Adolf Hitler_ my part in his downfall - Spike Milligan [2]
“Ohhh yes,” said our neighbour Mrs Windust, “you’ve got a rupture comin’. My ‘usband ‘ad one from birth. Orl fru our courtin’ days ‘e managed to keep it a secret, ‘course, on our ‘oneymoon ‘e ‘ad to show me, and then I saw ‘e was ‘eld together wiv a Gathorne and Olins advanced leather truss. ‘e ‘ad to ‘ave it remodelled before we could ‘ave sectional intercourse.”
Terrified, I hied me to my Hearts of Oak Sick Benefit Hindu Doctor, who had a practice in Brockley Rise. “Oh yes Milligan! You are getting a rupture! I can feel it!” he said inserting curry-stained fingers like red hot pokers in my groin. That diagnosis from a son of the B.M.A. was thirty-five years ago. I’m not ruptured yet. Perhaps I’m a late starter. Rupture! the thought filled me with lumps of fear, why? For three years I had been trumpet player with the Ritz Revels, a bunch of spotty musicians held together with hair oil. They paid ten shillings a gig-,↓ of this I gave Mother nine, who in turn gave seven to the church for the Poor of the Parish. I couldn’t understand it, we were the Poor of the Parish.
≡ A one night stand.
Blowing a trumpet puts a strain on the groin up to chest height, so, every time we did a gig I improvised a truss. I stuffed rags into an old sock until it was packed tight. I then placed it in the predicted rupture spot and attached it to my groin with lengths of tape and string, this gave me a bulge in my trouser; that looked like the erection of a stallion. Something had to be done. I mean, if some woman saw it. I could never live up to it, so I tried to reduce the bulge by putting leather straps round me and pulling them tight; nothing happened except my voice went up an octave. It still looked obscene, but Mother came to the rescue; she sewed on an additional length of dyed black curtain which covered the bulge but brought the jacket half way down my thighs. Embarrassed, I explained it away by saying, “This is the latest style from America, Cab Galloway wears one.”
“He must be a cant,” said the drummer. I had bought the evening dress from my Uncle Alf of Catford for thirty-eight shillings, the suit was tight, but so was money, so I bought it. For weeks I played in my leather harness trussed up like a turkey.
After a month I got saddle sores and went to the doctor, who passed me on to a vet, in turn, he reported me to the police as a Leather Pervert. The pain in my back persisted, sometimes I couldn’t move for it. What I had was a slipped disc, a condition then unknown to the world of medicine. But to get a ‘bad back’ at the same time as your call-up rings as hollow as a naked wife in bed with the lodger saying the laundry’s late. (In my case it was true, the laundry was late.) I was put in Lewisham General Hospital under observation. I think a nurse did it through a hole in the ceiling. Specialists seeking security in numbers came in bunches of four to examine me. They prodded me, then stepped back to see what happened. “He’s still alive,” said one. They then hit me all over with rubber mallets and kept saying to each other “what do you think?” Days later a card arrived saying ‘Renal Colic’.
The old man in the next bed leaned over and said in a hoarse voice, “Git aht of here son. I come in ‘ere wiv vericose veins and they took me ‘pendix aht.”
“Thanks,” I said, “my name’s Milligan.”
“Mine’s Ethel Martin,” he said.
“Ethel? It says Dick on your chart.”
“I was when I come in, somewhere between there and ‘ere.” He pointed in an obvious direction.
“The unkindest cut of all?”
“They got me mixed up with someone who wanted to be sterilized. How do you tell your wife you ain’t what she thinks you are?”
“Don’t tell her, show her!”
“I’ll think about it.”
“From now on that’s all you will be able to do about it.”
Those sons of fun at the hospital, having failed to diagnose my ailment, discharged me with a letter recommending electrical treatment, and headed ‘To whom it may concern’—I suppose that meant me. It was now three months since my call-up. To celebrate I hid under the bed dressed as Florence Nightingale.