Sholton Morgan as Spike Milligan
Spike Milligan’s war memoirs have been adapted for the stage.Laura Davis meets the man behind the show
‘I’M TOO young to go,” screamed Spike Milligan as he was dragged off to war by two military policemen who’d seen through his numerous disguises.
It had been more than three months since he had received his discharge papers and his Florence Nightingale costume was beginning to wear thin.
This, at least, is the way the comedian begins the colourful account of his time in the armed forces, in Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall.
And it’s also how the new stage version of his wartime memoirs starts – with Sholto Morgan as a young Milligan reciting the first chapter into a microphone.
“He just delivers it as a piece of stand-up comedy almost, so you get into the voice of the books very quickly before we start dramatising scenes from them,” explains Ben Power, the show’s co-writer.
“Sholto is so incredibly strong and so like him that you have an immediate empathy and emotional connection.”
