Spike Milligan: 'What's the dress code for dining with royalty?'

I'd experienced Spike Milligan in a number of states - hyper, despairing, giggling, excruciatingly, at his own jokes, and blurred from what he called "good brain-numbing" electro-convulsive therapy. His favourite sedative, though, was wine. He called it the love of his life, apart from "an Italian lady I met in 1944". That year he'd been a wine waiter for officers in a military rehab facility in Portici, Italy. "I loved that job, it taught me everything," he said.

The last time I drank with Milligan, at home in Dumb Woman's Lane near Rye, was in mid-1998, with his health deteriorating. He looked frail but spoke animatedly of wining and dining with Prince Charles. "I phoned the palace and said 'What's the dress for a dinner at Highgrove?' and they said black tie. So I arrived in the full kit, but Charles was wearing an open-neck shirt, flannels and slippers. He said 'That's the palace - they're always making bloody mistakes.'

"At one point, William and Harry came down in their pyjamas and he said, 'Look Spike, would you sing the Ying Tong Song to them?', and I had to sing this fucking song. I felt such a fool, but then we had a lovely supper.

"I had to stay overnight but I couldn't sleep in the double bed because my wife snores so badly, so I slept on the floor of Charles's toilet. It was elegant and spotless."

Did he step over you in the night, to use "the throne"? "I don't know. I was sleeping soundly. It had this excellent woolly rug which I used as a pillow."

Milligan was also mulling on jam and writing poetry. "Damn damn damn jam," he advised me. "Jam will get you in the end."