Spike Milligan - The Serious Poet

Radio 4's Spike Milligan - The Serious Poet, focused on the celebrated member of the Goons, manic depressive and enthusiastic Mini owner, who was also an intense, creative writer of highly diverse poetry. Here, the intimate, personal recollections of his daughters enabled listeners to get a fair way inside the mindset of the troubled, unpredictable, but marvellously mischievous wordsmith who often admitted to feeling like a child trapped inside a man's body. According to one daughter, he was always resigned to his fate of only being remembered for The Goon Show, and that, she admits, has essentially proved true.

While many comics would be very happy with that quality of legacy, it's clear that Spike (born Terence Alan Patrick Sean), had many other creative ambitions, poetry being an important outlet for his deeply personal feelings about everything from his complicated personal relationships, through to losing friends in the war, a brutal experience that haunted him right up until his own death in 2002.

These days, celebrities have five-star specialist retreats to help them deal with personal issues and addictions, but in Milligan's day, the safety nets available were more threadbare, and treatments less sophisticated. "Men in white coats used to visit [the family house] and administer electric shock treatment to dad," recalls one daughter, remembering such events as just normal days in a clearly abnormal, but loving home environment. If there is an upside to the terribly debilitating depression that he often suffered, it's that it inspired him to write some impressive, powerfully personal poetry. He also wrote some sublimely silly verse, a kind of comic safety valve from his personal despair.

Derek Smith, The Stage, 10th November 2011

Radio review: Spike Milligan - The Serious Poet

This study of the comedian's verse, much of it written while he was depressed, helped to highlight the loving and enchanting relationship he had with his daughters.

Elisabeth Mahoney, The Guardian, 7th November 2011

This is a charming, poignant programme in which Spike Milligan's three daughters, Sile, Laura and Jane, offer their warm recollections of their multi-faceted father, through the prism of his simple, sensitive poetry.

They present a new side to the archetypal tortured comic; to them he was first and foremost an enchanting father - Jane admits to having cried when she discovered a delightful poem he had written for her years before. They are also admirably clear-eyed about how difficult and, well, spiky he could be to live with. But it's his haunting poetry that's the main draw and that is the most affecting.

David Crawford, Radio Times, 6th November 2011