catford 1933’:

The light creaks

and escalates to rusty dawn

The iron stove ignites the freezing room.

Last night’s dinner cast off

popples in the embers.

My mother lives in a steaming sink.

Boiled haddock condenses on my plate

Its body cries for the sea.

My father is shouldering his braces like a rifle,

and brushes the crumbling surface of his suit.

The Daily Herald lies jaundiced on the table.

‘Jimmy Maxton speaks in Hyde Park’,

My father places his unemployment cards

in his wallet – there’s plenty of room for them.

In greaseproof paper, my mother wraps my

banana sandwiches.

It’s 5.40. Ten minutes to catch that

last workman train.

Who’s the last workman? Is it me? I might be famous.

My father and I walk out and are eaten by

yellow freezing fog.

Somewhere, the Prince of Wales

and Mrs Simpson are having morning tea in bed.

God Save the King.

But God help the rest of us.

We were no longer the Burragh Sahibs. We were just one of the crowd. It was a let-down for us kids, but we quickly adjusted to the working-class district we were living in. Dad was out of work for six months. Finally, an old army buddy got him a job with the American Associated Press in the news division. He became photo news editor in a very short time. Spike had odd jobs of no consequence, but was soon making his way with the local band groups, joining ‘Tommy Brettell’s New Ritz Revels’ playing at St Cyprian’s Hall, Brockley. By this time Spike had mastered four instruments: the banjo, guitar, double bass and finally the trumpet. So he was well in with the young band scene. But we spent lots of time together during the long cold winter nights, drawing everything you could imagine. I suppose this got me on the road to being an artist.

NORMA:[I told Desmond the remark Spike had made regarding the standard of his paintings, that they should be hung in the National Portrait Gallery. Desmond told me he had painted an extremely good portrait of Spike, parcelled it up and posted it to him from Australia. Spike opened it and returned it just as it had arrived; no acknowledgement, no comment, nothing. Desmond was quite clearly hurt by this appalling behaviour, but all he said was, ‘My brother at his worst.’]

DESMOND:As we became adults we tended to go our own ways. Spike was finishing High School and mixing with his mates, and then things changed dramatically. Mum, Dad and I emigrated to Australia and Spike stayed in England. He was just getting established, had written the first Goon Show , but was planning to follow – the rest is history. Of course, he visited us once, sometimes twice a year, and when he was with Mum, up at Woy Woy, he was always so happy. He did the odd television and radio show. That’s why so many people think he was an Australian. We wrote to each other very frequently. We worked together and I illustrated a couple of his books. We had our ups and downs as brothers.

NORMA:I’m sure you know that your brother, like your father, made up wonderful stories and he would swear they were the truth just to make you laugh. This is a wonderful opportunity for me to find out if the story about your father is true. Spike told me his name was to be Percy Alexander but he was baptised Leo Alphonso. The story goes that, on reaching the cathedral, the priest officiating at the baptism suggested he should be named after popes or saints, hence Leo Alphonso.

DESMOND:It does feel like something my brother could have written, but it’s absolutely true.

NORMA:When did you become aware that Spike was famous?

DESMOND:I remember going to local music gigs to listen to Spike playing his trumpet and realising he was mixing with a different set of people: artists and musicians. But I think my first visit to a recording of a Goon Show – to hear the laughter and applause – and thinking ‘my brother wrote that’. I knew then.

Eric Sykes

‘A piece of gold in showbusiness’ – Spike’s description of Eric Sykes, and to know him is to know the meaning of the word courage.

Early in the Seventies, Spike told me how Eric had tackled a burglar in his house and pinned him against the wall until the police arrived. ‘You know, Norm, Eric has the courage of a lion.’

As Eric’s manager for nearly thirty years I know him to have a different kind of courage. As most people are aware, Eric has been deaf for over forty years, but for the last fifteen he has been partially sighted until now he is almost blind. To a lesser mortal this would herald the end of six decades of a truly great laughter maker – director, writer and comedy genius – but not Eric. When Sir Peter Hall asked him to appear in his production of Molière’s The School for Wives in 1997, Eric was hesitant, until Peter mentioned the word vaudevillian. ‘Molière was a great lover of vaudeville and you are the last of the vaudevillians.’

Eric was hooked. He loved working with Peter and enjoyed the experience immensely. Then some years later Peter was back. He wanted Eric to play Adam in Shakespeare’s As You Like It . ‘That’s a bridge too far for me,’ Eric said, but I knew the persuasive charm of Peter, who invited us to lunch. My money was on Peter.

‘Do you know, Eric, Shakespeare appeared in only one of his plays and he chose the role of Adam. Don’t tell me you can’t do it, because I know you can.’

I encouraged Eric. ‘You have to do it. Shakespeare, for the first time, at eighty. After all these years we will be legitimate!’ Then came a gesture that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Sir Peter, the greatest authority on Shakespeare in the world today, recorded the part of Adam on to a cassette to enable Eric to learn the correct inflections. In Bath, on opening night in 2003, only one thing marred the evening for me – Spike was not sitting beside me to watch ‘his old mate’ perform Shakespeare. He would have been so proud. But I have no doubt he would be up there telling God, or anybody who would listen to him, ‘That’s my old mate. He has the courage of a lion.’

ERIC:I was in bed in hospital awaiting a major operation on my ear, and while I was enjoying the comfort of a proper bed and listening to the radio I heard a comedy half-hour. It had me laughing and I was so taken by it I promptly wrote a letter of appreciation, a whole two pages telling the writers what was admirable about it. It was a new type of comedy, and it was breaking new ground. Hearing it for the first time was like walking through clear air after being stranded in a fog, infinitely laughable and funny.

Next day I had the operation. It was a long job – about four hours. I was sitting up in bed with my head swathed in bandages like the Maharajah of Shepherd’s Bush. The door of my room opened and the nurses were coming in and out in a constant stream and I was coming in and out of semi-consciousness, and I saw two figures, little white faces peering at me, making ‘Psst Psst’ noises. I thought, ‘What the hell’s that?’ Then the matron came in and hauled them out. I learned later their reason for being there was to thank me for the letter I had written. It was Spike Milligan and Larry Stephens. I had briefly met Spike at the Grafton Arms and he had impressed me as a man with comic ideas, exploding from his mind like an inexhaustible Roman candle.