Spike Milligan

Spike Milligan0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Spike Milligan0:05

For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1978 and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:31

Our castaway this week is a comedian, writer, musician, actor, painter and character, and there aren't many of those around these days. Mother and housewife. Yes, she can. It's Spike Milligan. How much time do you spend listening to music? Uh all day. Really? Yes. This is where BBC comes good. Radio three is about the without it I don't think England would know there are any classical music.

Presenter0:54

How did you set about choosing your eight records? Are you choosing nostalgically or great music or what? Well, it's such a vast spectrum of music, it's ridiculous. I just ran my fingers down the index and said, give him eight of those. We just picked eight out very quickly off the cuff. I didn't take any great time out of them. So much good music, you can't go wrong. What's the first one? The first one is Festi Romana by Raspighi, a very much neglected composer. But I think it's a wonderful piece of arranging and composing here.

Spike Milligan1:11

Uh

Speaker 31:11

I didn't take it.

Presenter2:25

The opening of Respighi's First E Romani

Presenter2:28

Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter2:32

Spike, it's a well-known historical fact that you were born in India. Your Indian race.

Spike Milligan2:36

Originally.

Presenter2:38

Well it was contemporary, never mind.

Spike Milligan2:38

Close.

Presenter2:39

Uh

Presenter2:42

Your Indian roots went back several generations. Did they? Well, you tell me. Yes, they went back to about uh I know that uh an a grandfather kettlepan was at the Delhi gate when they blew it in.

Spike Milligan2:47

Tell me.

Presenter2:56

When was that? 1850? 1850, yes, about 1850, I think. Mutiny is about 1851, wasn't it, 52, like that. And your first school was in a tent? Yes, a military uh a sergeant in a tent in the Hyderabad Sindh desert it was. We had to sit on the tent pegs when the wind blew up. We each had a tent peg to sit on to hold it down.

Presenter3:14

How old were you when you came to England?

Presenter3:16

Uh but

Presenter3:18

Fourteen.

Presenter3:19

Did it look like home or did it look cold and grey? It looked cold and grey and awful and terrible and it still does. Uh you get used to it, just like uh if you've always had bare feet. Even a terrible pair of boots you can get used to in the end.

Spike Milligan3:21

Cowl and grey.

Presenter3:32

Have you been back to India? I should find it overwhelming nostalgia. It would destroy me,'cause everything is gone that I used to know and love.

Presenter3:39

Now you were here at fourteen. What did you want to be as a schoolboy? Did you want to keep up the army tradition? What did you want to do? I wanted to be a fighter pilot.

Speaker 33:44

I wanted to

Presenter3:46

And uh we came to England for that reason in mind and uh I sat for the exam at Kingsway and I I failed because uh uh I was helpless at mathematics. But strangely enough, when the war came on and they were getting shot down left, right and centre, I suddenly received a communicate from the RF saying we are we are rethinking about you uh joining the Air Force and we think you'd make a splendid uh rear gunner.

Presenter4:08

And I wrote back and said, No, I don't want to be a regular. I want to see what's coming at the front, you know.

Spike Milligan4:08

I wrote back and said

Presenter4:13

What was your first job? What did you do? I worked at Stone's Engineering Work, Deptford, for thirteen shillings a week, getting my hands trapped in a Miller Six machine, making little round plugs for some water pumps. You were also playing trumpet in a dance band? Yeah.

Presenter4:28

That's a good terse answer, isn't it? Yes. Yes. That's the end of it. Well, then you got swept up in the war before you'd really started anything. Um Gunner Milligan of the Royal Artillery at the Becks Hill Girls' School. That's right, yes. Mm-hmm. We unfortunately got there just after they'd left.

Spike Milligan4:28

That's a good terse answer, isn't it? Yeah. Yes. That's the end of it.

Spike Milligan4:37

Yeah.

Presenter4:43

It's never the same. Well, you had a rather pointless barrack room life for about three years before anything much happened, but it did improve your trumpet play, didn't it? Yeah, we played great jazz in those days. Well, swing. It was really called swing. It was the era of uh Bunny Berrigan and Harry James was the sort of last of the swing trumpet players uh who survived. And you won a a contest? Believe it or not, yes. Harry Parry had the Radio Rhythm Club. Yes. And he advertised for musicians who'd like to sit and come up to London, Maydevale Studios, and to have a contest. So I I won the trumpet thing and uh and uh the chap on the piano was George Shearing. And we cut a disc there at May develop studios. And I often wonder what happened to it, you know. It was broadcast, wasn't it?

Presenter5:24

I don't know. Radio Rhythm Club or something? I don't know if they're broadcast this particular disc. I don't don't know. Well, if anybody's got that disc, you'd like to hear about it. I would like to hear about it, yes.

Speaker 35:33

Uh

Presenter5:33

Yeah.

Speaker 35:33

Uh

Presenter5:34

In the meantime, your second record. My second record. Jesse Owens doing the hundred yards at the birth. My second one is A Woman of Ireland by The Chieftains. I think it was composed especially for the film Barry Lyndon.

Presenter6:48

Women of Ireland. Why did you choose that in particular, Spike? Well, I have latent Celtic roots.

Presenter6:54

They seem hanging out sometimes. I just felt it was terribly Irish and I was delighted to think that somebody could write such an Irish tune as that in the twentieth century. Good luck, Sean.

Spike Milligan7:05

Shawnee.

Presenter7:08

God bless, God bless all here, sir. Right. Irish woman got into bed with us and said to him, I've set the alarm clock for six. She said, Why? There's only two of us.

Spike Milligan7:09

Uh

Spike Milligan7:10

I agree.

Presenter7:19

It's getting worse. Um Terence Allen Patrick, who started calling you Spike? Uh in the gunners, in the army. It's a traditional name for milligans. I presume so. I don't know. It's completely mine's another guy called Spike Deans in in the record as well. In those days in Becks Hill with nothing much to do, uh you and your mates began to evolve a a new and rather desperate type of humor.

Speaker 37:26

Yeah.

Spike Milligan7:32

Right now

Presenter7:41

Yes, it was the I think the seeds of the g the this Gunia was certainly implemented itself then, yes. Where did the word Goon come from? Uh from the Popeye cartoon at the time.

Presenter7:51

Popeye had these long creatures called goons, who had no faces, just two eyes, and they had torx bubbles with rubbish inside, you know. Well then nineteen forty three, North Africa, life got real and earnest and very dangerous. You were wounded. I haven't wounded North Africa, no. You'll blown out, won't you?

Spike Milligan8:05

Yeah.

Speaker 38:05

Uh

Presenter8:08

What you mean, like a balloon or what? No, I was blown up in Italy. You were blown up in Italy. Yes, afternoon. I came down again. Yes. Had to, you know. Yes, just as well.

Spike Milligan8:12

You're blown up in Italy.

Presenter8:18

Apart from getting better, what were you planning to do after the war? Well the chap was uh teaching a chap the law of gravity at school, and he couldn't get it this year. He said, Well, I'll tell you what the law of gravity is. He said, Stand over there and jump up and down. So the chap jumped up and down. He said, Now, did you see what happened? And he said, You jumped up in there, but you had to come down to earth again. Now, why? He said, Well, uh, because I lived there.

Speaker 38:20

Yeah.

Spike Milligan8:20

Don't know what

Presenter8:37

You can't vault it, can you? No, no. What were you going to say, Ro, I'm sorry. I said, apart from getting better, what were you planning to do after the war?

Spike Milligan8:39

No, no, no. I'm sorry.

Presenter8:44

Nothing at all. I took it by the day. I think I had a feeling I wanted to be a a leader of a big uh swinging band, trumpet, and pa wear a white jacket and have a red carnation. You travelled round Europe for a bit with a band?

Presenter8:57

Yes, we formed a hot club de France sort of trio and we did comedy on the stage and we were we were a big hit with the troops at the end of the war and uh we after the war we toured with an Italian company, the Revista Company.

Presenter9:09

And uh Hugo Tognazzi, the contemporary Italian actor, he was the comic on the show, yes. And bit by bit I drifted into writing at most house. What did you write for a start? Oh, checks.

Spike Milligan9:17

Uh

Speaker 39:17

What

Presenter9:22

Well, I wrote bits and pieces for Peter Sellers and Alfred Marks and Harry Seacombe. Yes. Yes, you were never particular about the company you kept. There was that little drinking club just opposite the Windmill Theatre full of comedians. Yeah, Papa, I didn't drink though at the things. I used to go up there because I fancy the bird behind the bar. I've never had any money, and she used to lend it to me. Yes, but that was where the Goon Show was born, really, in that room, wasn't it? Not really. It was anywhere. I don't know where it was born, really. How did it start? It can't have been easier to have sold that anarchic form of humour to the BBC. How did it happen? Well, it's a very fine man, not many people know, called Pat Dixon, who was a bit of an avant-garde revolutionary. He had the Dixie rebel flag behind his desk, and he got it through the back door. And he fought for it.

Spike Milligan9:57

Don't worry.

Spike Milligan10:02

The engine

Spike Milligan10:04

And he fought.

Presenter10:05

Yes, he did. He put it on, against all the wishes of everybody, I think.

Presenter10:10

Let's have another record. What, number three? Uh, number three. No. Um De Bussy is one of my favorite composers uh'cause he's a miniaturist, like does things in small little packets. And I like his hombateaux, which I believe he wrote for his daughter.

Presenter11:26

Debussies Om Bateau, John Ogden, and Brenda Lucas.

Presenter11:31

How many programmes were there of The Goon Show altogether?

Presenter11:35

I don't know. It must have been over 150, I think. You must have pretty well written yourself out on that. It was a terrific chalk.

Spike Milligan11:37

Uh

Presenter11:41

Well, that's why I stopped. I thought I can't go on like this. You'd done all the work, but um Peter and Harry soared up to international stardom, leaving you a bit behind. Did that worry you at the time? Yes, it did. When it all finished, I was sort of an unemployed scriptwriter. And Peter, of course, had done well in the the film world and Harry had done well on the stage. And I had no confidence at all. I still have very very l lack of confidence. And I thought I'd got to do something. So um

Spike Milligan11:45

Yeah.

Presenter12:10

I thought, I think I'm a good clown. I thought I must be a good clown, and I'm going to push myself. So we did this play called Oblomov, which was terrible. So I ad-libbed the whole thing, and it became a great hit in London. Well, you've diversified and and made a success of all those jobs I listed at the beginning. I'm a clown, really, though. I think I'm a jobbing clown. That's what I am.

Presenter12:29

Another record.

Presenter12:30

McCartney, I find one of the most um beguiling commercial singers. He doesn't try anything awkward, his voice haunting, and uh it's at its best singing uh his composition Yesterday.

Speaker 412:44

Yesterday

Speaker 412:47

Dove was such an easy game to play.

Speaker 412:52

I need a place to hide away Oh I believe in yesterday

Presenter13:10

Yesterday. Yes, um yesterday Someone came and took the cat away.

Presenter13:17

Alright, don't go and refuse. It's a good song.

Spike Milligan13:18

Yeah.

Presenter13:20

Which is beautiful.

Presenter13:21

You wrote Oblomov, opened up a new career for yourself as a as as as an actor. Actor.

Presenter13:28

It's funny that nobody ever asked me to appear in pantomime or to come and act on the stage. Nothing at all. I've always wanted to be in a pantomime. I'm a good clown. I love children. You've been in Treasure Island? Yes, that was the no not a pantomime exactly, it's it was a play. Yes, right. And you've written other plays yourself?

Presenter13:45

No, I wrote the bed sitting room. Bed sitting room, right? That's what I was thinking.

Spike Milligan13:46

That's the one I was thinking.

Presenter13:49

And your books, all sorts of books. Your splendid three volume war autobiography Adolf Hitler, my part in his downfall, Crash, Rommel, Gunnah, Gunaho, and Monty, his part in my victory. It's all gonna be all right, Milligan.

Presenter14:04

Are you going to write uh a trilogy about your um uh peace-time trilogy? Four-volume trilogy. I haven't finished it. I've just written the fourth volume. Of the war time. Yes, called Good Die Soldier.

Spike Milligan14:08

Yeah.

Speaker 314:08

Plaza

Spike Milligan14:08

Four volume two.

Presenter14:14

Splendid Wednesday coming up.

Presenter14:16

I don't know. I've just finished to pan the manuscript and to be typed.

Presenter14:20

And then there have been novels. Pakoon was the first, was it? Yes. And the last.

Speaker 314:23

And the last

Presenter14:24

Really? Haven't you done another novel? No, I haven't. I just started one the other day called The King.

Spike Milligan14:26

No, I haven't. I just

Presenter14:29

Yeah.

Presenter14:30

And books of verse, children's books, animal books. Yeah. And you've had a one-man exhibition of your paintings.

Presenter14:37

I remember the first painting of yours I ever saw. It was at an exhibition at the Leicester Square Cinema in the in the foyer, and this one was called Painting Done with Knife and Fork. I thought it was very, very good indeed. It was done with a knife and fork. I wanted to see if you could paint with a knife and fork, and so I dipped it in and painted. Did you sell it? No, I c couldn't sell it.

Spike Milligan14:49

I want to

Presenter14:56

And of course you pop up in a television show occasionally. Yes. How long did they take you to do? To write. Well, I'll write in conjunction with Neil Shand. When he turns up we write together. And uh

Presenter15:09

It takes a couple of months to knock it off, you know. What we try to do is to write original ideas, to infuse new ideas to television. It's easy to write sort of stand-up comic joke ones, you know, just straightforward sketches. We try to put our ideas like, for instance, two chaps walk in and say, this looks like a good place for a sketch. And they knock on an invisible door. And a chap comes up and these chaps at the door have got stocking masks over their faces and they're wearing clerical clothes, vicar's collars. And the chap says, Who are you? and he says, We're Jehovah burglars. And he says, We're being persecuted for our beliefs. He said, What do you believe? He said, We believe you've got a lot of money in here. That's mad things like that. Do you act the stuff out when you write it?

Speaker 315:42

Ursus

Spike Milligan15:42

Uh

Presenter15:52

Yes, but it always seems to get mutilated to the process of going through a large organization. Uh we don't get enough time and I want everyone to know this to these shows that we do, they're too complicated. We actually often go to air without actually having run through the whole show in costume and with the props. We've actually run out of time and uh I don't think that they're going to make any progress in comedy on a visual level. I'm talking about visual comedy, making visual pictures, original visual pictures, unless they give more time to a show. Another record. Another record. Yes, ah, Ashostakovich Sixth Symphony, Last Movement.

Presenter17:27

The opening of the last movement of the Shostakovich Sixth Symphony, played by the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra. Why did you choose that spot? Well, it's amazing. In an age of brutalism, to find a man who has all the seeds of the romantic school of music, with a tremendous almost with the breadth of Mahler's feeling, all combined in one. I can still love his music. It's still romantic. And that last movement is very jolly, I found.

Speaker 317:33

But

Presenter17:50

You talked about brutalism. You're a man with many causes. You've taken up cudgels against a lot of brutalism and idiocy.

Presenter17:58

Which causes are most precious to you at this moment? The one which I found one I'm most concerned about is world population. And that's the one which least work is being done on. I mean, the the earth is a lifeboat. There's enough room for so many people in a lifeboat. And nobody's piloting this lifeboat in in any sensible form at the moment. They're just taking passengers on board all the time. It'll sink.

Spike Milligan18:13

Yeah.

Presenter18:20

You're a conservationist above all. Yes, I want to live a long time.

Presenter18:24

Okay.

Presenter18:26

And you became a vegetarian because of that? Yes, I did. I went and saw what was happening to these awful chicken broiler farms that they have dat and pigs, the way they put them in batteries. I was horrified. There's one admirable gesture of yours. When some louts defaced some wood carvings in Kensington Gardens, you spent months re-carving them. And now some louts have defaced them again. Is it worth going on? Are you going to do it again? I think the spirit of man must go on, yes. I think I broke my heart when I saw it being mutilated the week after we'd spent three years repairing it. But what was more heartbreaking is when I wrote to the minister and said, look.

Spike Milligan18:45

Uh

Spike Milligan18:49

Do we have

Presenter19:01

You can catch these louts. They come in after dark. You only need a policeman on duty at this point for three or four nights at the top and you'll catch them. If not, put up high railings. They ignored both. They eventually did put the railings up long after the tree had been mutilated to a degree which I thought was obscene. Let's get back to music. What's number six? It's The Shadow of Your Smile, sung by who I think is the best down-the-line singer of our day, Frank Sinatra. The Shadow of Your Smile.

Presenter19:32

When you

Presenter19:36

I've gone

Presenter19:43

Will colour all my dreams

Presenter19:48

And lie

Presenter19:52

The Dawn.

Presenter19:57

Frank Sinatra

Presenter19:59

We've dumped him on this island, which isn't a bad island. It's got fresh water, it's got sunshine.

Presenter20:05

How are you going to be at survival? Could you look after yourself? Yeah, great. You could build a hut? Yeah, do the lot, man. Really am really I'm a good survivor. Would you try to escape?

Presenter20:14

No, I'd try to attract people's attention, I think. Any ideas on that? No, no, I don't I have no idea. Uh it it I don't I don't think man can live entirely on his own, uh forever, even though Ro uh Alec Dala Selcock did it to a great degree. I think eventually um you'd get haunted by being on your own. I think you'd become impossible to live with, like all of us.

Presenter20:38

Record number seven. Number seven? Ah, this is um

Presenter20:42

Greek, one from his lyric suite, which I I believe he wrote for his wife as a wedding present. I might right or wrong. It's The Shepherd Boy.

Presenter21:50

Shepherd's Boy from Grieg's Lyric Suite, and Stanley Black was conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, and we've now come to your last disc.

Presenter21:57

Sounds like a spinal job, doesn't it? Your last dish.

Presenter22:02

Ed Welsh, a friend of mine, was a wonderful composer, and he wrote a theme for a record we made. The theme is the the Snow Goose theme, which I find delightful.

Presenter23:06

The Snow Ghost theme from

Presenter23:08

The recording that you've made of Paul Gallico's The Snow Goose, and some of the music on this disc you composed yourself. This is your debut as a. Oh, shut, you shouldn't have said that, John.

Presenter23:19

If you could only take one disc out of the lot, which would it be?

Presenter23:23

Yesterday. And one luxury to take to the island, will you? A Barclay card.

Presenter23:28

A Barclay card? Yeah. With a view to what? Well, I mean, well, I've got a Barclay card there, and now I'm saving money.

Spike Milligan23:28

Yeah.

Presenter23:33

It's a nice philosophy. Right, and one book.

Presenter23:38

The Bible and Shakespeare are already on the island. You mustn't take a big encyclopedia, but any one book you like.

Presenter23:43

I think I'll take the rent book.

Presenter23:46

Yeah.

Spike Milligan23:46

Is that very

Speaker 323:47

No.

Spike Milligan23:47

Uh

Presenter23:48

Uh I'd take Future Shock by Alvin Toffler. Yes, Future Shock by Alvin Toffler. What's it about? It's about three hundred pages, I think.

Presenter23:59

It's a it's just predicting what the course of the world might be like, what a hellhole it might be if we carry on eating the earth alive as we are. It says you've got to conserve the energy of the earth, and uh what eats the energy is people. Less people, more energy left.

Spike Milligan24:04

Uh here.

Presenter24:16

And as a painter, would you like to choose one picture to take with you? Starry Night Over Arles by Vincent van Gogh. Where is it, do you know? Oh, I haven't got it. No. No, I think it's in the Je Dipaum Museum in Paris. In Paris. Well, if it isn't, there's a lot of worried people in that museum, baby.

Speaker 324:30

It isn't.

Presenter24:35

Well, thank you, Spike Milligan, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discord. Well, I did enjoy it, Roy. It's marvellous.

Spike Milligan24:38

Yeah.

Spike Milligan24:40

Yeah.

Presenter24:41

Come back again. Come and see us again. Oh, yes, you invite me again in another 18 years' time, like you did this time. Right. Bye-bye, Roy.

Spike Milligan24:42

Oh, yes, you're not.

Spike Milligan24:47

Bye.

Presenter24:48

And keep taking those tablets, won't you? Goodbye, everyone. And that includes you.

Spike Milligan25:02

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.