As Sky prepares to show a documentary drawn from newfound archives

A very rare Spike Milligan sketch show is to get an airing next weekend.

The Goon Show star filmed The Gladys Half Hour while he was on a promotional tour of Australia in 1958.

It aired on the ABC in Melbourne that year, with a TV critic from Australian Women’s Weekly calling it ‘a complete uproar’.

The show was made up of material from Milligan’s earlier ITV shows A Show Called Fred and Son of Fred, which does not otherwise survive.

At the time of the recording the comedian suggested the show was called The Gladys Half Hour as ‘Gladys is the feminine for Fred’. He also mooted that it was based on the classic Australian novel ‘A Town Called Gladys’.

The full episode is being aired at the BFI on London’s Southbank on Saturday December 3. The venue called it ‘an unmissable treat for Milligan fans and anyone interested in the development of the style of surreal television comedy’.

Other footage being shown in the Missing Believed Wiped session is  the Leslie Crowther-hosted game show Runaround featuring special guest Rudolph Walker.

The event directly follows a preview screening of Spike Milligan: The Unseen Archive, a documentary coming to Sky Arts on December 7.

That 90-minute film is billed as the definitive portrait of Milligan in his own words and features recently uncovered material, including an unpublished play called The Snow Goose that the comedian returned to again and again after it was rejected by the BBC.

Producers at Yeti Television also found among the trove a simple annotated envelope that read: ‘I went into the now overgrown garden in 127 Holden Rd. I found this little toy... I broke down and cried. I feel I wanted those yesterdays with the children to come back.’ Milligan lived at that address in Finchley, North London, from 1955 to 1974.

Programme-makers say: ‘Film, scripts, letters, objects, photographs, recordings, art - they all come together to paint a portrait of a comic genius. But one plagued by crippling mental illness, insecurity, and an enduring lifetime struggle to reinvent what comedy could be.’

The film also features contributions from celebrity fans including Ian Hislop, Joanna Lumley and Al Murray, who will be introducing the BFI screening.

Published: 25 Nov 2022