Unseen footage of Spike Milligan’s Irish father from a vast undiscovered archive of the comedian’s life work is set to feature in a new documentary.
Have I Got News For You star Ian Hislop refers to the freshly archived material in a library near Milligan’s old home in Finchley as a “treasure trove”.
A children’s play and a script on an over-the-hill comic star are among the unmade scripts in the vast archive accessed by the filmmakers for the upcoming documentary on the comic genius who created the Goon Show.
The grandfather of modern comedy was born in India on April 16, 1918, to a Sligo-born father and an English mother but he always held an Irish passport.
One of the film reels featured in the new Sky Arts documentary, Spike Milligan: The Unseen Archive, contains footage of Milligan with his Irish father, Leo, and his mother, Florence, on Australian television.
They emigrated to Australia in the 50s after returning to England from Bombay when Spike Milligan was a teenager.
“I’ve never seen this footage”, said his daughter Jane looking at her father being interviewed with his proud parents.
“He was a real good mixture of grandma and grandpa. Leo and Florence, performers, lunatics”, she laughs adding “they were quite eccentric.”
In another interview, Spike is seen saying his father was a “soldier showman” and “frustrated actor”. “His father put him in the army when he was 14.”
In Bombay where his father was stationed, the documentary uncovers posters advertising Leo and his wife Florence in starring roles in Vaudeville shows.
“They were dancers and entertainers and did really vaudevillian musical style performance”, said Jane Milligan.
“Grandpa was an excellent horseman and rode on horses backward and my grandma was a sharpshooter and they did all that revolving guns. Hysterically funny.”
In Milligan’s interview with his parents on Australia’s ABC show, which features in the Sky Arts documentary, his mother recalled her son being at the side of a stage in a pram when they were performing.
In the documentary, comedians, and friends of the comedic genius including Joanna Lumley and Eddie Izzard sift through the papers and tape reels now housed in London.
Milligan’s grandson, Hastie Harrower, said the family is glad to have gathered all the writing and recordings, and personal effects of the influential humourist who died in 2002 aged 83.
“After my granddad passed away his stuff was spread out through various places.
“Finally, now it has all been collected and brought to Finchley, near where he used to live, any existing library of his effects.
“From a cursory look through his libraries, a lot of this stuff hasn’t been seen before we found lots of old films, I found unpublished works, one called Rebecca.
“We found 244 reel-to-reels, sketches, and paintings I’ve never seen, 14 photo albums.”
Joanna Lumley said Milligan, who counted royalty and the Beatles among his friends, was a child at heart.
“Spike was adorable.
“He had a kind of Peter Pan quality he never really grew up, what a dream it was to have known him.”
One of his closest friends and best man at his wedding was Beatles producer, George Martin, who worked with the comedian before taking over the iconic band.
David Quantick, a comedy writer with Veep, believes Milligan indirectly influenced the sound of the Beatles.
“The connection between Spike Milligan and George Martin is incredibly close. They worked together in the 1960s in the Goon era. They were very good friends.
“There’s a very prevalent theory amongst Beatles fans that without the Goons, without Spike Milligan, the Beatles wouldn’t have sounded the same.
“With George Martin, it was like, ‘yes, let’s cut up all the tapes and throw them in the air, let’s have an audience cheering, let’s have chicken noise on this record because he’d done it all was by Milligan.”
His grandson, Hastie Harrower, said he never realised his grandfather suffered from manic depression until he was much older.
“Clearly he suffered a lot, I suppose maybe we didn’t see that as much as kids.”
In the documentary, Ian Hislop, who co-wrote a play about the Goon creator called Spike, picks up a red notebook dated ‘1953’ with writing on the front.
“‘This is the book I had when I was in the psychiatric ward and I went off my rocker’, reads Hislop holding a red notebook, “he always undercuts everything with humour, there is a cartoon with a nurse trying to bring him medication.”
His daughter Jane said she believes his creativity came out of his illness.
“Whatever the battlegrounds were, he was willing to fight them and they gave him some of his greatest work. His deepest agonies were where he found some incredible jewels.”
Spike Milligan: The Unseen Archive is released on 7 December, 9pm on Sky Arts.
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