Woy Woy holds festival in honor of Spike Milligan - Sunday October 5th 2003

It is the place the writer and comedian Spike Milligan labelled "the world's only above-ground cemetery," but from yesterday the Australian town of Woy Woy, in the state of New South Wales, is celebrating the comedian in a week-long festival.

A settlement of 10,000 people two hours' drive north of Sydney, Woy Woy has had a troubled history as the butt of Milligan's jokes since his parents moved there in the 1950s.

He labelled the retirement town "God's waiting room" because of its bowls-playing pensioners, but was a regular visitor, and wrote his novel, Puckoon, at his parents' house.

"There is, somewhere in the steaming bush of Australia, a waterside town called Woy Woy [Woy it is called Woy Woy Oi will never know]," one sketch began. Later he called for it to become an independent republic: "Woy, a town twinned with Woy."

In keeping with Milligan's spirit, not everything has gone swimmingly for Spikefest since its inauguration last month.

Plans to commemorate the 1956 song, I'm Walking Backwards for Christmas, which featured in Milligan's Goon Show radio comedy, had to be kept modest because of fears the council would face lawsuits if anyone injured themselves while walking backwards: the 300 walkers in yesterday's opening parade were wearing their clothes backwards, but walking forwards.

The town has not always looked so kindly on its wayward son. Many locals took his constant lampooning badly, and proposals a few years ago to rename the town library after Milligan were bitterly opposed.

"I think the time has come to stop thinking that Woy Woy is humorous in a quaint sort of way, just because Spike made fun of the name," wrote one local on a newspaper's Web site.

Chris Holstein, a councillor and Spikefest organizer, said most people took the comments with a pinch of salt: "It's down in folklore -- more than anything it's endeared him to the population that he's poking fun at us."

Several of Milligan's letters were donated to the library last year and a reading room was opened in his name. Residents appear to have joined in the spirit of self-mockery: T-shirts on sale in the town bear the legend: "London, New York, Woy Woy."

Events will include exhibitions of art and cartoons, writing workshops, jazz performances and stand-up comedy. Proceeds will be donated to local mental health charities -- Milligan struggled all his life with manic depression.

In later life Milligan, who died in February last year, was active in the town, opposing plans for a sewage treatment plant and leading calls for the preservation of Aboriginal rock art. He claimed to have discovered an Aboriginal painting near the town depicting early settlers rowing in a boat, but said it had later been "smashed by yobbos."