With regular collaborator Nick Newman

Ian Hislop and his writing partner Nick Newman have penned a new stage play about Spike Milligan.

The show, entitled simply Spike, will focus on the Goon’s relationship with the BBC and draws on a cache of recently released correspondence.

‘About 35 managers’ didn’t want The Goon Show to be broadcast, the pair say, as they didn’t understand the anarchic and disrespectful tone set by Milligan and his co-stars Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine.

‘Spike’s letters to the BBC are incredibly funny,’ Hislop told The Observer today.  ‘He complained about everything.

‘The BBC replies are also very funny because of the inept way that they deal with his talent,’ Newman adds. ‘Some of the replies are just so pompous. It took the management there a long while to cotton on that Spike was the really gifted one.

‘At first they thought Secombe was the main star, because he could sing as well. Others had the same opinion about Bentine, because he had gone to Eton, which is obviously very important in creating radio comedy."

The writers have also discovered that Milligan was paid less than both Sellers and Secombe, despite being both a writer and performer.

Hislop added he was keen to portray Milligan at his creative peak.

‘It’s a celebration of Spike’s genius, so we’ve concentrated on the golden period, when everything he did seemed to work,’ he  told the Observer.

‘There’s been a lot of concentration on the melancholy end of his career, so we wanted to remind people that he was incredibly funny.’

Spike will premiere at the small  Watermill Theatre near Newbury, Berkshire early next year – coinciding with the 20th anniversary of Milligan's death in Rye, East Sussex, on February 27, 2002, aged 83.

The community venue previously staged the debut of the pair’s play The Wipers Times, about soldiers publishing a satirical newspaper to troops fighting the First World War – a clear precursor to Private Eye, which Hislop, below, edits.

Published: 31 Oct 2021