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.
We met later and that meeting proved to be the seed which turned out, over the years, to become Hyde Park. I came to know Spike fairly well and a few weeks after that we rented an office, five floors above a greengrocer’s shop in Shepherd’s Bush. It’s difficult to believe we turned up every day in suits and collars and ties. We were almost a registered company and trying to behave like one. Spike and I, with Frankie Howerd, named the company Associated London Scripts [ALS]. The aim was to corner the market in scriptwriters. That office over the greengrocer’s shop saw probably some of the happiest days of my life. I was newly married and lived in Holland Villas Road which was just round the corner. It suited me down to the ground, and the office became the centre of attraction for many jewels of our profession – Gilbert Harding, Irene Handl and her two pet dogs, Gretzel and Pretzel. They were little things, one under each of her arms, and we could hear her stopping on every landing to catch her breath, or possibly it was the dogs that were tired.
NORMA: It was such a pleasure to see Eric’s enjoyment, recalling the obviously happy times he shared with Spike. They lunched together every day at Bertorelli’s which was just across the road. Shepherd’s Bush was a busy metropolis and crossing the road was hazardous so they took it in turns to limp, and the other one to help the limper across the road. The traffic always stopped and as soon as they got to the other side they marched to their lunch like members of the Household Cavalry. Next door to Bertorelli’s was a funeral director’s where, in a now legendary scene, Spike knocked on the door and then lay on the pavement and shouted ‘Shop!’
Eric at that time was writing Educating Archie and Spike, who had now progressed from Crazy People to The Goon Show, was busy with his new creation, but they were still in the same office, sitting back to back. Spike had a typewriter and Eric was usually on the telephone. They had a ‘hilarious time’, but you can’t spend all your life laughing. Spike was writing a Goon Show a week and the pressure was taking its toll. By this time, Eric noticed the change in Spike. He was very drawn and tired and he asked Eric if he would write some of the Goon Shows with him.