They were never known for their sense of decorum and linguistic restraint, but a cache of previously unpublished letters by Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers proves – if there were ever any doubt – their humour was not for the fainthearted.
The comic geniuses, who along with Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine made up the cast of the wildly popular Goon Show, deployed their anarchic wit and eccentric punctuation to wincing effect in the letters, which were written to their friend, the jazz pianist Alan Clare.
“There are no filters in the letters. Some are… slightly rude, but show their characters,” said Valentina Borghi, specialist in printed books, autographs and manuscripts at Chiswick Auctions, where the notes will go on sale on 30 May.
In one letter, written by Sellers from France in 1967, the Pink Panther star remarked: “What do you mean watch Milligan going mad? I’ve been doing that for fucking years! It’s sad though especially when a person is so brilliant but these bleedin’ geniuses are hard going sometimes. I prefer dull cunts like myself! It’s smoothing.”
Readers of the letters may have some sympathy for Milligan’s mother, who is said by her son to have paled upon opening a letter from Clare. “I got my mother to open your letter… she read it – but being a Catholic nearly fainted at the “Fucks etc” in it. I explain you were a San Franciscan monk under great stress using Ativan suppositories,” he wrote in 1984.
Clare, who died in 1993, was close to both men, and their letters offer insights into their characters and friendships. His family is now selling the documents. Among them are Milligan’s lyrics for a “Mona Lisa song”, also believed to be previously unpublished, sent with a note from Australia in 1984: “It’s the best I can do in the time I have to spare. Spike.”
