Private compositions to be performed

Previously unheard Spike Milligan songs are to be heard at a comedy festival – with the possibility of an album to follow.

His daughter, Jane Milligan, has unearthed comic and non-comic compositions that the late comic recorded on cassette tapes for his family – and will sing some of them at the inaugural Spike Sligo festival next month.

Passed to Milligan's children when his third wife, Shelagh, died in 2011, the boxes of cassettes, titled 'Spike's Unpublished Music' and 'Ideas For Songs' were 'written for us' Jane told Chortle.

Spike was a keen pianist who began his showbusiness career as an amateur jazz vocalist and trumpeter in the late 1930s, continued while serving in the British Army, and composed music for The Goon Show, Q and for his one-man shows.

'He'd written songs for his mum, for my mum, my sisters, me and my brother - and when my stepmother passed away, it all came to us' explains Jane, who is also a musician and actor.

'A prolific creator of many things, my father was a very good pianist. And along with exercise, it was part of his daily routine. He was very disciplined and played most days. He wrote a lot of stuff.'

Shelagh Milligan inherited almost all of Spike's estate, auctioning off some of his mementoes in 2008.

But the cassettes remained and Jane recalls 'the minute I put the first one into the machine and heard him play, it was like a magical, bright sunrise. Every day I woke up as a child, he'd be down in the drawing room, playing the piano, fantastically, like a magic person. It was so beautiful to hear him again, it was really wonderful.'

Included amongst the tapes are 'quite a few recordings' of Spike singing Alice In Wonderland, a piece he wrote with Alan Clare for the jazz singer Blossom Dearie, which Jane sang at a thanksgiving service for her father after he died in 2002.

'I'm probably biased but I love his melodies and being a singer, I feel quite drawn to pulling it all out and making an album, because it's such a shame for them just to sit there, rotting' she says. 'It would be a crime to leave it.'

She wants to bring a recording of her father playing to the festival and suggests the possibility of doing 'that Natalie Cole thing', duetting with her father from beyond the grave, on the album. 'But I'm just piling through [the tapes] at the moment. It's going to be a long journey, it's going to take a year.'

The Spike Sligo Festival explores the relationship between creativity and mental health, reflecting the fact that Spike suffered from bipolar disorder and suffered at least ten serious nervous breakdowns during the course of his life.

'He has a slightly tarnished reputation for being mad but he wasn't' says Jane. 'He was a very sensitive man with a great creative spirit.

'What is admirable about him is that he used his pain to write. If he was suffering, he would put pen to paper, whether that was a song, lyric, poem or book.

'He was mining a seam of something quite extraordinary and while you don't have to be on his level, if you're suffering you need to do something with that energy. That's what this whole festival is about and if I can bring some of his energy to the table, the loveliness of it, then I'm up for it.'

Comedians appearing at the festival from April 8 to 12, include Richard Herring, Abandoman, Sofie Hagen and The Leg Breakers Improv.

Jane – who played the wife of Sean Hughes's Dan Madigan in the film adaptation of Spike's novel Puckoon – will reprise Alison in Wonderland on Friday April 8, along with the unheard material.

• The festival website is here

- By Jay Richardson

Published: 20 Mar 2015