Sincerely,
Spike Milligan
6394108
P. S. Please see the address above.
The Independent Newspaper
The Editor
26 April 1993
Dear Sir,
With due respect to the death of Sir Ian Jacob I must make comment on your obituary. It was the occasion of when the BBC thought it very funny to get Richard Dimbleby to comment on spaghetti growing in trees a joke that only an idiot would believe and yet Ian Jacob believed it to the extent he had to look up three books before he knew it was a joke. So much for the intellect of a BBC Director General.
Spike Milligan
The Editor
Daily Mail
15 December 1998
Dear Sir,
I read your description of the end of Barry Horne’s fast and it was outrageous! This man took no nourishment for 67 days, that in itself is an epic.
The fact that he sipped orange juice – well, so did Gandhi during his fast. Is he to be condemned also? Outrageous!
Yours sincerely,
Spike Milligan
The Editor
The Times
15 January 1999
Sir,
The Pope says God has no beard, if he knows that would he tell us what the rest of him looks like.
Spike Milligan
7
In Defence of Animals
Miss Nora Blackborow
The Secretary
The Totteridge Manor Association
London N20
27 April 1964
Dear Madam,
I noticed this year that one of the swans on the little pond at Totteridge is without its mate. I know not whether it be the male or female who is missing. I was wondering if you would be interested in a replacement for the missing swan. I am a personal friend of Peter Scott and I am sure could arrange for a replacement, for the rather lonely looking creature that now inhabits the pond.
Yours respectfully,
Spike Milligan
Totteridge Manor Association
London N20
11 February 1965
Dear Mr Milligan,
In reply to your letter of 1st January, I am glad to tell you that the two swans are now occupying one of the Long Ponds, and we have been assured on good authority that one is a cob and the other a pen.
Yours very truly,
Hon. Secretary
The Editor
The Daily Telegraph
4 February 1965
Sir,
If your reporting is true then the case of the company director who killed a dog with a shotgun is an absolute travesty of justice. How can a man who is a company director, which takes, I presume, a degree of intelligence, pick up a gun, point it at a dog at close range and fire it and consequently killing it and then come out with such a thin argument as ‘I only tried to frighten it away’. Anybody knows that pointing a gun at close range and pulling the trigger is the way to kill. How can this man get away with a £10 fine which for a man of his financial position is nothing, and on top of that to come out exonerated as a dog lover. I find the whole thing just too evident of the massive decadence in moral standards and intelligence which this Country is undergoing. Apart from everything else this man’s use of the gun proves him totally unworthy of having a licence. It is tantamount to letting somebody fire a cannon at a cat to frighten it away.
Yours faithfully,
Animal Lover
Spike Milligan
Mrs M. Thatcher
Conservative Hall
18 March 1968
Dear Mrs Thatcher,
I am writing to you asking can something be done about the unbalance between male and female Mallards in London parks.
The situation is, the males outnumber the females 10 to 1, the terrible conditions for the females during the mating season often ends up in death, mutilation, and permanent injury.
It really is the job of the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works who, and you must believe me when I say this, are incapable of any effort at all, and having formed a Committee to discuss this problem, needless to say have come out without an answer.
The answer is very simple, that is why they find it difficult to find.
We need some wildfowlers to thin down the males to a reasonable proportion. This means a little bit of office work, like writing letters to the Wildfowl Committee or Society, and asking them to come down one morning before the parks open and try and readjust the balance of nature.
The Mallards shot, need not be wasted, they can be given to the Chelsea Pensioners who, I am sure, would love them as a treat.
Please try and do something, let us see some drive in this old country which is not just made up of drains, atomic submarines, riots, retreating from outposts of the Empire. Let us try and sort some of the simple problems out as well.
Sincerely,
Spike Milligan
R. S. Teager Esq.
RSPCA
18 March 1968
Dear Mr Teager,
I am asking you for your help. The situation is, the condition during the mating season of Mallards in London Parks.
The females are taking a terrifying thrashing to the point of death, which I have seen myself. Having made a quick tour of the Parks on Sunday the females are outnumbered 10–1, 5–1, and 3–1. Something has to be done.
The solution is very simple, the males have got to be thinned out by shooting, or secondly, which would be much more difficult, trapping them at night by hand, and taking them into distant parts of the country and releasing them, which, of course, is out of the question.
The Ministry of Public Buildings and Works who should really be solving the problem are doing nothing.
I am writing around to the RSPB Peter Scott my local MP etc.
We need some Wildfowlers to thin down the males to a reasonable proportion, they could go into the parks in the early morning before they were opened to the public.
Please try and help.
Sincerely,
Spike Milligan
Peter Conder Esq.
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
Bedfordshire
18 March 1968
Dear Peter Conder,
In the last few years, in the mating season, many Mallards in London Parks have been murdered in that the males outnumber the females 10 to 1. The result for the females is mutilation, often death, in any case very savage.
Nothing is being done at the moment. The Ministry of Public Buildings and Works, in whose lap the problem really lies, apparently are acting as if they had no lap.
The best and simplest way is getting a brace of guns, preferably Wildfowlers, who would then thin out the males in the parks, early in the morning before the public come in, and the males need not die in vain, they could find a good home on the table of the Chelsea Pensioners, any Sunday.
Do you have the necessary machinery to do this.
I am writing to various people seeking their help, Peter Scott RSPCA etc.
Please try and help.
Respectfully, earthbound,
Spike Milligan
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
Bedfordshire
21 March 1968
Dear Mr Milligan
Thank you for your letter of 18th March.
I am passing your letter on to Lord Hurcomb, a Vice-President of the RSPB who can make things move. He happens to be Chairman of the Committee which advises the Ministry of Public Works on the birds in the London Parks. I will also mention this to Stanley Cramp, who is Chairman of the RSPB and also a member of the same Committee, and again who is pretty good at attempting to bully the Ministry. They both know London Parks very well.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Conder
Director
Rear-Admiral Christopher Bonham-Carter CB, CVO
Buckingham Palace
25 March 1968
Dear Rear-Admiral
Bonham-Carter,
Thank you for your signal of the 20th March. I am a bit amazed, a Navy man sending signals from a typewriter, when they have a perfectly good pigeon post and heliograph atop Admiralty Arch.
The problem of the Mallard on the Round Pound is very simple.
We de-cocoon HMS Boxer, now lying at Bucklers Hard, she is dissembled, mounted on pack horses and re-floated in the Round Pound.
Using pompons, I think we can deplete the male population and send them to a watery grave (blasted foreigners).
According to the laws of Her Majesty’s Parks, whereas Wildfowlers, or for that matter Unwildfowlers, are not allowed to fire guns, it is a point of Maritime Law that all watery surfaces inside 20 miles of our coast is considered fit highway for any of Her Majesty’s ships.
I trust now that you will send the requisite signal to set all guns blazing on the Round Pound at dawn.
Regards,
Spike Milligan (Gunner)
P. S. You weren’t ever in charge of a ship called Collingwood, were you? If so, I have got bad news for you.
House of Commons
Westminster
27 March 1968
Dear Mr Milligan,
Thank you for your letter. I knew there was this unbalance, but had no idea the difference was so great. I am sending your letter to the Ministry concerned, and will write to you again when I receive their reply. I hope in the meantime they will do something.
Yours sincerely,
Margaret Thatcher
Mr James Callaghan
Home Secretary
16 April 1969
Dear Mr Callaghan,
Just to add to your already hectic life, here’s some more. I just want to register a protest regarding the Cambridge University Department of Zoology. Getting a bird and making it deaf no matter what benefit it gives mankind is just bloody barbaric. You will just have to believe me chum. If you don’t know, then you shouldn’t be Home Secretary.
Spike Milligan
P. S. I shall still go on supporting the Labour Party.
P. P. S. I’ve been in contact with Prof. W. H. Thorne, who is a nice enough chap, but bloody barbaric as I said before.
The Rt. Hon. Pierre Trudeau
Office of the Prime Minister
Ottowa
Canada
14 October 1969
My Dear Prime Minister,
I am writing to you to speak for voiceless animals, in this case, the seals, which are ruthlessly hunted for personal adornment.
I am not asking you to restrict all seal hunting, but would you like to consider making the Gulf of St Lawrence, a seal sanctuary, where they can live out their lives in security, and also add a natural attraction for parents and their children who visit that area.
Respectfully,
Spike Milligan
P. S. I am a member of the advisory committee of the World Wild Life Fund.
The Rt. Hon. L. J. Callaghan MP
Houses of Parliament
Westminster
15 October 1969
Dear Mr Callaghan,
In the light of recent figures revealed regarding vivisection, I cannot help but as a public spirited citizen, register the degree of horror on the ever increasing number of experiments.
You really must put a break on it because, man by nature of his instinct will always ignore suffering for the sake of an experiment.
I am not anti vivisection in principle, it is rather the over increasing number of experiments which appal me.
As one of the ministers elected on behalf of the public, I, as one of them, must say I must consider this question when next casting my vote.
It would appear, neither conservative nor socialist would have any voice of opinion on this matter, which bears out my argument, that in main, man is pretty indifferent to suffering, provided it has the label Science attached to it.
I know for a fact that there are operations carried out that have very little bearing on medicine, and are done purely out of curiosity.
The recent deafening of birds at Cambridge was a point in question.
I ask you again to have re-enlightened thinking as a feeling human being and a Christian. A political answer will not suffice.
Yours sincerely,
Spike Milligan
P. S. I enclose a pamphlet which you may not yet have been besieged with. Observe it dispassionately, and you should still find it horrific.
President Richard M. Nixon
White House Office
Washington DC
USA
17 September 1969
Dear Mr President,
This is an appeal from across the Atlantic regarding the Wildlife in the Florida Swamps.
At the moment there is a threat, that the water, on which the wildlife lives and survives is being dissipated by various irrigation schemes and dredging. Of course, the wildlife is voiceless and can make no appeal, except to men with consciences and a feeling of respect for the creatures on this planet.
When man set foot on the moon it was dead, let that not happen in any measure on this planet.
I am a member of the Advisory Committee of the World Wildlife Fund and, therefore, I speak with a certain degree of knowledge on the subject.
I wish you well in your mammoth task as a new President, and hope you will bear in mind some of the small things, one of which I have brought to your attention.
Respectfully,
Spike Milligan
Mrs Molly Ross
Birkenhead
9 April 1970
Dear Mrs Ross,
Thank you for your letter of Easter Sunday ’70.
I will tell you why the hell I am worried about Wildlife; it’s very simple. It’s nearly all gone. If that isn’t a priority need, then I don’t know what is. Second thing is, the animals have no chance in newspaper appeals, no political party, nobody to take photographs of nuns holding them in their arms trying to save them. In other words, only the conscience married to intellect can ever do anything for them. Now, there is absolutely no shortage of human beings. They have satiated themselves to the extent where they are now turning out unwanted human beings by the thousand. This is the direct result of man himself. The destruction of the animal kingdom is also the work of man. So look at it through the cold eye of logic. One can immediately see where the priority is at its most urgent. This does not mean that I ignore my fellow man, I also work for human charities as well. I realise the pitiful agony of children born to a life of not being wanted, and they are never long out of my thoughts. Bearing their suffering in mind along with the fact that my fellow men are so debased as to give birth to children without any thought of whether they can provide for them or not. I joined the Family Planning International because that is where the heart of the problem is. Needless to say I am as distressed about the condition of children as you are, but I am also distressed about the extermination of animals.
Your description of where the children sleep 150 at a time is of course terrible, but I also witnessed in Nairobi last week, a baby chimpanzee with a broken leg in a tiny box, lying in its own excreta, which is also not very nice.
I will be trying to gather some money together for Mother Provincial, Loreto House, 7 Middleton Row, Calcutta.
I am also sending your letter to Oxfam who have thousands of bloody pounds especially for this purpose. Why aren’t they sending any of it to these children? Have you approached them?
Anyhow, I will try.
Yours sincerely,
Spike Milligan
The Editor
The Listener
25 June 1973
Dear Sir,
On Saturday 26th May (BBC 2) I watched an ‘educational’ programme. A man, with knife and scissors, stood over an anaesthetized white rabbit, slit it open, cut away with scissors, and removed the rabbit’s heart, the heart was kept beating on a machine; the vivisector’s voice purred on softly, and, no matter who argues to the contrary, I realised that
the man had absolutely no feeling of remorse or sadness as to the destruction of the animal. Bearing in mind, he no doubt believes his actions are in the interest of mankind, we saw, that by continual repetition of taking life, the experimenter himself was being modified and dehumanised in his attitude to the taking of life. I have often pondered how German vivisectors in 1939 (apparently ‘normal’ men, just like our friend with the rabbit), went from animals to experiments with live men, women and children, the answer is simple, by continued association with suffering, the experiment finally becomes more important than the live creature, experiments mean death for the animal and to those who kill them a gradual and pernicious erosion of compassion and morals.
Respectfully,
Spike Milligan
[Note Spike put on his car whilst demonstrating in Trafalgar Square. You know what? They didn’t.]
HRH The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
Buckingham Palace
28 June 1973
Dear ‘Skipper’,
Good to see your name added to the signatories on the ten year ban on whale killing. There should be no let up to this fight, I am delighted that the battle is still on.
Race you to grandfather.
Love, light and peace,
Spike Milligan
The Earl of Antrim KBE
The National Trust
London SW1
6 June 1974
Dear Lord Antrim,
May I draw your attention to Page 22 of the National Trust Summer Issue (No. 20), there was an advert for Kirinyaga Game Safaris, and this included hunting, and that means killing.
I am certain the National Trust does not wish to advertise this sort of thing, and I wonder if you might terminate publishing it in any future issues.
The fight for conservation in my own area (Barnet) goes on a pace, my own Society (Finchley Society) after three years have only managed to save four buildings, but we have had success with tree planting and having preservation orders put on trees, so our gains in relationship to our efforts are by and large very small, but we continue to fight, and shall continue to fight.
Spike Milligan Page 7