![]() At first they thought Secombe was the main star, because he could sing as well. It took the management there a long while to cotton on that Spike was the really gifted one. “Some of the replies are just so pompous. “The BBC replies are also very funny because of the inept way that they deal with his talent,” Newman adds. “He complained about everything.” The two-way communication amounts to a protracted battle between Milligan and a broadcasting institution that repeatedly misunderstood him. “Spike’s letters to the BBC are incredibly funny,” Hislop says. In the new play, Spike, Hislop and Newman draw heavily on recently released correspondence between the BBC and Milligan, who, as the chief writer for the Goons, was the creative force behind the cult 1950s radio show, which also starred Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine. Newman, a cartoonist, agrees that satire resurfaces in new places, such as Michael Spicer’s popular Room Next Door sketches on Twitter. Satire often gets accused of being ‘lefty ranting’, but then you’re not going to get a comedian just saying how well the government has done with the vaccines.” ![]() “Those who say that comedy is biased usually just mean they don’t agree with it. In the play he co-wrote Ian Hislop draws heavily on Milligan’s ‘very funny’ correspondence with the BBC. And people will always have a right to disagree with them. Comics will just have to go on saying what they want to say and then defending it. “You have to be optimistic if you are a satirist and so I think it will just reinvent itself. Hislop says he remains hopeful about satire’s power to regenerate, regardless of new concerns about offending the public. He felt he had done all these bizarre jokes and the self-referential stuff, rule-breaking stuff first.” “And when Monty Python came along, Spike felt it was unfair that it was all regarded as so new. “The idea that modern British satire was invented in 1963 or 64 is ridiculous, since there was great stuff around in the 50s.” Satirical television shows such as David Frost’s That Was the Week That Was and Not Only… But Also, with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, owed a huge debt to Milligan, Hislop believes. These two strands met in Milligan first, Hislop says. The core of good British satire, argues the Private Eye editor and veteran team captain on Have I Got News For You, is a happy marriage between silliness and attacks on those in power. “But Spike Milligan believed, with good reason, that his own work on the radio had got there earlier.” “Everyone always dates the satire boom from the 1960s, when it was suddenly on television,” says Hislop.
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