As we celebrate, what would have been spike Milligans birthday, April 16th 1918, we thought we would look at his history with cars.
The main thing to remember, was that Spike Milligan wasn’t really into cars. Possibly because, since he arrived in London at the age of thirteen – having been born in British Colonial India – he worked in and around the capital.
Working as a trumpeter during the evenings didn’t call for a flashy car. Just something you could park easily if the latest gig was too far from a tube station.
Only two cars stand out in period press, The first was the latest, in the 1960’s, ‘new’ Mini (Don’t be confused with the modern BMW Mini, these things were properly small, they made a loss on every one sold, but they were an icon!)
We can really ignore the Mini, virtually every celebrity had one in the swinging sixties, including John Lennon, whose was driven about by a 6 foot 6 chauffeur.
No. The real hero of this story, is the little car that Spike was gifted by his friend and fellow Goon, Peter Sellers. Sellers, unlike Spike was a serial car nut, often buying and selling a new car on the same day, as the whim took him.
The car in question was a small 1930 Austin Heavy Twelve Open Road Tourer Deluxe, that the pair quickly christened ‘Old Min’ after a character on the Goons radio show.
Don’t worry if you don’t have any idea what one was either, most under 30s back in the late sixties had no idea what one was.
Peter Sellars bought Spike the car as a gift, not a whim this time as Spike had expressed an interest on first sight.
The twist comes with Spikes preferred accessory, as per the title.
Only a few weeks after gifting the car, Sellars decided to take the car back – his reasoning, “Spike had left the car out in the rain”, an understandable sin to the international movie star who had a fleet of exotica stored in a dry garages.
But also because Spike had replaced the cars temperature gauge – commonly found at the front of the bonnet on pre- WWII cars – with . . . . a coffee percolator.
In case he fancied a cup of coffee on the way back from a gig we assume. Some people had style without shouting about it.
True to all marketing principles, the car was sold recently at Bonhams (photo above) who maximised the previous owner(s) in all their adverts. A bit like Google Reviews or web site back links? I don’t think so.