It was the movie premiere of the biopic of ‘Dundee’s Bard’ which was just as bad as one of his terrible poems.
Everything went wrong at the Royal charity film premiere of The Great McGonagall which also gave Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon an eyeful of more than they bargained for.
Spike Milligan played the world’s worst poet William McGonagall in the humorous biopic which also featured his Goon Show partner Peter Sellars as Queen Victoria and Alfie actress Julia Foster as Mrs McGonagall.
The film premiere at the ABC in Bloomsbury in London is being remembered exactly 45 years since it got off to a Goon-show start on January 22 1975.
Princess Margaret, who was born at Glamis Castle near Forfar, had already agreed to meet a cardboard replica of Peter Sellars dressed as Queen Victoria on arrival.
But an exuberant guest knocked the replica over and broke it.
Princess Margaret was then to be presented with a copy of McGonagall’s poems.
But she received an apology from Spike Milligan because the book of poems was not published in time.
To top it all the first reel of the film didn’t work after hitting technical difficulties.
The film was produced by British pornography producer David Grant who had forced director Joseph McGrath to put in some nude scenes and used the film as a tax write-off.
Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon saw full frontal nude scenes once the reels got rolling again but witnesses said they didn’t bat an eyelid.
Widely considerd the worst ever poet in the English language, McGonagall was a Dundee carpet weaver with a side-line in terrible verse who was most famous for The Silvery Tay.
He described how it was in Paton’s Lane that he was moved by the ‘spirit of poetry’.
McGonagall, who also had spells as an actor, carried an umbrella to protect himself from rotten fruit thrown at him by strangers.
He never admitted to writing deliberately bad poetry and maintained his persona as unintentionally hilarious until his death in 1902, aged 77.
The Great McGonagall was the seventh in a string of flops for Sellers whose next film was a return to the role of Inspector Clouseau in The Return of the Pink Panther.
Princess Margaret eventually did meet the cardboard replica of Sellars once it was patched up again.
Pink Panther legend Sellars was unable to attend the premiere.
“It’s so sad that Peter could not be here,” she said.
“This is the cut-out of him is it?”
Milligan replied: “Yes – the real Peter Sellars is in America somewhere on a tax dodge.”
Milligan previously resurrected McGonagall in the form a character called ‘McGoonagall’ for The Goon Show during the 50s and 60s.
In 1965, a competition was organised to find poets like McGonagall, with cash prizes being offered to the winners.
Sellers and Milligan were again involved among the panel of judges who rejected all entries after deciding that no poet could compare with McGonagall.
