Dealer buys Spike's notebooks for £30

An antiques dealer has bought Spike Milligan's comedy notebooks for just £30.

The 13 books, full of jottings about potential Goon Show ideas, could now raise more than £10,000 at auction.

"It was a complete accident," Mr Carey told the Daily Telegraph. "I saw one of the books on the edge of a stall and quickly realised what it was from the jokes, poems and comments inside.

"The dealer wanted £10 but I knocked him down to £8 and then he said that he had more in his car outside. I bought the whole lot for £30. "

Rather than using dedicated notebooks, Milligan scribbled in the margins of Victorian children's books published by The Religious Tracts Society.

One volume bears the inscription: "This book belongs to a wandering idiot of no fixed abode known on most police charge sheets as Terence Milligan, also Spike, also Eccles, also Minnie Bannister. T. Milligan, June 20, 54."

Christie's will auction the collection later this year.

Published: 28 May 2003