Darlington welcomes Ian Hislop and Nick Newman as they bring their new play, Spike, to Darlington Hippodrome this month, and The Northern Echo had a chat with the duo to find out more.
The pair was originally meant to be coming to Darlington yesterday (Wednesday October 5) but due to a train strike, we made do with Zoom.
Most known for Private Eye and Have I Got News For You? Ian Hislop has known satirical cartoonist and playwright Nick Newman since they were at school together and they have been making audiences laugh with plays they’ve written together such as; A Bunch of Amateurs and The Wipers Times ever since.
The tour of Spike began last month and the play is based on Spike Milligan and The Goons Show, a radio show broadcast by the BBC Home Service from 1951 to 1960.
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Spike is four years in the making and the pair is delighted that it is finally touring the UK and the “fantastic, hilarious cast” is bringing stories of The Goons Show to new audiences.
Mr Hislop said: “Nick was the big Goons fan, I discovered Spike Milligan later from his book, Adolf Hitler: My Part In His Downfall. Spike was amazing because he completely reinvented radio comedy and he was also an excellent prose writer which is rather annoying that he was able to do absolutely everything. He was a bit too talented.
“Nick’s enthusiasm for The Goons made me go back and listen and we just couldn’t believe how funny it was, and not just funny for the 1950s, really funny for now.
“It’s not surprising really, just imagine it, a period of austerity where prices are rising and people are unhappy and they criticise the Government. It fits perfectly with today.”
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Mr Newman said: “About four years ago, we were given a huge amount of material, about the correspondence between Spike and the BBC and how difficult Spike was to deal with and this was dated from the early 1950s which was the birth of Goon-mania, which was a real phenomenon and we wanted to delve into what caused this comic phenomenon which has changed comedy forever in this country.”
Mr Hislop added: “We see a lot of biopics about comedians and how unhappy their lives are (/were) and yes Spike had mental health issues and had a terrible time in the war and suffered from PTSD and all of that is really interesting but none of that is as interesting as the fact that he wrote The Goons and made a whole generation laugh and that seemed worth celebrating.”
Both Hislop and Newman have children and they decided to write the play to tell their kids about the real king of comedy.
Mr Newman said: “It’s been a joy to introduce Spike and The Goons to a younger crowd. After opening night at each venue we have a Q&A and we always have young people tell us how funny they’ve found it.”
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Mr Hislop said: “Part of the point of the whole play is to say to a younger audience:'It doesn’t matter that you haven’t heard about him. We’ll tell you about him and by the end of it you’ll think that’s really interesting and by any luck you’ll think that’s really funny.”
Starring Robert Wilfort (Gavin and Stacey, Bridgerton) as ‘Spike Milligan’, Patrick Warner (The Crown, One Man, Two Guvnors and Play That Goes Wrong) will also join the production to play ‘Peter Sellers’, and Jeremy Lloyd (The Comedy About a Bank Robbery, Trial by Laughter) will return to his critically acclaimed role as ‘Harry Secombe’.
Spike plays at Darlington Hippodrome from Tuesday, October 18 to Saturday, October 22 and tickets are on sale now.
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