Documentary opens up Spike Milligan’s ‘treasure trove’ of scripts and footage Looks like an interesting doc on SkyArts. "Seb Barfield, the producer-director of Spike Milligan: The Unseen Archive, was astonished to find entire shows, sketches and poems among hundreds of papers and reels of footage. Barfield said: “There is so much material, it was a struggle to decide what to leave out. I grew up on the Goons and it was overwhelming to read scripts and watch footage for the first time. The archive isn’t just scripts, and film rolls. There’s his old clothes, his piano, his awards, books, paintings. It feels as if he’s in the next room … During filming, one of the crew would notice something that Spike had written and we’d have to stop for five minutes because we’d all be laughing so much.”
I saw this at the BFI today, with an introduction by Al Murray (the pub landlord). It is indeed very interesting and left me wanting more (Barfield said his first cut was four hours long, which he edited it down somewhat). Spike's daughter Jane was also in attendance and hinted at the possibility of some sort of Milligan museum in the future.
I was very disappointed in this. What was shown of the archive was excellent, unfortunately it tended to be rather short clips. Much of the time when something was shown, a photograph for instance, it would then lead to a section about his life. So his depression; his wives, his children etc were all covered. All interesting, but all done before and nothing to do with the ‘lost archives’.
An older documentary about Spike tonight on BBC4: Spike Milligan: Love, Light and Peace | Radio Times
