your ten per cent,’ he said.
I normally needed to work nearly a year for that. I could swear Anthony winked at me. Perhaps we had done the right thing after all. We would stay a little longer to get some money together before moving on. Besides, ‘manager and agent to Spike Milligan’ would not look too bad on my c.v. when the television job came up.
Obviously my new rôle meant I had to watch the money side of things, and that was not always easy. When he ran out of wicks for his numerous oil lamps (he dreaded power cuts) they had to be replaced immediately; no delay was brooked. So off he sent Tanis in a taxi to make the expensive round trip to Christopher Wray at World’s End. I learnt to laugh off this sort of indulgence.
Most actors have an agent as well as a manager and there is a distinct difference between the two roles. Tony Boyd, co-agent with Jimmy Grafton to Harry Secombe, who worked in the next office to me, was fond of telling me, ‘You’ll regret showing him you can do both jobs.’
Our professional relationship merged into friendship fairly early on, but I have never been able to answer those who ask when the change took place. It was soon after I had started to negotiate for him, however, that he made an announcement at one of our meetings (which were so informal as to make the word meaningless).
‘I’ve made a decision. As from today I’m not making any decisions.’
I was happy to agree. ‘But there’s one condition. When I make a decision you’ll have to stand by it.’
‘Right on, baby.’
We shook hands. And that was that.
Peter Sellers may have been an international star but, far from feeling left behind, Spike often felt sorry for his friend. One evening he invited Spike to dinner at his luxurious new flat at 30 Clarges Street in Mayfair. Britt greeted Spike dressed stunningly from top to toe in silver – and then went out for the evening. Spike thought that was peculiar but Pete did not seem at all surprised and showed him round the flat with its three bedrooms, one for Britt, one for their daughter, Victoria, and the other for the chef.
‘Where’s yours?’
‘I haven’t got one. I walk to the Dorchester every night, go in the back way so nobody sees me, stay the night and come back here in the morning.’
Spike was sceptical; he knew that Pete valued the truth about as much as he did monogamy.
‘What has the chef got for us?’ he asked.
Pete turned those mournful eyes on him. ‘Britt has given him the night off. But we could do ourselves egg and bacon.’
The Hollywood star frying an egg! So that was their dinner and afterwards Spike walked him to his hotel.
The next morning he told me the story.
‘Do you know, he hasn’t got a fireplace in his life.’ He shook his head and sighed, ‘Poor Pete.’
Spike placed enormous importance on the ideal of a happy domestic life, but for him it was more often an idea than a reality. Nobody found his ideals more difficult to live up to than his wife, Paddy. He often claimed that she made him ill. This was an exaggeration but occasionally it was true. She lived in chaos, while he was obsessively tidy and orderly. Having been brought up in a military regime, punctuality had been drummed into him; for Paddy, time was something the clock kept but not her. For all his whims, Spike was paranoid about falling into debt and never spent more than he could afford, whereas Paddy was reckless with money.
When I took over as Spike’s manager his accountant suggested all Spike’s financial affairs should be looked after by me. Paddy had an allowance for clothes but everything else went on accounts which came to the office and were settled each month by me – greengrocer, grocer, fishmonger, butcher, chemist, garage for petrol, taxis, electricity and gas bills, rates, coal, clothes for the children and their school fees. She would go out for a day’s shopping in the West End and take a minicab for the whole day while she disappeared into Oxford Street department stores. Friends thought I spent a fortune on make-up but I was a Scrooge compared with Paddy. The bills from the chemist where she bought hers were mind-blowing. After she had exhausted her monthly clothes allowance she ran up huge overdrafts, which Spike had to settle.
When I told him the bills were in his reaction varied. Sometimes he would say ‘Just tell me how much and by when’ or ‘Give me the bottom line’, or even ‘Don’t put me in a bad mood. I don’t want to know.’ On other occasions it was rocket time. His temper could be searing and their rows would be momentous. ‘Are you trying to bankrupt me?’ he would shout down the phone. Or he would race home to have it out with her. Their rows were cataclysmic and after some of them he returned to the office looking shattered. In calm moments Spike believed Paddy could not help herself. ‘She lives life in a rush,’ he once said to me. ‘Sometimes the ink is still wet on the birthday cards she gives me.’
Spike was wonderful with all children, particularly his own. He had the gift of being able to understand the workings of a child’s mind. That ability produced poems that have bewitched several generations of children.
Eric still recalls a Christmas, after June had left Spike, when his wife Edith invited him and his children to share Christmas with them. ‘It was simply magical, and it was all down to Spike. I’ll never forget it.’
On Christmas Eve Spike dressed as Father Christmas and, out of sight in the garden, put a tube through the sitting-room window and announced: ‘Father Christmas is coming tomorrow. Ho, ho, ho. And you must light candles in the garden so the reindeer will be able to see their way.’
That is what they did, with lots of laughter and screams from delighted children.
Spike then reappeared as himself and gave everyone a torch. They ran through the woods backing onto Eric’s house, Spike leading the way with a red light that everyone had to follow.
Come Christmas morning, which according to Eric was the best time of all, with the children screaming excitedly over their presents, Spike was nowhere to be seen. Eric did not think he had done a bunk because he would not leave his children. Edith and he searched the house and grounds, but he was nowhere to be found, and she was upset that he had missed them opening their presents. Spike did not appear until eleven. Instead of his bedroom he had slept in the attic because he did not want to be disturbed by the noise of the children.
‘I need my sleep,’ he explained. Eric and Edith knew Spike well enough to take this in their stride.
Although Spike and Paddy had their problems I soon realized that his difficulties came from his personality as much as his marriage. In the little details of life his eccentricities and obsessions were beyond anything I had previously encountered.
He worked at a frenetic pace, always several ideas at once, with numerous television appearances sandwiched between long sessions of writing his books, and kept up vigorous physical activity, playing squash twice a week and cycling seven miles daily on his exercise bike. Even so, he rarely ate more than one meal a day, generally spaghetti if it was a Trattoo night, surviving on doughnuts and his beloved Battenberg cake the rest of the time. Yet his energy was extraordinary. But it could all stop at any minute.
Soon after becoming Spike’s agent I arranged for him to play J.B. Morton in a television programme. Morton wrote the famous ‘Beachcomber’ column on the Daily Express, which poked fun at the upper classes, and for Spike, he was ‘a light in the darkness’. Because he was due on location I took the opportunity to go out for lunch. When I returned there was a desperate message from the television crew. Spike had not turned up. I raced upstairs to find out whether he had taken a nap or forgotten about it. Pinned to the door was a note: ‘Fuck off and leave me alone – and that means you.’
There was only one thing for it. I told the crew to stand down. They were not very