MY BRUSH stars WITH THE
The Two Mikes sounds like a new comedy show, but we have two regulars called Mike with stories about Spike Milligan.
Recalling a time years ago when his wife worked on the switchboard in a local hospital,
Mike White of Hastings, East Sussex, says: “She met Spike when he came into the hospital. I wrote a joke on a scrap of paper and asked her to give it to him in exchange for his autograph. I recently asked if she remembered this and she replied, ‘I gave it to him and he kindly gave me his autograph’.
“I asked, ‘Did he read the joke?’ She told me, ‘Yes he did and he didn’t seem very impressed’. Just as well I gave up attempting to write comedy scripts and stayed at the good old Post Office for over 30 years!”
If it’s any consolation, Mike, you’re definitely one of our funniest contributors.
Another reader with an amusing turn of phrase, Mike Smith in Chatham, Kent, was all the way across the other side of the world when he spotted the Goon.
“I was browsing in a book shop in Sydney when I saw Spike enter the store,” he writes. “Then history repeated itself six years later when he turned up at a book shop in London where I worked.” Having started his retail career as a sales assistant in Selfridges department store in London in 1975, Mike met many celebrities. “I even had the privilege of shaking the hand of a sporting legend, Muhammad Ali, who was there to promote the book he co-wrote about his life, aptly titled, The Greatest.”
Mike was seconded to security to beef up numbers as a large crowd of people were jostling to catch a glimpse of the living legend. “As he drew closer,
I felt compelled to stick my hand out which, surprisingly, he grasped. It was a very firm handshake. “At the end of that extraordinary day, I was still buzzing from the realisation that I’d shaken hands with the heavyweight champion of the world!”
If that wasn’t enough of an adrenaline rush, Mike also once served a former Bond Girl and Carry On actress Valerie Leon. “She was tall, elegant, and perfectly charming,” he says. “I’ve even made physical contact with Joan Collins.”
Then adds: “Alas, it was nothing more than a gracious handshake.”
Send your celebrity spots in to me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk