Eric Sykes, Spike Milligan and the house with comedy value

Part of an 1890s terrace of Arts and Crafts buildings, 9 Orme Court, off the Bayswater Road in W2, is at first glance simply the kind of grand red-brick townhouse you’d expect to find in the area. Look up beyond the elegant entrance canopy to the ornate first floor balcony, however, and above it you’ll spot a pair of blue plaques that single out its seminal role in the birth of British alternative comedy – and a place from which peals of laughter would ring out across the sedate street.

It was here, during the 1960s and 1970s, that absurdist genius Spike Milligan kept an office, in a first-floor space at the rear of the house, complete with fold-down bed for long nights of writing – although he also had a dedicated bedroom on one of the upper floors. The second blue plaque is dedicated to his partner in avant-garde comedy, Eric Sykes CBE, who from 1962 rented the six-storey building with Milligan, and – along with a coterie of friends and collaborators – came up with scripts for shows that defined a golden age of comic writing.