Spike Milligan the (serious) poet

Spike Milligan's daughter says that her father was 'terrified that he'd only be remembered for The Goons' and 'immensely proud' of his poetry. Milligan's serious writing tells the story of a very complex man who used his poetry as an outlet for his feelings about his family, the war, his own manic depression and childhood in India.

Laura Milligan’s welcoming smile greets me at her doorstep, a friendly sight after a long taxi ride from ABC Ultimo during which I realised I’d left my notes and questions back at the office.

'Hi how are you?' Laura asked.

'Tired with a splitting headache,' I replied 'probably due to the 3am wake up call from Qantas this morning telling me my flight had been cancelled from Adelaide to Sydney…oh and I don’t have my questions with me! How are you?'

Laura looked at me with her piercing, sparkly, blue eyes. 'Knackered too. I’ve been up all night with my vomiting dog. Think I need a champagne.' Brilliant, we’re both on the same wavelength, although we decided it was a tad early for champers after all.

As we made our way into Laura’s bedroom—to escape the sound of her poor, suffering vomiting dog that was getting picked up by my microphone—she unpacked the box of her Father’s handwritten letters and poems for us to sift through and spread out on her doona. Spike’s handwriting is absolutely stunning, calligraphic in style and it becomes apparent, very quickly, that his poetic themes are wide and varied, intimate and personal.

A prolific writer, Milligan used his poetry as an outlet for his feelings about everything in his life from his family, losing friends in the war, to his own manic depression and childhood in India. His funny verse is well loved and his infamous poem, ‘The Ning Nang Nong’ was once voted the UK's favourite comic poem.

'It just means that he was completely insane,' she says of the nonsense poem, now taught in many British schools. 'And his children enjoyed his insane poetry because at school in England at the time, all we got was Dip, Nora and Dot the Dog, so "The Ning Nang Nong" was a great outlet. I suppose it was like the Goons, you know, there was a new sense of humour after the war, completely different and these poems were just so different from the ones we were reading at school.'

Milligan was born in Poona, India. He was the son of an Irish captain in the Royal Artillery. He died in 2002, aged 83. India was the most exciting time of his life.

'I grew up with bright sunshine, with tremendous space, with animals, I grew up with excitement,' he once said. 'My relationship with Indians now is very, very close and affectionate. I love them very much and I realise now the effect that they had on me was that they had a better sense of humour than the English. I was brought up with an Anglo-Irish-Indian sense of humour and because they laugh so much more, even in their poverty, than anybody else I know... I developed a high degree of laughter.'

Spike’s life in India fuelled so much of his humour and thought process. Laura says that his love of animals and life-long passion as an animal rights activist were born in India.

'He was incredibly sensitive and he witnessed terrible cruelty to animals by the soldiers over there, including hiding and watching and seeing some soldiers drunk, drowning a monkey in a barrel and putting the lid on, it was obviously something he never forgot,' she said.

Milligan had a distinctly British voice but, more importantly, was distinctly Milligan. Tom Burton, professor of English at the University of Adelaide, describes Spike as a 'natural, he’s not a studied poet but he’s got a marvellous ear, both for language and rhythm, especially for the way kids speak, and just loves puns…quite different from someone like Stephen Fry—another comedian, another manic depressive but who has made a real study of the rhythms, the technicalities of the language and so on—whereas Spike sees the ball coming and he whacks it.'

While reading his poems and chatting further with Laura, I realised what a loving relationship he had with his children. Laura tells a story about how her father always used to read to them as kids, how he asked them to make up characters and drew magical chalk drawings on the wall of her bedroom, which later became the characters and poems in his book, Silly Verses for Kids. As Laura reads ‘The Ning Nang Nong’, the spirit in her voice elevates. It still excites her.

'He just loved us to bits and never really wanted us to grow up,' she said. 'I think he felt so guilty about splitting up from our mother, the rows and arguments, and just wanted to give us the most loving family life as a single dad. I believe his humour was a release, giving back to his children some fun and laughter and that was the way he did it—writing his mad, crazy poems for children.'

Love was never in short supply in their household. Laura goes on, 'Dad actually tried to sell all of his children when we got to 21, we’d outgrown our use-by date!'

Laura reminds me that love wasn’t in short supply either when it came to the women of his life. Wives and children were acquired aplenty and he wrote some deeply felt poems about love and unrequited love—such as ‘Love Song’. His poem, ‘A Failed Love’ is all the more potent when you learn that he had three wives and many mistresses. There are four official children of Spike and, well, a few others that are unofficial.

'My father was very reflective of ALL the lovely women he had in his life,' Laura says. 'I know of one particularly beautiful lady, who I’m still in touch with in Australia, who he was very much in love with and she told me she’ll never forget when he asked her to marry him and she replied, “Spike but you’re already married". “So?” said Spike, "That doesn’t matter”… you know, as he always thought, he could just break the rules.’

When the second world war broke out, Milligan joined his father's old regiment and served in North Africa, where he first met Harry Secombe. He began to organise music and comedy shows for the armed forces entertainment organisation ENSA with Secombe and others, and was then wounded in Italy. Milligan spent many months in the battle fatigue ward and his war experiences later formed the basis for a number of bestsellers, including Adolf Hitler, My Part In His Downfall and his poem, ‘Soldiers At Lauro’. Laura recalls that her father didn’t talk about his war experiences, rather he wrote about them.

'That was his release for the pain. I think the war had a lot to do with the black dog that plagued him all his life. Poetry and writing was his way of explaining how he felt about things, a release.'

He wrote moving, dark verse while in the grip of manic depression. Milligan wrote a poem called ‘Manic Depression' at St Luke’s Wing, Woodside Hospital Psychiatric Wing, 1953. The poems starts: The pain is too much, a thousand grim winters grow in my head, in my ears the sound of the coming dead. Laura remembers what it was like to live with her father during the bouts of depression.

'He used to lock himself in his bedroom. Basically he had it [depression] all his life, but when it went into real bad, dark spaces his six foot two frame would shrink down to half the size and the eyes would just look like glazed chasms and he was unable to talk.'

Laura says it's impossible to sum up her father, but adds with huge enthusiasm, 'It was brilliant, he was brilliant, he was a kind, thoughtful, empathetic human being. I was very, very lucky to have a father like Spike.'

I left Laura’s home after many hours, beautifully drained from laughing and crying and indulging in Milligan’s poetry.

George Orwell's assertion that 'whatever is funny is subversive' was never truer than in the case of Milligan and after investigating and hearing his poems, a very complex, comic genius emerges.

Hear the serious and comic verse of Spike Milligan in Poetica on Saturday 4 May at 3pm