Richard Lester

Why, 60 years on, Spike Milligan's Bed Sitting Room is as relevant as ever

Spike Milligan's post-apocalyptic dark comedy The Bed Sitting Room has not been performed on stage for almost 40 years. Now, ahead of a rehearsed reading of the script that the former Goon wrote with John Antrobus, producer John Hewer recalls what drew him to the project...

This is not the moment for ponderous blockbuster cinema: concentration spans, we are told, are plummeting in the Covid era. So if you're fretting at home, here is a film that will take your mind off things: the Beatles' super-entertaining feature from 1964, which showcased their ease and humour in front of the camera as well as director Richard Lester's gift for experimentation. A blast.

Radio Times review

You may be expecting a breezy, knockabout profile of a zany comic talent. Certainly there are ripping clips: the sort of humour that constantly tore up the rulebook and demolished the fourth wall ("What are we going to do now?"). But Verity Maidlow's detailed biography ends up being a profound meditation on work pressure, mental pain, and the things that really matter in life.

The story of his life (born in India, scarred by the Second World, dedicated to entertaining) is told by Milligan himself in archive interviews, his daughters and admirers. A poet, trumpeter and green campaigner, Milligan developed a style of comedy that was like freeform jazz. As director Richard Lester says, he had ideas "like fireworks going off".

The goofing clown of anarchic classics The Goon Show and Q comes across as a passionate, sometimes tormented soul - he bravely admitted his depression at a time when it was taboo to do so. But it was his children that brought out the inner calm in Milligan (Love, Light and Peace refers to his sign-off in letters). Asked what he considered his greatest success, he replied, "Being a good father."

The Bed Sitting Room Review

A very British apocalypse from Richard Lester, based on the satirical one-act stage play by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus.

Richard Lester's adaptation of the play by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus is a truly bonkers curio. Set in a blasted post-apocalypse Britain where roughly 20 people have survived, all of whom steadfastly avoid discussing what has happened, the film features an impressive pantheon of 1960s British talent - Milligan, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Ralph Richardson, Arthur Lowe - attempting to carry on as normal with bicycle-powered public transport and the ever-present threat of mutation.

Lowe turns into a parrot, Moore turns into a sheepdog, and Richardson wearily endures his inexorable transformation into the titular rented accommodation. Bleak, dark, surreal, silly and truly unique.