Spike's possessions go under the hammer

Original poetry, private correspondence, original Goon Show recordings and even furniture such as a piano and a director’s chair with ‘Spike Milligna’ written on the back are to be sold off at Bonhams in London on November 25.

His widow, Shelagh, 64, who inherited his entire £626,326 estate, is putting the items up for sale, but says it will be heartbreaking to let some of them go.

She said: ‘I just don’t have the space in my new house to put everything. The alternative is that I carry on paying huge storage bills while everything just sits there rotting. But I can’t pretend I'm going to find it easy’

Among the unique items are a collection of the often testy handwritten notes he would leave for colleagues, Christmas cards – including several from Prince Charles, and an archive of Spike's wartime diaries and related material.

Some of the lots are expected to fetch thousands of pounds, but there other items might be more affordable. Spike’s own copy of his wartime memoirs Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, for instance, is expected to fetch less than £100, while a fountain pen he owned should fetch between £80 and £120.

However, as so often with Millgan’s legacy, the sale has reopened old family wounds.

His illegitimate son James told the Daily Mail: ‘It's disgraceful, but I can't say it's unexpected or that I’m surprised, given the animosity between Shelagh and us, his children, since my father's death.

‘I can accept that Shelagh is entitled to do with the archive what she wishes and that she might need an income, because she gave up her career to care for my father, and his estate was not vast.

‘But I believe my father’s work should stay in the Milligan family and it is painful to think about it going elsewhere. We are his flesh and blood and this archive means so much to us.

However, he insisted: ‘It's not about money or the material value of these items; it's the sentiment.’

‘If I could say one thing to Shelagh, it would be this: please let Spike’s children choose one small thing from the auction to remember him by. It would mean so much to us.’

In 2005, three of Spike’s children failed in a legal attempt to revoke their father’s will to stake a claim on the his £500,000 family home in East Sussex. In his will, Spike had stipulated that his legitimate children could choose items from the family home to remember him by, which Shelagh allowed them to do.

Published: 8 Nov 2008