# Jack Hobbs (publisher)

Jack Hobbs (1926 – November 1993) was a publisher from Yorkshire. He worked at various London-based publishers before settling at Michael Joseph Ltd, where he worked on a variety of projects including Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate. By the late 1960s, he was working as a director at Private Eye Productions and had set up the short-lived Scorpion Press and then M & J Hobbs, which published mainly poetry and humorous works. He struck up a friendship with Spike Milligan after organising a compilation of his father's weaponry articles and co-authored several books with him including four about William McGonagall. Hobbs is best remembered for suffering from a bout of explosive diarrhoea two-thirds of the way from 26 Bloomsbury Street to London Waterloo station, as Milligan would tell his story wherever he went.

## Life and career

Born in 1926 in Yorkshire, Hobbs spent much of his childhood in libraries and spent time in the military. His first job was running a second-hand bookshop, after which he became a commissioning editor. Shortly after the Second World War ended, he took a post as an all-purpose assistant at Hugh Evelyn Ltd at 9 Fitzroy Square in London before moving on to Jonathan Cape in Bedford Square and then to Michael Joseph Ltd at 26 Bloomsbury Street. While at the last of these, he worked on a variety of projects from many authors including Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate and The Shell Nature Lovers' Atlas. He also co-founded, with his friends John Rolf and John Sankey, the short-lived vanity label Scorpion Press, which mainly published poetry and introduced works by Christopher Logue and Peter Porter. By the late 1960s, Hobbs and Willie Rushton were both working as directors at Private Eye Productions, a company connected to Private Eye. He had become involved with them after becoming a regular visitor to The Establishment in Soho, where he had met Peter Cook and his colleagues and became a regular consultant on their commercial projects.
   "As they relaxed in each other's company, they found that they shared many interests, including a passion for jazz (Spike played the trumpet and guitar, Jack the piano) as well as a love of writing and comedy along with a complicated attitude to their respective experiences of military service during the war. They complemented each other well."
One evening, Rushton mentioned to Hobbs that Spike Milligan of The Goon Show wanted to "quickly" publish a "special" kind of book, prompting Hobbs to contact Milligan the morning after and volunteer his publishing expertise. Within seven weeks, Hobbs had organised three copies of green Morocco leather-bound books compiling Milligan's father's articles about weaponry, one each for him and his two sons, via the Glasgow-based publisher Thomas Nelson & Sons, which were hurriedly airfreighted to Woy Woy in Australia, where Milligan's father was based. A delighted Spike threw Hobbs a celebratory dinner, where they bonded over shared interests. At the time, Milligan was tiring of his treatment by entertainment producers; he later became one of the first signees to M & J Hobbs, a Walton-on-Thames-based independent publishing house Jack had co-founded with his wife Margaret at the end of 1968. The first book the firm released was How to Play Football by Rushton, Richard Ingrams, and Roy Hudd.
In 1971, after significant delays, the firm released Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, the first volume of Milligan's memoirs. These received positive critical reception by most critics and were commercially successful, revitalising Milligan's career at a time when Monty Python had been pillaging his audience. The firm also released a wide range of works by Milligan, including The Bedside Milligan (1969), Milligan's Ark (1971), "Rommel?" "Gunner Who?" (1974), Monty: His Part in My Victory (1976), The Spike Milligan Letters (1977), Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall (1978), Open Heart University (1979), Unspun Socks From a Chicken's Laundry (1981), More Spike Milligan Letters (1984), Goodbye Soldier (1986), It Ends With Magic: A Milligan Family Story (1990), and Peace Work (1991). In one of these books, Milligan described Hobbs as a "friend, pianist, and fellow manic depressive". M & J Hobbs subsequently expanded with an international distribution agreement with Michael Joseph and commissioned from many humorous writers including Eric Sykes, Willie Rushton, Richard Ingrams, Barry Fantoni, Ronnie Corbett, Cardew Robinson, Harry Secombe, Johnny Speight, Dudley Moore, Roy Hudd, and John Antrobus.
Hobbs and Milligan later co-hosted multiple annual dinners commemorating the poet William McGonagall, which were attended by Peter Sellers, Peter Cook, Harry Secombe and other fans of surreal humour, before moving on to multiple pastiches and charity readings, drafting a script for a play or film, and co-authoring The Great McGonagall Scrapbook (1975), William McGonagall: The Truth at Last (1976), William McGonagall Meets George Gershwin: A Scottish Fantasy (1988), and William McGonagall: Freefall (1992). Hobbs would also co-author several unrelated works with Milligan such as The Milligan Book of Records (1975) and coax Milligan's agent and manager Norma Farnes to open up the Milligan and Goon Show archives and begin writing her own memoir; the latter was published in 2003. Hobbs died in November 1993, within a week of another of Milligan's friends, Alan Clare.
   "Jack could play the piano, so he could sit in the office and play and sing, and so could Spike. And Jack would laugh at what Spike was saying, and make suggestions - and he could do short-hand, so he was very quick at getting it all down. Jack was also a very good editor, and Spike accepted that."
Alan Brooke, a contemporary of Hobbs's and Milligan at Michael Joseph, would attribute the pair's successful working relationship to Hobbs having the time, patience, and personality to keep Milligan encouraged and to make sure their joint projects were completed, while the director Joseph McGrath attributed it to Hobbs's competency at listening, dictating, and editing. Graham McCann of the British Comedy Guide wrote that "there can be no real doubt as to the importance of Jack's role in ensuring that Spike persevered with his publishing career throughout the next few decades" and that "he acted, in effect, as the link, the hyphen, the buckle, that kept Milligan connected (whether he wanted to be or not) to the outside world".

## Legacy

Hobbs is best remembered for a bout of explosive diarrhoea he suffered a few years after the Second World War. While spending a couple of weeks on holiday in Paphos in south west Cyprus, he acquired dysentry from a local delicacy. At the time, Hobbs was in the habit of wearing a trilby, as his favourite movie stars also did so. He flew back to England and returned to Michael Joseph Ltd the next day, though left earlier than usual due to his borborygmi. Disinclined to chance a taxi or the London Underground, he attempted to walk from Bloomsbury Street to London Waterloo station, but coughed two thirds of the way there and soiled himself. He then walked into an old-fashioned department store and ordered a pair of underpants and trousers, which were wrapped in thick brown paper and strung up. He collected them ten minutes later, walked to Waterloo station, boarded a train, and locked himself in a toilet cubicle. Once the train had departed, he threw his soiled garments out of the window, cleaned himself up, opened the package, and was shocked to discover that the package contained a woman's fluffy pink cardigan instead of the bottomwear he had ordered. Once the crowds had dispersed, he attempted to walk home wearing the cardigan on his lower half while holding a trilby where his genitals were, only for the station master to ask if he had been on holiday. McCann wrote that Hobbs "knew how absurd it must have looked: smart sky-blue tie, white shirt and nut-brown tweed jacket, with a pair of fluffy little pink legs whirring away underneath".
   "It is at least in part down to Jack Hobbs, therefore, that there is still so much to remind us of Spike Milligan. It is largely down to Spike Milligan, however, that there is still mainly just one thing to remind us of Jack Hobbs."
Hobbs told Milligan the story of his diarrhoea during an off day over a meal and wine, as he wanted to see a comedy hero of his double up with laughter at one of his anecdotes. He was later surprised, however, to find that Milligan would tell the story to almost everyone he met and then use it for radio and television programmes and his one-man shows. He would deliver the anecdote with varying amounts of embellishment; sometimes Hobbs would be in Greece, Morocco, Egypt, Ibiza, or Portugal, while one occasion involved an elaborate trip to Oslo in honour of the works of Edvard Munch and another involved a half-grilled billfish from the Ionian Sea during a trip to Corfu. On other occasions, Milligan claimed to have fallen foul of a rancid hotel shrimp dip, an allergic reaction to halloumi, a curling open sandwich on the flight home, or to have contracted his condition from a chorizo-eating contest by a large and enigmatic fez-wearer. Milligan would continue to tell the tale after Hobbs died until he himself died in 2002. Of being remembered for his bout of explosive diarrhoea, Milligan would repeatedly reassure Hobbs that "being remembered for having a shit is a far, far, better thing than being remembered for being one". Upon Milligan's death, Joe Rooney described the tale as his favourite ever comic story.