This. He's got a milligansa he has
come to face for his king. Where have you been and why are
you wearing We are girls that would let me on the train naked,
Sir. You see, I missed the 814 full
frontal flyer. I mean, why aren't you in
uniform? Well, what would anybody say?
Silence. When you speak to a love star, I
spells you now off 3 months later, arriving.
Makeup printer I'll fight nights as well.
Hello and welcome to Goompod. If podcasts were poultry, this
would be the last Turkey in the shop.
My guest today is someone who I followed on Twitter for many
years and he's one of those rare people that I I've I've heard
nothing but good things about him.
He's possibly one of the nicest people on Twitter.
I I can't read one of his tweets without generally experiencing
kind of a warm fuzzy feeling because he's very enthusiastic
about all lots of stuff. Although this is the first time
the two of us have spoken, I already feel like I'm speaking
to an old friend. It's Walter Dunlop.
Hello, it's lovely to be here. Thank you very much for inviting
me. Not not a problem.
My pleasure. So I know that.
I know that you do have an interest, at least in the goons.
We're more or less the same generation and obviously not old
enough to have heard the goons on the radio in the 50s.
So how did you, how did you discover them?
It feels like I've almost always known them, but I would almost
certainly have caught repeats on radio in the early 80s.
But the big thing that got me was record libraries.
Everywhere I went, I've moved about the country quite a lot
and most of the places I went to, the first thing I would do
would be join the local library. And there was always a record
library there in the early 80s and there was stuffed full of
the old BBC records releases and I was just drawn in.
Must have borrowed one. And then I was hooked for life.
And then As. I'm sure with quite a lot of
people. I found a copy of the Goon Show
Companion in a charity shop, and that was me.
Lost for life really. And it's kind of expanded ever
since. Once you start digging into
everything that all of the goons have done, there's so much
there, so many riches to explore.
You can just spend the rest of your life wallowing, basically,
which I've pretty much done. A lot of my guests who are
roughly our age. You know they they discovered
the goons through parents, often the dad okay, but yeah, that
there are a number like yourself who discovered the goons
independently just through going to the local library and finding
the Lps or in some cases the cassettes.
Now do you think, particularly LPS, do you think that the
appeal to a youngster of one of the Goon Show classics LPS was
the covers with the cartoons? Very, very much so.
The Hunt Emerson covers, I mean, I don't know about you, but one
of the things that, you know, I always get about vinyl in
particular, and I'm, I'm sure I'm not alone in this, is when
you're listening to it, you study the vinyl, the cover
really, really intensely. And in my head, in quite a lot
of cases, those Hunt Emerson caricatures are the characters
in my head. Basically, and I think I'm quite
happy with that. Yeah, better.
More than the telly games, for God's sake.
Oh God, yeah. Yeah.
It's. I don't know if you ever wanted
an example of just how bad the uncanny valley can be.
Just watch an episode of the Telly games.
It's really quite unnerving. It is.
I'm going to be covering them in detail in a few months because
it's the 60th anniversary coming up.
Oh, excellent. Lucky you.
So OK and. What about the goons as solo
performers and Milligan sellers, That sort of thing.
I think it was bitten by Sellers, first of all, to be
quite honest, because Channel 4 used to specialize in doing
seasons of films devoted to one artist, a director or a
performer or whatever. And I've got a really clear
memory of basically suddenly discovering Peter Sellers at
some point in the mid 80s. It was like.
The Mouse That Roared. The Smallest Show on Earth.
I'm All Right, Jack That saw them all in about the space of
2-3 weeks And then well, Milligan's film career is well,
yes, yes, very much so. Oddly enough, a very, very good
friend was obsessed with the great Mcgonigal, so that was
probably the first one I saw. But.
Yeah, just Millikan just keeps popping up wherever you look.
TV as well. Obviously, it's every time you
think you've seen everything that he's done.
There he is again. And Harry was, well, I mean, I
don't know about anybody else, but Harry was always kind of the
beloved mainstream entertainer. I grew up with him appearing on
things like Highway and the like, so.
To use a great phrase I discovered in an old listings
magazine a couple of days ago, he is the boom with the golden
voice. So he was, you know, he's just
been kind of part of the television furniture for me my
entire life. I couldn't really comment about
Harry's film career, to be quite honest, because I haven't really
seen much apart from the obvious, you know?
But I know he's out there as well.
And of course down among the Z men, which was a Saturday
morning stalwart when I was growing up.
But there's a. Very.
There's a very good film called Jetstorm from 1959.
I think now Harry, it's an ensemble.
I mean it's the cast is headed by Stanley Baker, always
reliable Stanley Baker. And it's a thriller set on a
plane okay. And it's got.
And it's got Harry is as one of The Passengers, and he sat for
the whole film. He sat next to, I think it's
Dame Sybil Thorndike, I think, but it's also got people like
Bernard Braden and Barbara Kelly.
Is that Bernard Braden's? Wife Bernard Braden's wife.
Yeah, suddenly. And and and a whole host of
other faces. And Richard Attenborough is the
is the villain okay but wait that's not giving away but
that's a fantastic film and and and it probably turns up on
talking pictures TV but I would recommend that for because
Harry's brilliant in it. So let us let us get to the the
topic this week in 2004 a film came out starring Bruno Ganz as
Adolf Hitler the muchmeaned Downfall.
The film was a huge success and scooped a whole heap of well
deserved awards, and rightly so, although the guy playing Gurbles
still holds my dreams to this day.
Like many people, I went to see it at the cinema but came out a
little dissatisfied. You might even say Earth.
Sure, the movie seemed to give a pretty faithful account of
Hitler's final days and the events leading up to his death,
but the filmmakers had to my mind.
Missed out a small but important element of the Fury's eventual
downfall. Surely the screenwriter could
have included a short scene where Hitler says in passing to
his devoted secretary that he'd have gotten away with it if it
hadn't been for the Americans, the Russians and the British.
Particularly that shrine hunt, Ghana Milligan.
Which is a long window way of saying that today we're talking
about the first volume of what would become.
Spike Milligan's septet of Is septet the right word for Group
of 7? Walter, do you know?
Yep. I would say.
Definitely. I'll go with that.
Then. What would become Spike
Milligan's septet of war memoirs?
The first volume, Adolf Hitler, My part in His Downfall.
Published in 1971, the book begins with the declaration of
war in September 1939. Covers Milligan's call up in
1940 as 954024 Gunn and Milligan, him joining the 56th
Heavy Regiment, Royal Artillery, D Battery, and all the spills
and thrills he and his New Army comrades experienced while
essentially undergoing 3 years of preparation for active
combat. It ends with them arriving in
Algiers, about to face the sharp end of the war, and the book is
shot through with Milligan's trademark humor.
It pulls no punches, and it was certainly groundbreaking as a
wartime memoir with frank language and no attempts to
sanitize events. It's not wholly reliable.
It's Milligan. How could it be?
But here and there, among the comic vignettes, there are a
handful of quite moving passages where Milligan tacitly
acknowledges that there's no place for gags, and he
demonstrates his skill as a writer of emotionally affecting
prose. Walter, so you nominated this
book to come and talk about why this book.
What does this book mean to you? I have best to put this it's
pretty much distilled Milligan. So far as I'm concerned.
It's pretty much, it's what, 140 pages?
Not much more than that, anyway. It has cut to the bone.
It's utterly lean, but it's got everything that I love.
About Milligan at his best. There's also some of Milligan at
his worst in there as well. There are a couple of moments in
there that you kind of go about, but.
Robson. Yes, Robson, that's the big one,
very definitely. But there's there are moments
of. Pure poetry in there.
I've I've taken note of a couple of point, a couple of moments in
it that I want the flag up where he's the pros.
Absolutely sings. It feels it feels to me it's
there's a point in it where Milligan says something about
all the past Leave me alone, it and I always it feels like this
is kind of the last time. You actually see Milligan before
the darkness descended. It's the time in his life that
he looks back on, where he actually seemed to not have the
weight on his shoulders. I don't know if I'm right in
that, but it I mean obviously the the point in the memoirs
where the shell shock happens, things dark and perceptibly and
the mood of the whole thing changes, but there are moments
of purest sunshine. In this book, especially in the
in the early stages, there's also the ropes moment.
But on the whole it just it's Milligan freewheeling.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely cartwheels through that book.
It it feels like it's one of the things in his life that he had
the most fun writing as well and.
It really does. Really shines through.
Like you say, he didn't have any responsibilities, did he?
Which he would later have. Obviously heavy responsibilities
and he was just having fun and I didn't.
I haven't read this for many years, in fact I haven't read
the the septet for many years and in my head, I mean, how
often do you read this or how often have you read this?
Read them all about. Well, I've read them all about.
Twice in my life. But I picked them up piecemeal,
obviously, for the years. But I did, I did do them all in
a one hour and a couple of years ago, and it is very much the law
of diminishing returns that the earlier books are.
They're edited to the absolute squeak with that.
Been. Jack Hobbs did that.
Possibly, yes, probably. Thinking about it well, because
I because in my head, because as I said, I haven't read them
probably since I was. Probably since, well, 30 years
ago. I probably read them last okay.
I think I've read this twice and so this will be the third time
I've read it. But again, a long time ago in my
head I thought it just spanned a period from war breaking out to
probably maybe 1941 at the latest.
But it goes up to 1943. Which to me, I don't know, I
just, I didn't realize that Milligan spent so long in
England, if you know what I mean, before being shipped
abroad. Exactly.
It's the first book almost feels like an extended prologue.
It's kind of second one's Rumel Gunner who.
Isn't it? Yes.
Yeah, it kind of feels like that's where, you know,
Milligan's War actually starts. And the 1st 140 pages are
basically him learning how to be a soldier before it all,
actually. Kicks off before it gets dark.
Yes, I mean there's there's always, I know there's always
gags and there's lightness in the the subsequent books, but
this is the light. I would say this is probably, I
would assume this is the lightest of them all in terms
of, I mean it's lightest to to hold of course because it's such
a slim volume, but lightest in tone because he's not, there's a
little bit, I mean there's a few deaths in this book.
Someone loses a hand, gets the hand blown off, Although again,
that black human where I think they're on Salisbury Plain, he
gets his hand blown off, this soldier.
It's an extraordinary moment. On the last day B subsection of
a firing smoke shells one got jammed the breach.
Sergeant Jordy Rowlands was in the process of removing the
charge when it exploded in his hand.
When the smoke cleared, Rowlands were looking at the stump of his
wrist with his right hand 10 yards away on the ground.
There was a stunned silence and then he said, well, I'll be
fucked. Apart from initial shock he was
OK. But for him the war finished on
Salisbury plane. The severed hand was buried
where it fell by Busty Roberts as he dug a small hole.
Driver Watts said you're going to shake hands before you bury
it. Busty Roberts reply was never
recorded. You know, wartime black humor.
What else can you do in a situation like like, except
Joke. Really.
Absolutely. And it's interesting because
it's written so he would have been writing this late 606970
around that time, I suppose so 25 years after the war and and
more than 25 years after the events in this book.
So how, how reliable do you feel it is?
I know that he got a bit of criticism and he later defended
these memoirs and said I I I wish the reader to know that he
is not reading a tissue of lies and fancies.
It all really happened. But obviously it's it's
difficult to to judge. It's difficult to say, but a lot
of it is fanciful, surely. To God, yeah.
Absolutely. And that disclaimer, yet I'm
fairly sure I was, I went looking to try and find evidence
of this earlier on this week and I couldn't actually track it
down, but I'm fairly sure that he got into a bit of a spot with
Harry Edgington. At some point over some of the
things that he said in the memoirs that Edgington disagreed
with, it might be just memory is so subjective, isn't it?
I mean, if you were to ask me to recall stuff that had happened
25 years ago, my version would probably not tally up with
anybody else's being, you know, going through a Milligan filter
as well, it's it's going to come out.
Larger than life and it's I cannot imagine that if you got,
you know, the D battery reunions that are used to attend, I'm
fairly sure that there were an awful lot of people after the
memoirs came out, basically cornering and going boy.
Well, yeah, cuz it's famously the 1973 This is your life for
Spike. He was interrupted at one of
those reunions, I think, wasn't he?
Yes. Well, the cameras aren't just
here for the reunion, but because tonight, ex Bombardier.
Spike Milligan, this is your life.
You call this your life? Never thought Jamaica, don't.
Look, Spike Milligan, this is your life, and I've been quite
serious about it. And we're better to tell you a
story than here. In Bexhill, Thanks to you.
Yes, the unlikely scene of some of the most remarkable exploits
of World War 2A. Stirring tale that you've
recently recalled in your personal war history.
Adolf Hitler. My part in his downfall.
Well, as you can see, your old comrades are.
I was here in forest Spike. Milligan, you horrible little
man. Get your hair cut.
You're a Sergeant then. But now war is over.
Old friends, Forgiven. Ex Sergeant Bill.
Jordy Dawson. Josie Dawson.
How are you? Jordy Dardy?
Then look, we see you later. Come in the fucking the camera
as former guitarist Alf Styles and ex drummer Doug.
Two more musicians, Spike, Two more Spike you Lost touch with
for more than 15 years from Huddersfield bass player Joseph
Chalky White, and wait for Spike from Portsmouth crooner Jimmy.
Because just one member of that band we haven't mentioned like,
and now I want you to watch that screen, please.
Over there. A very important part of the
combination, your pianist and best mate, Harry Edgington, who
as you know lives in New Zealand now but wouldn't let this
evening pass without sending you a special message.
I mean, Harry Edgington comes out of this, this volume anyway
very well. In fact, he's he's, it's the the
way he is, the way he figures in this book.
He's almost like a match. For Milligan, For Witt.
Very, very much so. It feels like Milligan's soul
mate. Yeah, well does that his they
do, they write prototype goon shows.
Yeah, the whole bit about the clubbers having been introduced
to the Goons and the Popeye cartoon, and they basically
start up their own little club and they build clubs.
And sacred, sacred clubs. Yeah, sacred clubs.
Newarks. Not nourisher and instant lumps
and the like. So and then they're basically
absolutely thick as thieves, the pair of them.
You know that I would have said reading this that, you know,
Edgington and Milligan were tied together for absolute life.
It wouldn't have been at all surprised if Edgington had
turned up and show business after the war, along with
everybody else, but. He just seems to disappear.
He emigrates, doesn't he? Goes to New Zealand, I think.
My old stamping ground. Yeah, I think so, yeah.
So he, his name is obviously immortalized now.
And because obviously he was the inspiration for the the word
Ying Tong. And as I say in the book, in
this book, the banter that Milligan either recreates or
just invents between them, Oh yeah, there's a bit.
Towards the end, right towards the end of the book, when
they're on the on the boat bound for Algiers, and they're going
through what they call fish infested, what Milligan calls
fish infested waters. And there's this scenario,
There's this banter between him and Harry Edgington where
Milligan says many fish are sympathetic to the German cause.
There should be regular fish inspections, each being tasted
for identification. Sir, this fish tastes like a
Gestapo Sergeant. Harry says Right, drown it at
once, Spike says it's not frightened of water, Harry says.
Then drown it on land, poison a hill and make it eat it.
That is pure Goon Show, isn't it?
That is. You know, I could hear that
being a Moriarty moment, definitely.
Poison a hill, Make it. Eat it.
I mean, there was a goon show called Mount the Mountain
Eaters. It's amazing how these things
echo back, isn't it? Yeah.
You know, one of the things that you get out of this book, of
course, is good. Show references just suddenly
leap out. I mean, Bexel on sea, for a
start. The fact that there's a place in
it called Robin's post. Yeah, another big one.
It's all this stuff went in pendency.
Yes. Absolutely.
Yeah, I did. I'm sure there's others, but
those are the ones that leap out.
But the bit that I wanted to raise about Spike and Edgington,
the bit that I absolutely loved, which absolutely pins down their
relationship, is this bit just before they're all about board
for Algiers and Milligan's back from leave, you know, that.
Fantastic. Meeting in the Anderson shelter
with his family. Oh yes.
And he comes back home and they're all just sitting around
doing nothing. And Harry and Edgington
basically go, let's go and have a jam in the NAFI.
And they go down to, Milligan says.
It was about 1:00 in the morning when we got in.
For an hour we played these foolish things.
Room 504, Serenade in blue, falling leaves and the
inevitable Blues. In retrospect, it wasn't a happy
occasion. 2 young men away from home playing sentimental tunes
and a pitch black naffy. Oh, yesterday.
Leave me alone. I mean, isn't that just
brilliant? Not just.
It's just a gorgeous moment that it really is.
Yeah, earlier in the book, he says.
Milligan says happiness is a mug of tea, a cigarette and a record
of Bunny Barragan playing. Let's do it.
Happiness is a yesterday thing. Yeah, which is deeply, deeply
bloody sad. I mean, the implication there
would be that Milligan can't be happy in the now as well.
It's and it is weird that, you know, his happiest, most
carefree memories are in the days leading up to.
World War Two, It's remarkable, the fact that these are the
moments where all of the responsibilities fall away.
And and it's also odd now I come to think about it, given
Milligan's lifelong hatred of pushing of authority, the way he
always pushes against other people telling him what to do.
And yet here he is in the Army, just absolutely in his element,
although obviously that doesn't last.
Does that make any sense at all? It does.
Why would you want to be in a
heavily regulated environment if you're always wanted to kick
against the pricks of authority? Yeah, kind of.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
But yes, it's that little moment, and again, the
wonderful, evocative image of playing sentimental tunes in a
pitch black naffy. They're doing it in a blackout
as well, which. You know, I can't even begin to
imagine what life must have been like living under those
conditions. But, you know, if you've got
Trump on the piano, you can make something of it by the looks of
it. Well, that's it.
And and just getting back to authority figures.
So when he first arrives, because he's three months late
because he got well, he slipped a disc, didn't he?
And so he was hospitalized. There's something about hernia
as well. I kind of didn't quite get the
the chronology right, whether that was just a milligram
diversion, whether that had something to do with this delay.
But yes, there's definitely a slip disk in the the very early
parts as the ohm ohms letters start piling up.
Have you Have you seen? Sorry to digress, but have you
ever seen the film the I think It's the Elf Garnet Saga?
Yes, but not for quite some time, but yes, I have seen it.
Because that's it. During the war with a with a
young elf, Ghana, and a young what's her name?
Elf. Is it Elf, his wife Elf.
Yeah, yeah. Which is Dandy Nichols, who I
think was probably about 60 at the time, was 65, trying to look
about 31, you know. Absolutely.
Didn't didn't quite pull it off anyway, but there's a scene in
that where Alf receives his OHMS letter and he and he's.
Because he's been, you know, he's been mouthing off prior to
this about, you know, these bloody cowards, you know, not
wanting to go and fight for the country and all the rest of it.
Then he gets his call up papers and he puts the letter.
I think he, if if I remember correctly, he doesn't open it.
He puts it on the mantelpiece and kind of stares at it for a
couple of weeks. The absolute terror that those
things must have contained. Yeah, yeah.
And I kind of got vibes from of that, from this.
But yeah, so I say before, when Milligan arrives in Bexhill on
sea and is it Sergeant Jumbo Day, That first greets him, but
it takes him to meet the commanding officer, which is a
character that we only we only know is Leather Suitcase, don't
we? Yes.
Is is he? Is he also Major Startling
Grope, which is always the name that sticks in my head, it's Are
they two separate characters? I'm not sure I wrote that down
because major Startling grope if you're Are you aware of the LP
bridge on the river? Why yes the the there's a
character in that played by Sellers which is basically Blood
Knock, but the character's name in that is Major Startling
Grope. Okay.
So that's dolishing name, isn't it?
I'm not sure. Yeah, that does.
Milligan doesn't make that clear.
But you've got, I think leather Suitcase is so named because he
wears lots of leather patches on his uniform.
And obviously Milligan has got no respect whatsoever for this
CEO. But later I think Monty takes
over Southern Command and then they get a new CEO, which is
major chaitor Jack. Yes, and there's real respect
between the two of them. Yeah, Milligan says.
I would have followed him anywhere.
Yeah, yeah, totally. That's that wonderful moment
where basically Trader Jacks standing up in the middle of a
bombing raid and when it's all over, he basically says to them,
now, you know, now I've shown you what not to do, you'll know
for for the future. And it's like, yeah, you kind of
would do anything for somebody like that, I think.
Yeah, yeah. It always felt that Milligan was
always at his best. If he had somebody who would
push back, you know, it's a framework for him to kind of
bounce about within. I mean you you get that in the
Goon Show. He's got a really strong
producer. He seems to work incredibly
well. But it's it's certainly Trader
Jack comes out of it absolutely as the the.
The one person in authority who Milligan can actually respect,
and it certainly shines through in this in this particular
chapter in the Memoirs. I didn't.
I didn't write it down, but I seem to remember in the book.
Or it might be another person, but I'm sure that Chater, Jack
and Milligan were certainly in contact during the 50s.
Yes, yes they are. Because Chater Jack at one point
gives Milligan a. A letter full of reminiscence
for I think it's the D battery reunion in 58, right.
There's lots of kind of you may want to raise this and see what
see what everybody remembers. But this is how I remember it,
which is it's interesting that you know, once again there's
kind of trader Jacks got one view of things that happened in
the war and Milligan's obviously got another one.
But but yes, they they stayed in regular contact, I think.
And there's so many characters. There's you've got Milligan, you
got Edgington, you've got the other members of the band to a
lesser degree, Alf files. Alf Files and Doug Kidgell.
Doug Kidgell. But there's also there's the
characters on the periphery, The other, you know, the other
soldiers that are in the barracks with them.
His description of Knights in the barracks.
Yes. Plunger, Bailey, plunger,
Bailey. Oh, that's extraordinary.
In a couple of weeks, I'm putting out an episode about the
Goon Show episode The Sleeping Prince All right, which is the
episode where it's set during a revolution in a South Pacific
country, and right at the end of the show, Seagoon mentions
Plunger Bailey. Excellent.
Once again, these names just stick, don't they?
Yeah. He doesn't go into any detail
about the legend of Plunger Bailey, however, because it's
BBC Home Service. But do you want to just
delicately describe? I already have because I've
recorded that Goon show, that episode about the sleeping
Prince, but do you want to describe about Plunger Bailey's
sort of party piece? If you like I I will do my best.
I may end up giggling like mad, but.
If you can imagine a floor show performed by the manipulation of
certain pieces of gentleman's equipment below the navel is
probably the most delicate way of describing.
Well. Done.
It's. Let's put it this way.
At one point he puts a pair of glasses on them and imitates
Groucho Marx. Which?
Is a moment and a half, definitely.
But yeah, it's there are an awful lot of references to
nocturnal manipulations in this book.
Is probably the most tactful way I can put it.
Well, he talks about. He even talks about.
I'm not sure how his brother felt about this cuz he talks
about when he goes back home on leave before before embarkation.
And he talks about when he goes back to spend a final night with
his parents, and he says he basically says his brother, his
younger brother Desmond's night manipulations were stymied by
communal sleeping arrangements. Absolutely.
And that would be another thing I would imagine that caused the
relationship to be fractious. I mean, Norma Farms always used
to comment, Riley, about the fact that Milligan had very.
Sudden, dappled reminiscences of what life with Desmond was like.
And so far as she was concerned, the pair then used to fight like
cat and dog. And yeah, I can imagine if if
any relative of mine announced in a best selling novel that
that was one of the things that I like to get up to.
Yeah, I don't think I'd be terribly happy.
The Yanks were coming and we had our first case of Crabs.
I had no idea what crabs was, or as Smudgesmit said.
The Sandy Mcnabbs. The victim was Sergeant Cusack.
He discovered he'd got them on the eve of a week's leave.
The MO told him to apply Blue Unction.
Now, Blue Unction has only one use to destroy crabs.
Knowing this, Sergeant Cusack entered Boots in Piccadilly with
the Prescription during the rush hour on Friday.
It was crowded. He whispered to the assistant.
Can I have some blue unction? In a voice that should be heard
up Regent Street, the assistant said.
Blue. I'm thin, Chrisack replied twice
as loud. Yes, I've got bloody crabs to
hear me. I've got crabs.
It's very much a life as it's lived sort of thing.
I mean, it's the first. I've ever read where you get
like, stuff where blokes are in the shower and they're basically
comparing each other's sizes and things, you know, like Christ is
poor wife and stuff like that. I mean, you know, you don't get
that in like Montgomery's memoirs or anything like that.
So it's it's very much the the barrack rooms from the ground
up. You know, you're seeing the army
from the inside out. In this it's it's as you say.
It's not sanitized in any way. Yeah, setting light.
Setting light to farts, yes, or posting blasts as milling.
A trouser trumpet voluntary. And he calls, he calls the the
performers that set fire to these as he calls them artists.
Yes, absolutely and and of course.
You know that possibly the funniest bit in the entire book
for me, The performance in the garden during the break, in the
dinner dance where everybody goes out to the garden for a
leak and as Milligan says, finding a Bush, we ease springs.
These are accompanied by the usual poster blasts, each one
greeted with cries up. Good luck.
Fall out, the officers drink up. Mine's a Guinness.
And as their eyes became accustomed to the dark, the
suddenly realized the over on a on a garden seat Tony Goldsmith
sitting there with the object of of his desires.
And as they all tried to sneak away, he just calls out.
Thank you gentlemen. And what time's the next
performance? Yeah, it's you don't get that in
your standard warm and water, do you?
No, just talking about female relations.
I don't mean, I don't mean his mother, but in terms of, you
know. There's there's lots of soldiers
having well sleep, he says. 1 soldier was sleeping with so
many officers, wives, he was excused clothes.
Yes, yes, absolutely. And there's a there's a moment
in it as well where Milligan has an excitingly acrobatic night
out with a married woman, and then about a week later he gets
a lift and he can smell her perfume in the car.
Yes, as well, that one that that stands out as well.
He meets just before he's off to Algiers.
There's this dinner, dinner, dance, dinner and dance.
And there Spike meets and hooks up with a woman called Betty.
He spends quite a bit of time with leading up to embarking,
and he said she later wrote in sizzling letters, which he
auctioned off. To the.
I can't remember the exact phrase, but isn't it kind of the
various people in the artillery section or whatever, Just
basically you're Randy British. Squaddy.
Yeah, yeah. He's got no time for the
commanding officers, apart from Chater Jack, of course.
But he's constantly poking fun at the sergeants like Jumbo Day
and then the Sergeant Belcombe. And he he writes about Sergeant
Belcombe. And you can just hear the voice
in your head, can't you? As he says that he says, Belkin
spoke with that sound peculiar to the cockney larynx when he
tries to speak posh. To obtain this metallic sound,
you press the chin down onto the throat, apply slight pressure to
the Adam's apple purse, the lips, the lower one slightly
protruding. Tense the tongue.
Lay it flat in the well beneath the lower teeth and say.
You all going to be? Only been little soldiers.
Be the team ain't finished with you, that sort of thing.
Yeah. Sir, it's when you speak to an
officer. Yes, absolutely.
Oh, that's a beautiful moment, that.
Probably the most famous line from this book, if you like, is
the opening sentence or opening paragraph.
And I wonder how long he agonized over this because it
kind of sets the tone for the rest of the book when he talks
about the fact that. His mother's digging the air
raid shelter. Yes, she's a great little woman,
getting smaller all the time. I know 2 minutes later a man
called Chamberlain, who did Prime Minister impressions,
spoke on the wireless. Yeah, Chamberlain's stepping
down for a better man. So Milligan's dad wrote off for
the job. Just think, little lines that
just tossed off, if you like, you know, just chucked off.
Chucked. What?
Not chucked away, but just, you know, just these perfect little
one liners. Absolutely.
And an awful lot of them. Again, I mean, obviously because
Milligan's got his own unique style.
There's nobody writes like Milligan, for better or worse.
There's nobody writes like Milligan.
But you know, things like with head held high and feet held
high on my father was thrown out, I mean.
You can imagine him giggling at the typewriter when he wasn't
cursing and throwing it out of the window, narrowly avoiding
hitting Eric Sikes or whatever, but just that.
Yeah, just and his awareness of how ridiculous it always as
well. Sorry, I'm just looking at a
page here of just the line, whereupon he was immediately
nipped in the scrotum, thrown out, and his horse whipped into
a gallop. It's like you're not gonna get
that from anybody apart from Spike, are you?
Yeah. OK, tell me what?
What is it? What's what's so bad about the
Warsaw Concerto? I?
Wish I knew. I wish I knew it.
I guess it's just the the fact that it keeps on turning up.
It's obviously something that absolutely.
Just works on Milligan like, you know, somebody brushing a cat
backwards. If you do go back and reread the
rest of the war memoirs, you'll find he's got an allergy to
Gracie Fields as well. That's.
Right, I remember. That later on that she keeps
popping up, it's. I mean, I don't know is it Anton
Walbrook keeps, keeps being mentioned.
He goes to see at least one film with with Anton Walbrook.
It's got the bloody awful Warsaw concerto in it so.
Presumably they must have used it as a morale thing in wartime
films. I don't know enough to actually
be able to confirm that, but it there's definitely something
about it that gets it. Yeah, and it is.
As a result, I can now not think of it without calling it the
bloody Awful Warsaw Concerto. I've got no feelings about it
one way or another, but it is always in my head gonna be the
bloody awful Warsaw Concerto, yeah?
There's a sequence again talking about Barrett room japes at
night, when they would sometimes put a sleeping man's hand in a
bowl of water to to make him whittle himself.
I'm not sure that that actually works well.
I certainly don't want to find out.
But, but do you remember when you were a kid hearing that
people it was kind of like a little sort of schoolyard urban
myth? You like, you know, you'd hear
people say if you, you know, if you got someone at a party who's
so drunk that they fall asleep, you put the hand in a bowl of
water and they'll piss themselves.
Do you reckon that that that originated from people reading
this book? Oh, it's entirely possible.
Now, come to think about it, I would imagine that this book was
one of those ones that kind of got passed around the playground
because it's got root bits. In it, Yeah, yeah.
Because I remember there's also, you know, the.
It's gotta be in one of the later books where Milligan's
having a pea into a river and talks about the little fish that
swim up the urine. Yes.
Now that's one of the memoirs, isn't it?
That's one of the memos. And that is also a playground
myth. That one went round our
playground as well. Yeah.
Yes. Weird.
At least things stick, isn't it? Yeah.
Talking about urine. Excellent thing.
Again, he's quite frank. Talking about the men pissing in
their boots to keep them soft and supple, yes, followed by
cries of horror The next morning when people forget to empty them
out, there's a weird. Again, is it?
There's more than one occasion where superior officers get
drowned in piss in this book, isn't there?
There's one. Or am I conflating 2?
There's one, the thing with the gun bucket that's rotted the
floorboards. Yeah, And comes down in the
middle of the night and yeah, then there's the other one right
at the very end. It's on the last page where a
superior officer gets his. Get second degree burns on his
bum because he drops a match into the latrine and it explodes
on him. Yeah, he says.
He says of that. As I say, does he say that's
right at the end. And Milligan says that he was
our last casualty before we actually went into action next
time. Next time it would be for real.
Excellent. Just one last urine related
extract. He talks about Gunna Mossman.
Who would always get drunk and then have a piss in the same
corner of the barracks? And some other soldier was
transferred or something or posted and asked if he could
sleep in that corner. And obviously Ghana Mossman came
in later that night and did the business and there was a frakar
and then there's an official order.
The next morning the practice of urinating on sleeping comrades
must cease. Yes, absolutely.
Unofficial memo and the belief that it's going to stop them
doing that as well. There's also there's these
little exchanges between Milligan and senior officers,
which again, the pure fantasy surely to God.
But I just love them. I've highlighted them.
Roll call One morning, Nick. TA.
And you didn't ta million. Milligan.
Donna. Milligan, why didn't you answer
the first time? I thought I'd being a little
tension into your life, Serge. Followed by at least six days of
punishment duty immediately afterwards.
Jenkins is what they call confined to your barracks,
wasn't it? Yes, yes, I think so.
I've just, I've just looked up the.
They're trying to put a tent up as well.
There's a few swear words in this, but they are bona fide.
You know, so I know this these aren't for the years of
children, but so if you have any children's ears, would you
please put them in the box and hand them at the new position?
We were to live under canvas. It's very simple, said Sergeant
Dawson. He was talking about putting up
a tent. I've been camping a lot in my
town and I'll show the 30 signals.
Drove to the RAOC Depot, Drygate and the three ton Tuck, which
made some of the nature of 28 tons.
We've shown a great piece of rolled canvas, 6 foot by 10 by 5
foot. From it hung numerous lengths of
trailing ropes. In picking the thing up it was
impossible not to stand on them. We lifted must have weighed all
of 400 weight and it all seemed to be on my side.
It was but a few yards to the truck, but somehow we found it
impossible to get there. The lump was moved in a much the
same confused way that ants carry a twig.
That is, there was a fair bit of going round in a circle, 3 paces
backwards, a little bit sideways, then lots of going
round and round again. Straining around the edge were
about 20 Gunners, while underneath, taking the weight on
the heads, was another 10. There was frequent swearing,
unending strings of instructions, but progress none
The far side of the lump had started to unfold, so the
carriers on that side were lost to sight and carrying blind.
The whole thing was becoming absurd.
The lump was coming to pieces as we continually taught of the
trailing ropes. Those on the outside were
getting tired, and the lump was getting lower and lower as the
men underneath wilted. Finally collapsed in a heap of
swearing Gunners, the second attempt to start.
At this time we just dragged the thing by its trailing edges and
forced it into the lorry. Like stuffing a Turkey.
The lump now seem much larger. We called on top of it and moved
off. On arrival we dragged what was
now a long, uncontrolled canvas mess.
Through the woods. To the site.
Sergeant Dorst was waiting there.
What's a dirty little? He said.
How many had explained? We fucked it up, Sir.
Yeah, squaddies versus official dump is obviously a major theme
all the way through this. Everybody just basically taking
the mortal piss out of each other to try and get by, I
think. There's a time when Milligan
does something so heinous. I'm trying to find a bit now,
actually. Oh, he was hiding rifles in a
loft. Oh yes, I think it gets it.
Solitary he sent to Preston Barracks and Brighton and given
these really menial tasks, like shoveling coke into a single
pile in pouring rain. But he says that he would
receive regular visits in his cell from a humorless medical
officer. And the first visit from this
MO, there's a little framed photograph of a woman and the MO
says, who's that photo of? Spike says my fiance.
And the MO says throw it away. So the next time that the MO is
Jude Milligan's bitten all his fingernails and put the
fingernail bits, I think on the table.
And when the MO comes in, he says, what are those?
And Milligan says they're my fiance's.
So. And he says throw them away.
And then the following visit, Milligan's got a I've got a lock
of hair. What's that?
It's my fiance. So throw it away.
Etc, etc, etc. And Milligan says he was
planning on the coup de grace to be an artificial limb, but he
was. But he was released.
Before that could be realized. Not brilliant.
And the copper of that, of course.
Being there the officer gets drafted oversea killed during an
air raid on Tobruk when a Naffy tear falls on his.
Head yeah, which I think he I think I meant to check before
this actually cuz I think Milligan uses that, you know the
tea on falling on the head you know when the goon show scripts
or the more goon show scripts when he does those little
character. Descriptions for the future
characters and there's William May Cobbler's I think it's
William May Cobbler's injured in combat during the war when a
tear falls on his head. I think you're right.
I think you're right actually, having obviously the William bit
that always sticks in my head from that.
Is that hobbies wandering around saying you can't park there to
anyone who lives something like that isn't it?
But yeah, I'm just looking at the list of things that Milligan
has to do and. Is solitary confinement.
It seems to be one day it's all right, and then the next day
they give him something absolutely terrible to do.
You know, the six 6 foot high piles of coke into 1U conical
heap. And then the next day he's
drawing naked girls for the guard room.
Yeah. And then the next day after
that, it's a trip to the beach to collect winkles for
Sergeant's mess. Tea winkles, for God's sake.
Oh, that's the saluting traps. It's like because, you know,
officers are conditioned to salute as they walk past another
soldier. And so basically they set off at
10 second intervals and watch as the officer saluted his way to
paralysis of the arm. It's there's a real, real
feeling of kind of like this, not even a war, but just
officers versus. Versus the ranks basically just
constantly pushing against each other just in in order to get
through, in order to survive life in the army.
Really. Yeah, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, they the, the band, they said they've got
this court, they they make up this quartet, don't they?
So like they've got Harry on piano, Spike on the trumpet,
Elf. What does elf what does health
play? Not sure what elf.
I think Elf's guitar and Doug's drums for recall, right?
And they play quite a number of. Village dances and things like
that and that. One of the dancers, a drunk
soldier who's feeling a bit maudlin and aggressive, rips
open his shirt to reveal a scar on his chest and he roars.
Dunkirk, whereupon Milligan rips open his shirt to reveal his
appendix, scar and shelves. Lewisham.
Hospital. Absolutely, absolutely.
And you can see him do it as well.
That's it. It's the music thing in this
book as well. It threads its way through
almost every page. It's reading about Milligan's
life and just how much being able to play an instrument meant
to him as well. You just, I can only imagine how
much. Even worse, life must have been
for Milligan if he if he hadn't been able to cut loose to play
his trumpet whenever he whenever he possibly got the opportunity
there. There are moments in this book
where you just feel that he's absolutely at his most content
and the most content is basically being without band.
It's and and again it might be something to do with the fact
that it's his mates. You know his closest mates at
the time, but those passages really shine the way he can
still remember, like 2530 years after every song that they
played as well. And the fact that at one point,
at one point, he mentions the fact that there's one particular
record that he can't hear anymore because it just blows
him apart. And he has to basically go off
and walk about for a couple of hours afterwards because the
memories become overwhelming. It's.
Well, that's that's similar. That's similar, sorry, That's
similar to when he talks about Millwood, which was where they
were posted at one point, and he talks about he he revisits
Millwood in 1962 and he says the place was full of ghosts.
I had to get out. Yeah, yeah, that that's that
comes up a bit later in the memoirs as well.
It's like on foreign joints or whatever, going back to places
that he was at. In the war, and just not being
able to cope. I mean that it's almost as if
the good memories are almost worse for him than the bad ones
at times. And it just it must have been as
you say, it's the place was full of ghosts.
I mean, that's the same for all of us, I imagine, but even more
so for him. Indeed, he's not.
Trying to make himself out to be a hero by any means or to be
heroic, I think at one point he said.
Well there's the bit where, so just before he's due to go on
leave, the final leave to see his family, he somehow gets his
hand injured and has to be bandaged.
Oh, when? When he gets his his hand
slammed in the tailgate of the truck.
That's it. Yeah, and I think he arrives
home with the bandaged hand. And there's nobody in.
So he goes to the local pub. And it's just at the time when
the survivors from Diap were being picked up around New Haven
and it was very much on everyone's mind.
And people in the pub see Spikes bandaged hand and put two and
two together and make five I suppose.
And they they assume that he's, you know, he's from, he's back
from Diap. And he gets a lot of sympathy
and free drinks and he just plays.
He plays it well. I think he briefly hesitates and
then thinks I'll sort it and plays along and he says for two
hours I've been a hero. Yeah, yeah.
He knows very well that he isn't one, but just for a couple of
hours he gets to pretend to be one and he gets free drinks out
there as well. You know, as he says he realizes
that if he said no. Then that would be it.
The drinks would stop. So, you know, go ahead.
You kind of get the feeling from reading this that yeah, he's
he's he kind of he's aware of the fact that he's perhaps not
the bravest man there ever was. You know, it's he doesn't
sugarcoat. Anything or how he feels and as
you said earlier on in this, there are moments whenever he
realizes that there are times when laughter isn't enough to
get you through and you're stuck in a terrible, terrible
situation and it it almost overwhelms him on the spot.
On a couple of occasions is the bit with the the aircraft
crashing and he realizes that the first thing that happens is.
His fellow soldiers swarm in and stripped them of absolutely
everything usable. I mean, that is, that's a bleak,
bleak moment in the middle of it all.
Or at least that's that's how it felt to me.
Yeah, on the 8th of January 43 when they had head out to sea on
route to Algiers, he writes. Somehow it had all been fun, but
now we were on to the truth. I don't know why, but I started
to cry. So again, not, not not
embarrassed or ashamed, nor should he be to to, you know, to
admit that. Yeah, totally.
It's it is just that feeling where up to that point it almost
feels like you're play acting and then shit, suddenly it's
real. It's I'm just trying to look it
up. There's a moment I think where
there are. Taking off in the train in order
to get to the troop carrier, and I'm fairly sure there's a
comment in it about yeah, the train started as it pulled
fretfully from the station. I suddenly realized that some of
us were being driven to our deaths as a very telling moment.
It's almost as if the war isn't real up until our point.
Yeah, and just there's a couple of eccentric characters.
In this book that I just wanted to touch on, there's gonna
Octavian. Neat.
I'm wondering if that's, you know, that's a pseudonym for,
you know, someone who didn't wish to be identified.
Well, who knows who used to get naked often just around the camp
and at one point. Arrives in the barracks totally
naked. I think he's wearing one sock
and he says. Anyone know a good tailor?
Yes, absolutely. And he keeps.
Buggering off and getting 14 days when he comes back.
Yeah, yeah. And of course, later.
And obviously Milligan's, if this is true, which assuming it
is, Milligan's obviously told that to his friends after the
war. Because there's that story, that
famous story that Milligan tells of.
I don't know. In 19561957 he's at home,
there's a knock on the door. He goes to the door and there's
Peter Sellers, stark naked and says do you know a good tailor?
Again that it's that the the way these these things just stick in
your head and you may not consciously remember them, but
they bubble back up later on. And you know, especially if
you're having to deal on a daily basis with Peter Sellers, it's.
That is a beautiful moment. That's, yeah.
I can see the pair of them doing that, and it's not exactly
pleasing me, but certainly an image that's gonna stick in my
head for quite some time. I wonder if Peter Sellers did
any Groucho Marx impressions while he was there.
Thought I really hope not. There's also there's the sports
day scene, the boxing match. Well, there's the boxing match,
but there's also gun and nays. I think it is.
Oh, with with this amazing way of doing the high job.
Issuing from under the stands was a figure.
He was wearing a red hooped, loose football jersey, elastic,
waisted blue military PT shorts that reached well below the
knee, Gray Army socks dangling around his ankles and white
slightly over large pimsoles. He ran in a series of peculiar
little bounds and leaps, flicking his feet behind him.
Which I thought was some sort of expertise muscle loosening
exercise. He was blissfully unaware of the
comparison his comic garb made with his sleek muscle,
professional Chad opponents. By then he arrived at the jump
off, the warming up had been terminated.
The official had taken down the bar and temporary arrested it at
3 foot nays, eyed it. He walked some 100 yards from
the bar, then turned and started to run.
It wasn't until he was halfway that we realized.
He intended to jump. He gathered a sort of lumbering
momentum, but never got faster. Finally reaching his goal, he
launched himself into a sort of schoolboy double your legs under
you style, jump, and just managed to clear it.
He seemed well, pleased, unconscious of the puzzle.
Look that followed. His effort came time for the
jump off, an official signal lays and asked him if he was
competing. Nays nodded, Nays walked back 20
yards, turned, and now saw. That the officials had set the
bar at 5 feet for the first time.
He looked worried. He walked back a further 50
yards. He started his approach.
The stadium fell quiet as the great athlete had bounded across
the grass. We all felt that something
unusual was about to happen. On and on he came, making little
clenching gestures with his hands.
He reached the bar and with a triumphant shout of Hoy Hoy
Hapla and an almighty effort, he hurled himself upwards.
The bar broke across his forehead.
Cheering broke out from the stands.
Gunnanes kept running. He left the field.
He left the stadium. He left athletics.
Complete with a classic little Milligan drawing of Gunnanes, so
obviously he's stuck in his head.
There's a little bit quite early on where Milligan gets his first
glimpse of the enemy. I think he's walking along a
Cliff and a German plane. Swoops low, and he's low enough
that he can see the faces of the pilot and the copilot, and he
picks up a brick and throws it at them.
Yeah, and the sort of desperate hope that that's actually going
to achieve anything. Again, it's been a while since I
actually read this, but there's a bit later on in the memoirs
where he a plane flies low over him and he basically.
Points his finger at it and shouts bang and the plane
crashes and he develops kind of this mystical reputation amongst
the rest of the battery for his ability to down jump in planes
just by shouting at them. So and yeah and again the the
whole thing and certainly in this early part of the book and
you get this in Dad's Army as well the no ammunition.
Thing in the early part of the war, you know the fact that
they're actually having to play act, which is probably.
Why, towards the end of the book, as you say, as they leave,
he starts to cry because all of a sudden it's everything's gone
live. Yeah, it's Showtime.
Yeah, exactly. Rehearsals over.
You don't really get the sense in this that he's pacifistic.
During this period he's not gung ho, but he's he does this.
There's little lines here and there where you know he's he he
gives the impression that he's really anti German.
You know, it's us against them. You know he's quite, he's swept
up in the whole fervour of the war.
But there is a bit when they're in Bexhill and I think they can
see that he describes it as a sky on fire.
They can see. Far away just because of the the
color of the sky that London's being bombed and they can't they
can't get through to the loved ones on the telephone And he
they're all worrying about their families you know those that
live in London and it's and he says he's the the the tone of
that is he kind of exhibits these faint stirrings of
pacifism which I guess we're obviously to to grow and to
develop and take hold. Yeah, You kind of get the
feeling that, you know, he might not necessarily have been
actively pacifist, but because of what he saw and what he went
through, it was basically, yeah, that everything changes for him
because of the war, that you know that there's there's
Milligan before he gets drafted and then pretty much everything
that he is. Yeah.
So as a result of what happens to him, it's he sees death
basically at close quarters is probably the best way I can
describe it. And Milligan being Milligan, of
course, you know the first defense is humor, but the black
dogs immediately behind. Him at all times?
Yeah, absolutely. You know that there's the the
whole thing about Milligan, the poet as well, and an awful lot
of his writing. Certainly every now and then,
you know, with Milligan, the the jokes just stop and he gets
wonderfully lyrical. There's this bit I wanted to
raise about what it was like in the summer of 1941.
It's very idealized. Envision.
Because I'm sure, like Britain, Britain during wartime was not
entirely like this. But the way he describes it is
beautiful. If you don't mind, I'll just
read it because I put it highlighted.
Yeah, no matter what season, the Sussex countryside was always a
pleasure, but the summer of 1941 was a delight.
The late lambs on spring heel legs danced their happiness.
Hot immobile cows chewed sweet card under the leaf, choked
limbs of Juneaux that were young 500 years past.
The must have Bramble of BlackBerry hedges with purple
black fruit offering themselves to passing hands.
Poppies, red, red, red, tracking the sun with open throated
petals. Birds bickering aloft, bibulous
to the sun. White fleecy clouds passing
high, changing shapes as if uncertain of what they were to
break for smoke To lie on that beckoning grass and watch
cabbage white butterflies dancing on the wind everywhere,
was saying, befank, It isn't that lovely, it's beautiful.
Not just lovely and then a couple of pages after that we're
back to the FARC guys and whatever, but just and
immediately below that we've got the line.
I started to read the situations vacant in the Daily Telegraph
and prematurely advertised. Gunner 954-O2 Four retired house
trained, war hero unexpectedly vacant, Can pull a piece of
string and chat bang with confidence.
So basically you've got both Milligan's on one page there.
That's one of the things that makes.
This book, Magic, for me, it's totally everything about Spike
is in it, if that makes any sense.
Yeah. And if listeners haven't read
the book, as we say, it's a very slim volume, but 140 odd pages,
so you can read it in a day. But I did.
Yeah. And me?
The book was adapted into a film quite soon after publication,
Adolf Hitler, My Partner's Downfall, starring everyone's
favorite, Jim Dale as Spike as the young Spike and Spike
himself as his. Father, what a surprise for you,
Terrence Shadow, leave us on 1934.
He won it in a raffle. It's a chill to temperature.
I remember we've always been a close family, never been parted
before. Anyhow, let's hope that after
this war we're still together and happy in one piece till it's
over. Then let's string a toast to the
family to 1,000,000. He's only in it twice, but God,
he makes it count. Does spite with Pat Coons as his
mom, which is an interesting little.
So yeah. It's it's a very, very good film
and I utterly recommend that. I enjoyed it much, much more
than I was expecting to. I watched it for the first time
yesterday. It's.
It doesn't. It doesn't get.
It's generally regarded to have been a bit of a stinker, but I
saw it years ago. I haven't seen it since and I
can't remember a lot about it. I will probably be doing it on
this show at some point in the future, but I can.
I can revisit it then. And yeah, and.
The book was also adapted into an LP in 1981, featuring
Milligan with guest artists John Wells, Alan Clare and of course
Graham Stark. And there's also a stage play in
2009. So conclusions, what
conclusions? I mean, I I would say this is
this. Having not reread the others
yet, I still feel like I'm confidently say that this is the
best of of the was and and it was it was before everything
became dark in Spike's world and and yeah and the war informed
Spike's worldview like you said earlier.
Informs the war of the worldview of that entire generation, I
would say it's. I mean, I'm not the first person
to notice how many bombs and explosions and people.
Dying and coming back to life or in episodes of The Goom Show,
but it's you can't help but feel that basically everything after
the war is a reaction to it. It's spiked more than most, I
would have said. Well, he need, I think in a way
he needed the that he probably disagree, but he needed the war.
If the war hadn't happened, would spike.
Yeah, probably just become a musician or something, wouldn't
he? It's an interesting one, isn't
that? That's.
You know that. Would he ever have got out of
Jimmy Grafton's attic? Would he ever have got into
Jimmy Grafton's attic? Come to that?
If it wasn't for the contacts he made in the war, it's yeah, for
better or for worse. The war pretty much informs
everything that he became, I would say.
And I know he was very proud of this book and he wrote to his
close friend Robert Graves, the writer of Goodbye to All That,
soon after. Adolf Hitler, my part in his
downfall, was published and he wrote.
He wrote Beyond My Wildest dreams.
It became a bestseller. The first thing I did was to
phone my parents in Australia, and in doing so I realized, in
fact I was a little boy of seven running to his mom and dad to
tell them that he'd got a good conduct star at school.
Anyway, it sold 30,000 copies, and it had to reprint almost at
once. I can't tell you how good it
feels for a person whose education ended at 14.
To be a bestseller. Yeah, yeah.
It's it's validation, isn't it? Yeah.
And he's rightfully, he's right to be proud of it.
It's it's a wonderful book. It's a kind of feel with the
memoirs that as they go on, they could use a Stern editor,
definitely. But this one, as I said right at
the start of this, it's so compact and so compressed.
You know there's there's not. Not an ounce of fat in it.
And I would, I would probably say it, it's my single favorite
book that Milligan ever came out with.
Not not pocoon, not even not pocoon.
I mean, I love pocoon very, very much so.
But this one, just that wonderful mix of kind of.
Wit and enthusiasm and that keening nostalgia as well, that
breaks through every now and then.
It kind of, if you wanted me to point at something that would
demonstrate, you know, why I've been fascinated by Spike
Milligan. I don't always love him.
You know, but that's you know, There are times when I could see
him far enough, but I don't always adore him.
But I find him constantly fascinating, and this book is
probably Exhibit A. Everything I love about him is
in here, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Yeah, when I was reading the book, preparing for this because
I'm a Twitter Hore, I am I from the GOOM part account I.
Tweeted that I'm rereading out of Hitler, my partner's downfall
and this sequence had me hooting and I quote the bit when spikes
applying to join the RAF and I think it's leather Suitcase.
Who asks him. Have you ever flown before?
Milligan replies. No Sir, but I've been upstairs
on a bus so which I love, but I tweeted that.
And I got huge response, huge response, right load of people
liking it and all the rest of it, but also some replies and
just a handful of replies. I just wanted to mention because
it just shows the sort of the, the love for the book, Roger
Stevenson says. I once read extracts to a class
of 11 year olds as they were studying World War Two.
Imagine that. I told him.
I told him this is what it was like for the ordinary soldier.
I had to. I had to tone down the language
in places. I'm sure you did, Roger, Steve
Hyatt says. The line about this is the line
we haven't quoted, the line about the light bulb in the
office's office that was such a low wattage that when turned on,
it made the room darker. Ben Grabham says It's a genius
book, perfectly encapsulates that fear of being called up.
Some of his comrades were based on this book, possibly more out
there than Spike and Raymondus. Decis says it's amazing he made
it through the war alive. Thought his CEO's might have
dispatched him :) so yeah, so a lot of love for the book,
obviously off the back of that. And as I say, it's it's, you can
probably get it, probably pick it up for, I don't know, a
fiver. Off Amazon and it's a quick read
and it's there's multiple laughs on every single page.
Yeah. Very much so.
And lastly, just one point.
You might not be aware of this, but on this podcast I try to
include as many gratuitous references to a certain.
Much maligned, perhaps comedian of yesteryear, Okay and a Little
bird told me that something happened at your wedding, which
gives me the perfect excuse to invoke the name Hilda Baker
again. Oh, it very, very much did.
Yes. It's a treasured memory, believe
you me. Would you like me to?
Yes. Yes.
Yes, at our wedding, during the evening, basically before the
wedding, I sat down with the person who was running the night
time entertainments, the disco, and he was like, is there
anything that you? Don't want it.
You don't want me to play or whatever.
And. Or is there anything that you do
specifically want me to play. And I've, you know, got through
a fair amount of things. But the thing I missed out, the
thing I didn't mention because it never even crossed my mind,
was stuff from Greece, which of course turns up the wedding
quite a lot and somewhere in the middle of the evening you're the
one that I want stands on. And two gentlemen of our mutual
acquaintance, Louis Barth and Ian Greaves, were at the
wedding, I'm delighted to say, and I can still see them now,
standing at the side of the dance floor as this kicked in.
And the pair of them. Burst into an absolutely note
perfect rendition of Arthur Mullard and Hilda Baker at such
a volume that it actually drowned out to music.
And they were note perfect. Well, I say note perfect as note
perfect as you can be. But yeah, it it that I can think
of. Very few people were blessed
with something as wonderful at their wedding as as I was with
that. I mean, I can still hear you
better. Shape up.
Because I need a man blasting across the dance floor and
people wetting themselves laughing.
So yes, Hilda Baker was present on a very, very happy evening,
so I'm delighted to share that with you.
Very, very few things more disturbing than Hilda Baker and
Arthur Mallard dressed up. On that episode of Top of the
Pops. If you're filled with infection,
you're to sly to convey. Medicate in my direction, feel
your way, I. Better Skype up.
Cause you need a man. Terrifying.
Absolutely terrifying. I mentioned that guy who played
Gurbles in Downfall earlier. Actually, I think.
I think Arthur Mullard and Hilda Baker on Top of the Pops just
just pips it. They haunt your nightmares.
Well, Walter, listen, it has been a blast.
I've really enjoyed talking about.
It's nice to talk about a book as well for change because we
too often on this I'm talking about.
You know, films or goon shows or TV shows or whatever.
So it's nice to talk about a book and take it a bit, take
things a bit more highbrow for change.
So, so thank you very, very much for joining me today and I
would, I would love to get you back sometime if if the fancy
takes you. Oh, thank you very much.
It's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for asking me.
Loved every minute of it. Ha, ha, ha, ha.