Spike An Intimate Memoir, page 9
I knew he was emerging from a depression as soon as a note appeared on his door. It meant he was preparing to come back into the world. It would say, “Leave me alone,” or something else, less polite.
Then he would come out of his office, his whole appearance changed, with large purple bags hanging over his cheek bones, his body hunched and his gait unsure. The next stage would be a curt, nasty, “Why do you keep me unemployed?” But I always shrugged it off.
Chapter Seven
On 7 November 1968 Spike wrote in his diary, “I should shoot her.” I got married the following day. To me he said, “Keep your own flat and let him keep his. You’ve been very happy for nearly a year together. Don’t cock it up.”
John Hyman was everything I considered I was not: educated, professional, liberal and only too ready to agree that there were grey areas which needed to be discussed on most topics. He was quite different from Spike, who shared a number of liberal ideas with him, but did so vehemently leaving little room for argument. John seemed well-balanced and reliable. He was an extremely successful solicitor, with offices in Harrow and Regent Street, and did not expect me to give up the job I enjoyed.
I was so busy that sometimes I wonder how I fitted a private life around it. We met on New Year’s Eve. I was dating a BBC director but he was in Scotland and snowed in. A friend dragged me out to a party in Pinner and I was immediately charmed by him.
We did not follow Spike’s advice and moved in together. Spike’s version of married life was not an example I wanted to follow. There was no doubting Spike and Paddy’s tremendous mutual attraction. Within minutes of meeting he told her, “I’m going to marry you.” But their relationship oscillated between tender love and furious rows. They would argue, she would not give in, he would accuse her of being an iceberg and then move into Number Nine. As well as his office he had a large sitting room on the next floor up. It was furnished in the style beloved of Edwardian gentlemen, with a fireplace, deep armchairs, oil lamps and walls lined with bookshelves. Once he had taken up residence he would greet me in the morning and still be there when I left at night.
During these periods he always asked if Paddy had phoned, just as he would when he was in a depression. She would not sit in at home, however, as Spike thought she should, but went out with friends. I am certain she never had an affair. Which is more than could be said of him, although he loved her very much. She did not only have to deal with Spike’s depressions; when he was living at Number Nine Spike would also spend time with what I came to call the Bayswater Harem. He did not try to hide it from me, indeed he claimed he had slept with three leading ladies during one theatre run. He was not the first man who thought there was one rule for him and another for his wife, but if you had asked him he would have professed a complete belief in a faithful marriage. Once I asked him, straight out, what he was up to. He gazed at me sadly out of his blue Irish eyes. “Oh, Norma. I’m sleeping with some of them. One day I’ll pay for my sins.” He had not entirely forgotten his Catholic upbringing.
There seemed to be anything between half a dozen and a dozen women in the harem at any given time. While he embraced the sexual emancipation of the Sixties and Seventies and enjoyed cocking a snook at authority, Spike still lived part of his life according to Victorian values. He always stood when a woman entered a room, helped her into a chair, arranged corsages when they were his guests at dinner and insisted on paying their taxi fares home. Nearly all his intimate girlfriends were friendly with one another and few seemed jealous about taking their turn in his bed. He seemed to have the knack of persuading them that there was nothing unusual about such an arrangement.
Spike’s love life was his business and I was determined not to sit in judgement. To paraphrase Johnny Speight, he did not trouble me and I did not trouble him. I soon got to know Liz Cowley, his long-standing girlfriend, a diminutive, bubbly and highly intelligent Canadian journalist who became Deputy Producer of the BBC current affairs flagship programme, Tonight. She was at least his intellectual equal and great fun. Sometimes he found it difficult to cope with her independence. Because she did the same as him and slept with other partners he also considered her amoral. It takes a man to work that one out. She never showed the slightest jealousy and I think that irked him more than he liked to admit. I always thought she was ideally suited to him. They continued to meet until two years before his death. Spike would say to me, “Ssh. I’m in town because you need to see me.” Then came a grin and a wink.
He and Liz first met when she was working for Reveille, an armed forces orientated newspaper, which wanted a feature on The Goon Show. There was an immediate attraction, he said, and he invited her to dinner, the first of scores. He told me he could never understand why she enjoyed their conversations. “She’s a real highbrow – went to university and I didn’t.” The lack of formal education was something that bugged him all his life. I reminded him that his friend, Robert Graves, had written that Spike was “the most educated uneducated man” he had met.
His response was vintage Milligan: “What fucking good is that?”
Another of his girlfriends was Roberta Watt, also a Canadian journalist. She was tall and statuesque like Paddy, in contrast to Liz. Roberta committed the gravest of all sins as far as I was concerned: she fell in love with him. Fatal. I warned him about it but I think her devotion fed his ego. In an effort to prevent things going too far I took her aside and warned her of his black moods, volatile temperament and other girlfriends, of his devotion to his children and belief in marriage. I might as well have been speaking Urdu. She vowed that she wanted to protect and devote her life to him. Apparently, no doubt in the aftermath of one of their rows, Spike had told her that Paddy made him ill. That is as may be, I told Roberta, but he still loves her. She would not accept that he did and confided she would like to have his child. I was horrified.
“It would mean the end of the relationship,” I said, sure it would bring her up short. I was satisfied it had when I heard no more of such nonsense, and he continued to see her just as he did his other girlfriends.
Spike also had out of town girlfriends, even out of the country girlfriends in Australia. These he generally saw when he was on tour. One such was Margaret Maughan, based in Northumberland. Although she claimed to be his mistress she never was, not unless you counted all the other girlfriends as mistresses.
As well as becoming privy to his intimate affairs Spike introduced me to many of his friends, including Sir John Betjeman. Spike and he had a mutual admiration for each other’s work and accepted their respective eccentricities. Another great British eccentric was Vivian Stanshall, of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. I think their shows reminded him of his days with the crazy Bill Hall Trio. Vivian was outrageous and having dinner with him and Spike was like sitting on top of an unexploded bomb. Spike admired him for not giving a damn about anyone or anything and related with wonder the experience of a hotel manager who had gently reminded Vivian and his band that guests were expected to wear ties in the dining room. They were only too ready to oblige and returned, wearing nothing else.
When Tony Blair used the phrase “Cool Britannia”, Spike retorted, “How bloody old hat. Vivian coined that way back in ’67.” The proof is there as it was the title of a track on one of his albums.
The brilliance and diversity of the guests that joined us at the Trattoo was dazzling. The evening after I met Vivian we dined with Edgar Lustgarten, a brilliant author who read stories on radio and television. Before Spike left the office to record a discussion programme with Lustgarten at BBC Radio’s Paris studio (in London) I mentioned that I had always been a fan, and being Spike he invited him to have dinner with us afterwards. Edgar was a generation older than him and his was a brilliant brand of straight-faced humour. Two more dissimilar characters would be difficult to find, but one was the flint to the other’s stone and as an audience of one I was dazzled by the sparks of the evening.
A more enduring relationship began within a year or two of my starting to work for Spike. Most years Spike would go to work in Australia and fit in a visit to his parents at their house on the coast at Woy Woy. His mother Florence, or Grandma as I always called her, often came to visit him in the U.K. and she became my very good friend.
Grandma’s first letter to me set the tone for those that followed over the next twenty years, containing confidences she knew I would keep. Because I looked after her son she started to refer to me as “my adopted daughter”. Our letters, often hysterically funny without meaning to be, continued until a week or so before she died. She did not rely completely on the international mail service but always wrote “S.A.G.” on the top left corner of the envelope to make sure I received them.
“What do the initials stand for, Grandma?” I asked.
“Saint Anthony’s Guide, of course.”
Alongside “S.A.G.” was generally written “Strictly Private and Confidential”. That was because of references she made to her son – who was to her always Terry – and his family, often far from complimentary. Despite displays of temperament when Grandma was present Spike adored her and she worshipped him. Their love was unconditional and never-ending, which is not to say she could not become his enemy. He could rant “even my own mother” etc. when she disagreed with him. She could be indiscreet and would often become incensed by what she perceived as the “freeloaders” and “scroungers” who paid court to Spike. As a devout Roman Catholic she could find much to disapprove of in her son.
I made sure neither Spike nor his family ever read her letters. Because he showered presents, cars, flats and money on his children Grandma bracketed them with the “scroungers”. If they were hers, she often declared, they would be made to get jobs and keep themselves. I believe he was so generous to them out of a sense of guilt, as he never forgave himself for the break-up of his marriage to June. Although Grandma always ended her letters with thanks for caring for “my troubled son” and she knew he was a depressive, she chose to ignore it. Probably this was because she was a no-nonsense sort of woman, fearing nothing and no one. “Everything can be overcome”, she claimed, “except death.” She demonstrated this by surviving cancer in her eighties and lived to be ninety-six.
I sometimes wondered whether his family background had anything to do with his mental state. If Leo was a fantasist Florence was certainly a one-off. Until she died she always dressed Ascot style for the Melbourne Cup race meeting but never actually went to it. Instead, in all her glory, she watched it on television. “What could be more natural?” she asked those who commented.
She was a tall, commanding woman. After I met her for the first time I remarked to Spike, “If I had a vision of one woman who built the British Empire it would be your mother.” Over the years I grew to love her and looked forward to having her to stay. Spike viewed her visits with more mixed feelings. On the one hand he was delighted she could be with him for a few months, but on the other he was apprehensive because of the rows that inevitably occurred. She always spent two weeks or so with me both to be nearer the shops and to have “a bit of peace and quiet away from Terry and that chaotic house.” Despite that her devotion to him was total, probably because they were so alike.
I had wonderful times with Grandma. She had such a personality and sense of humour that it was easy to forget she was an octogenarian. She said the first thing that came into her mind, embarrassingly so at times, and once started on any subject would not shut up, no matter who was present or within hearing. Like mother, like son.
Whenever she stayed with me I had to drive her to church for confession.
“Grandma,” I once asked, “what have you to confess at your age?”
“You’re getting just like Terry.”
We went out to dinner with my friends, visited the theatre, and best of all had dinners in the flat when we talked and talked. She liked a sherry or two or three before dinner and then moved on to her favourite wine, Mateus Rosé. She would always try to persuade me to have a glass. When I insisted on Chablis she remarked that I did not know what I was missing. She was a great raconteur and told stories of the amazing life she had shared with Grandpa, of their time in India and Burma, the long voyages back to England on leaves, and the occasion she and the family were shipwrecked. Her voice was worthy of her sergeant major father and could be heard even when she was murmuring a confidence.
If someone asked me what Grandma was like I replied, “Like Spike multiplied by ten.” But she was more fun because she did not have his darker side. I miss her to this day and have kept many of the cards and letters she sent over twenty years.
One day when she came to see me at Number Nine Spike threw a tantrum. This time it was to do with a filming sequence for Q5, the first of the long-running series of comedy sketch shows he wrote with Neil Shand for the BBC. As usual the people he dealt with at the Beeb were idiots. Whenever he asked for a prop it was either wrong or they could not produce it.
“They don’t understand me or my work.”
After this outburst he charged to his office upstairs. I could tell Grandma was about to remonstrate with him but advised her not to interfere. That was tantamount to ordering a volcano not to erupt. A few moments later Spike threw his typewriter down the stairs. Grandma’s face was stern. She rose from her chair.
“I’ll go upstairs and have a word with that young man.” (Spike was then in his fifties.) I persuaded her not to and went up to deal with him. I knew from experience that he would eventually tire himself out, lock the door and go to sleep and by the time he emerged Tanis and I would be refreshed and ready to deal with him. I listened at his door. Everything was quiet so I went back and told Grandma that the emergency was over. I was wrong. He marched back down after me and, oblivious to his mother, started ranting. “Please God make me anything. Make me stupid, but please God, never mediocre.” Grandma could take the exhortation to God but not what followed. “Not like all those stupid bastards I have to deal with at the BBC.” She made to rise so I said quickly, “Grandma and I are going to the park to see the Elfin Oak. If you want to join us there …”
He burst out of the office and ran upstairs. Grandma pursed her lips. “It grieves me to see and hear what you have to put up with.” She sighed. “But you know he loves you. He’s very tortured, you know.” I was about to reassure her that I understood Spike when she stiffened and stared. I followed her gaze to the photographs by my desk. There were several of Spike, Johnny, Tommy Cooper and Eric, but one she did not recognize.
“Who’s that?”
“Another tortured soul. Anthony Hopkins. A great actor. I admire him so much.”
Doubt spread across her face.
“He’s got a drink problem. Like Spike, he has his demons, but his marvellous talent will out.”
“You wouldn’t leave my son to look after him, would you?”
“Tony’s in good hands – and I’m not about to leave Spike.”
She smiled. “That’s all right then.”
Later we went to the Trattoo and joined a much calmer Spike for dinner. Beforehand we had drinks and listened to Alan playing brilliantly. He was the consummate jazz pianist, imposing complex rhythms, extemporizing and endlessly inventing as he glided from one key to another. He may have taught piano and composition but Grandma was undaunted.
“You played a bum note there, Alan,” she boomed.
Spike laughed. Nothing his mother did could shock him. Alan smiled.
“You’re right, Grandma.”
“No matter. I’ll play for you when we’ve had dinner.”
Alan concealed a wince. Grandma’s playing was of the exuberant variety, born no doubt of the necessity of making her music audible to occasionally noisy military audiences, and he guarded his piano jealously from what he termed “thumpers”. But nothing could have stopped Grandma. After we had eaten she relieved Alan of the piano stool and banged out some of the old evergreens. The day ended enjoyably for everyone, except possibly Alan.
As the day approached for her return to stay with Spike, she suggested the three of us should have dinner together at the Trattoo. “We’ll have a pleasant evening with no tension.”
That will be a first, I thought.
During the meal she said, “When I went to church on Sunday I lit a candle for your friend Anthony and I’ll light another and say prayers for him in my beautiful church in Woy Woy.”
Spike sat up quickly and gave me a knowing look. “So who’s your friend Anthony? And what’s he been up to that he needs a candle?”
With as much dignity as I could muster I told him about my hero, Anthony Hopkins. It was no surprise to me that he had not noticed Anthony’s photograph. He laughed, mockingly. “Well, I wonder what he thinks about Mother lighting candles all over the world for him?” Then he started to giggle. “Somewhere in the States your hero is in some bar or other, smashed out of his mind and wondering how he’s going to end up. And then suddenly he knows everything is going to be all right because all over the world Spike Milligan’s mother is lighting candles and saying prayers for him.” He dissolved into hysterical laughter. Grandma was furious.
“Don’t you ridicule my faith, Terry.” She was very much on her dignity. After a few minutes’ silence she looked at Spike. “I shan’t be going back with you tonight as planned. I’ll go back with Norma.” So our tension-free evening ended with plenty of it. Grandma, like her son, never surrendered.
Late in 1968 Spike had an idea for a television series, but as he was writing Q5 as well as performing in it he did not have the time to take it any further. The series took a comical slant on racism in the U.K. and featured a Pakistani, played by Spike, who worked in a joke factory in a northern town. Eric Sykes was the boss trying hard to be kind, but with opposition from a black man, played by Kenny Lynch, who did not want “the likes of them coloured here”. Spike asked Johnny Speight to write it and the first meeting took place between Eric, Spike and Johnny, on New Year’s Day, 1969. Everyone was enthusiastic and I arranged an appointment with Frank Muir, then Programme Controller with London Weekend Television (LWT). He thought it was terrific and so Curry and Chips was born.
