Looking Back
1
January
1963
- 31
January
1963
"The Bedsitting Room" opened at the mermaid Theatre. It got mostly rave reviews and it ran for a year. At one point Barry Humphries was in the cast. He described acting alongside Spike as “one of the oddest and most exhilarating experiences of my career. One could never be sure what would happen from night to night”. One night Spike threatened to shoot one of his fellow actors, Graham Stark, supposedly because he was jealous of the plaudits Graham was getting for his performance. They eventually reconciled and remained friends. Graham later said “He was very naughty in lots of ways, but he was the most brilliant bugger I ever knew”. Gradually depression set in and he began missing performances. At this stage he was demonstrating many symptoms of bipolar disorder’, including using depression to dodge a confrontation or crisis. Some days he would just lock himself away and speak to no-one and other times he was exhilarated. He called the 1960s his “dreary years of depression”.
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