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Spike and Co
This is the story of how four people, Spike Milligan, Eric Sykes, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, grouped together inside a set of offices five floors above a greengrocer's shop on Shepherd's Bush Green and launched a golden age of comedy, producing shows like 'The Goons' and 'Hancock's Half Hour' among many others.
- GenresBiographyNonfiction
438 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 24, 2021
As always McCann gives us a detailed insight into the minds of the creative geniuses amongst us.
This account is well written, often funny, and always fascinating. So if you're interested in the world
of British television in the 1950/60's it comes highly recommended.
This account is well written, often funny, and always fascinating. So if you're interested in the world
of British television in the 1950/60's it comes highly recommended.
November 8, 2024
An excellent biography that charts the rise and rise of Associated London Scripts and the incredible catalogue of work produced by its writers including Spike Milligan, Eric Sykes, Galton and Simpson, and Johnny Speight.
November 21, 2021
Thoroughly enjoyable look at the roots of British Comedy.
May 28, 2014
This review appears at a blog.
Spike & Co. by Graham McCann.
Hodder and Stoughton, 2006, 438 pages.
I've been a fan of British comedy for as long as I can remember. I recall watching Hancock on Australia’s ABC when I was quite young. I've listened to the Goons off an on for thirty years. I think Peter Cook was probably the most brilliant comedian, well, ever. But even the work of the very best inevitably dates. I watched a Best of Ronny Barker recently, and was surprised at its reliance on 'tits & bums' for humour.
Hancock and the Goons remain funny, but a bit of cultural awareness about their time and place is rather helpful. The book provides that, but that is not its purpose.
This book is essentially a biography of an organisation; Associated London Scripts, formed by Spike Milligan, Eric Sykes, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, and home to them and many other very fine writers, not all of comedy (they include Peter Yeldham from Australia, and Terry Nation, still most well-known for inventing the Daleks). As such, it gives brief biographies of the key players, in varying degrees of depth depending on how central they are to the ALS story. Apart from the principals -- the four writers noted above plus Johnny Speight -- we find out about Frankie Howerd, Tony Hancock, Hattie Jacques and a raft of British actors and comedians. The key dates are from the end of the war through to the mid sixties.
They key outputs are legion, but the main ones between them shaped postwar English comedy more strongly than any other single factor apart, perhaps, from the BBC itself. And I do not exclude Beyond the Fringe or the Pythons. These outputs are:
The Goon Show (and the rest of Spike's oeuvre)
Hancock's Half Hour (on radio and TV)
Steptoe and Son
Till Death Us Do Part
ALS shows cover the bases from polished mainstream comedy (Sykes and a...) through the social commentary of Speight's Till Death Us Do Part, which challenged rules on content, to The Goon Show which challenged every rule -- content, structure, logic -- and even seemed to invent new ways to make you laugh. Galton and Simpson's best work is like Harold Pinter but 'with fewer pauses and more laughs' and is fine work by the purest standards of screen storytelling, comedy or not.
So that's the content, more or less. The book itself is highly readable, amusingly written (as well as conveying amusing stories) and well structured. It roughly divides into two sections (1) the people and (2) the outputs, and each of these major parts is cut up, effectively, into `Milligan', 'Sykes', 'Galton and Simpson', 'Speight' and 'the rest'. It works pretty well.
To use a reviewer's cliché, this is 'an essential book for fans of British comedy of the 1950s'. It perhaps could place the work in a slightly wider context -- at times it feels likes only these guys were writing comedy in Britain in those days -- and it perhaps 'sells' the ALS contribution a little hard at times, such that I began to wonder 'Really? Did they really change the world of comedy that much, or is this a sales job?' I mean, I know these were all great comedy writers (as of this writing at least Galton and Simpson are still with us, I hasten to add), but they weren’t the only game in town.
But it is a minor cavil. The book is fun; it kept me reading into the night. It is casual and readable but authoritative. And it shows you where Seinfeld came from -- it is essentially Hancock's Half Hour (the radio version) moved to TV in America and the 1990s. Hancock even has an episode 'A Sunday Afternoon at Home' which is clearly the prototype 'show about nothing', with four characters getting on each other's nerves while stuck inside a flat...
Now I must go out and write my script. Well, perhaps not. Stone me, what a life.
Spike & Co. by Graham McCann.
Hodder and Stoughton, 2006, 438 pages.
I've been a fan of British comedy for as long as I can remember. I recall watching Hancock on Australia’s ABC when I was quite young. I've listened to the Goons off an on for thirty years. I think Peter Cook was probably the most brilliant comedian, well, ever. But even the work of the very best inevitably dates. I watched a Best of Ronny Barker recently, and was surprised at its reliance on 'tits & bums' for humour.
Hancock and the Goons remain funny, but a bit of cultural awareness about their time and place is rather helpful. The book provides that, but that is not its purpose.
This book is essentially a biography of an organisation; Associated London Scripts, formed by Spike Milligan, Eric Sykes, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, and home to them and many other very fine writers, not all of comedy (they include Peter Yeldham from Australia, and Terry Nation, still most well-known for inventing the Daleks). As such, it gives brief biographies of the key players, in varying degrees of depth depending on how central they are to the ALS story. Apart from the principals -- the four writers noted above plus Johnny Speight -- we find out about Frankie Howerd, Tony Hancock, Hattie Jacques and a raft of British actors and comedians. The key dates are from the end of the war through to the mid sixties.
They key outputs are legion, but the main ones between them shaped postwar English comedy more strongly than any other single factor apart, perhaps, from the BBC itself. And I do not exclude Beyond the Fringe or the Pythons. These outputs are:
The Goon Show (and the rest of Spike's oeuvre)
Hancock's Half Hour (on radio and TV)
Steptoe and Son
Till Death Us Do Part
ALS shows cover the bases from polished mainstream comedy (Sykes and a...) through the social commentary of Speight's Till Death Us Do Part, which challenged rules on content, to The Goon Show which challenged every rule -- content, structure, logic -- and even seemed to invent new ways to make you laugh. Galton and Simpson's best work is like Harold Pinter but 'with fewer pauses and more laughs' and is fine work by the purest standards of screen storytelling, comedy or not.
So that's the content, more or less. The book itself is highly readable, amusingly written (as well as conveying amusing stories) and well structured. It roughly divides into two sections (1) the people and (2) the outputs, and each of these major parts is cut up, effectively, into `Milligan', 'Sykes', 'Galton and Simpson', 'Speight' and 'the rest'. It works pretty well.
To use a reviewer's cliché, this is 'an essential book for fans of British comedy of the 1950s'. It perhaps could place the work in a slightly wider context -- at times it feels likes only these guys were writing comedy in Britain in those days -- and it perhaps 'sells' the ALS contribution a little hard at times, such that I began to wonder 'Really? Did they really change the world of comedy that much, or is this a sales job?' I mean, I know these were all great comedy writers (as of this writing at least Galton and Simpson are still with us, I hasten to add), but they weren’t the only game in town.
But it is a minor cavil. The book is fun; it kept me reading into the night. It is casual and readable but authoritative. And it shows you where Seinfeld came from -- it is essentially Hancock's Half Hour (the radio version) moved to TV in America and the 1990s. Hancock even has an episode 'A Sunday Afternoon at Home' which is clearly the prototype 'show about nothing', with four characters getting on each other's nerves while stuck inside a flat...
Now I must go out and write my script. Well, perhaps not. Stone me, what a life.
February 13, 2021
Although the story of Associated London Scripts covers the years 1954 to 1967, most of the individuals discussed in this book remain household names in the UK, and a good quantity of the diverse outpourings of their comic – and, in some cases, dramatic – creativity remain firmly embedded in British popular culture, despite the ephemeral implications of the word "scriptwriting" when contrasted with "playwriting" or "authoring". For cultural impact, "Associated London Scripts" ought to be as well-known as the "Bloomsbury Circle" or "the Beats": its writers included (among others) Spike Milligan and Eric Sykes, Alan Galton and Ray Simpson, Johnny Speight, Terry Nation, Barry Took, and Marty Feldman, while performers who relied on its material included Frankie Howerd and Tony Hancock. McCann's book draws on archival research and interviews, and shows a deep familiarly with (and critical appreciation of) British comedy entertainment over the period from the 1950s to the 1970s.
ALS was initially the idea of Sykes and Howerd's shared manager, Stanley "Scruffy" Dale; however, Dale proved to be incompetent (and, eventually, dishonest), and was he was in due course removed. In his place, the ALS secretary, Beryl Vertue, evolved into a highly effective agent and rights manager, developing merchandise and selling versions of ALS shows abroad (most notably, leading to the creation of Alf Garnett's American counterpart, Archie Bunker). ALS was originally based above a greengrocer's in Uxbridge; Milligan and Sykes at first shared office space, although Milligan's manic-depression soon made that impossible. Galton and Simpson (who had met in a TB sanatorium) would spend hours sitting on their own office floor, mulling over ideas.
McCann devotes chapters to individual writers, and then to their shows; the title Spike & Co perhaps gives the false impression that he was somehow in charge, although his influence should not be underestimated: McGann calls him a "revolutionary", and quotes John Cleese as calling him "the great god of us all". The chapter on Alf Garnett and Till Death Us Do Part includes an account of Speight's clashes with Mary Whitehouse: the BBC and Speight were obliged to pay Whitehouse a sum of money to avoid a libel case after Speight allegedly "implied" she was a fascist. A chapter pairing Galton and Simpson's work for Hancock with their subsequent Steptoe and Son shows how the sit-com evolved from comedy-star vehicle to using actors in more realistic situations.
Two chapters deal with other miscellaneous writers and shows, such as Round the Horne, which got around censorship by employing polari code words. While there is probably little that is new to say about Terry Nation and the Daleks, McCann's account of "Dalekmania" is engaging (there's a passing reference to David Whitaker; his novelization Doctor Who and the Daleks was one of the earliest novels I ever read). The same is true of the book's brief treatment of political satire: Speight and ALS colleagues provided Frankie Howerd with satirical material for Peter Cook's Establishment Club, and the ALS was heavily involved with TW3.
ALS was initially the idea of Sykes and Howerd's shared manager, Stanley "Scruffy" Dale; however, Dale proved to be incompetent (and, eventually, dishonest), and was he was in due course removed. In his place, the ALS secretary, Beryl Vertue, evolved into a highly effective agent and rights manager, developing merchandise and selling versions of ALS shows abroad (most notably, leading to the creation of Alf Garnett's American counterpart, Archie Bunker). ALS was originally based above a greengrocer's in Uxbridge; Milligan and Sykes at first shared office space, although Milligan's manic-depression soon made that impossible. Galton and Simpson (who had met in a TB sanatorium) would spend hours sitting on their own office floor, mulling over ideas.
McCann devotes chapters to individual writers, and then to their shows; the title Spike & Co perhaps gives the false impression that he was somehow in charge, although his influence should not be underestimated: McGann calls him a "revolutionary", and quotes John Cleese as calling him "the great god of us all". The chapter on Alf Garnett and Till Death Us Do Part includes an account of Speight's clashes with Mary Whitehouse: the BBC and Speight were obliged to pay Whitehouse a sum of money to avoid a libel case after Speight allegedly "implied" she was a fascist. A chapter pairing Galton and Simpson's work for Hancock with their subsequent Steptoe and Son shows how the sit-com evolved from comedy-star vehicle to using actors in more realistic situations.
Two chapters deal with other miscellaneous writers and shows, such as Round the Horne, which got around censorship by employing polari code words. While there is probably little that is new to say about Terry Nation and the Daleks, McCann's account of "Dalekmania" is engaging (there's a passing reference to David Whitaker; his novelization Doctor Who and the Daleks was one of the earliest novels I ever read). The same is true of the book's brief treatment of political satire: Speight and ALS colleagues provided Frankie Howerd with satirical material for Peter Cook's Establishment Club, and the ALS was heavily involved with TW3.
March 14, 2009
I didn't know much about Associated London Scripts (ASL) but I found this really interesting. They were responsible for some of the most popular ever radio and TV comedy shows as well as The Daleks and Dr Who!
Great to read the background on the shows I grew up with like Steptoe and Son, Till death do us part, Sykes and many others.
A reasonably easy read, some nice period photos, and a style which discusses the tensions of so many fractured comic geniuses working together in a small environment, without taking sides.
Great to read the background on the shows I grew up with like Steptoe and Son, Till death do us part, Sykes and many others.
A reasonably easy read, some nice period photos, and a style which discusses the tensions of so many fractured comic geniuses working together in a small environment, without taking sides.
August 1, 2010
Books like this, about the workaday world of people revolutionizing comedy (semi-unwittingly, while seeking laughs), are books I tend to like. I don't know why anyone else would even care about taking note of these names, least of all in America in 2010. But it pleases me.
August 11, 2011
I'm interested in the topic, but I didn't feel there were any insights in this book. In fact it sort of read like the results of an internet search on each of the writers who worked for London Scripts Inc.
January 22, 2015
A must read for anyone growing up in the 50s and 60s with the likes of Hancock, Sykes, the Goons etc. Probably seriously dull for anyone else.
Spike & Co referred to in my previous book, Nick Hornby, Stuff I've Been Reading.
Spike & Co referred to in my previous book, Nick Hornby, Stuff I've Been Reading.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews