Comedian, author, poet and environmentalist.
Born Ahmaddnagar, India, April 16, 1918. Died 27 February
2002.
Spike Milligan's mind was not of this world. It seems the
only explanation for his twisted, highly amusing and seemingly
inexhaustible perspective. Milligan has access to a higher,
crazier plane of logic.
On the one hand, his madness was a veritable blessing.
From the time it was unleashed by the BBC on the ageless
radio series The Goon Show, he was destined to be the most
influential British comedian since Chaplin. John Cleese,
the senior member of the Monty Python troupe, described
him as "the Great God to all of us". Prince Charles,
a sporadic friend of Milligan's, admitted that Milligan's
nonsensical "The Ying-Tong Song" was the only
song he knew by heart. Even John Lennon was a fan of the
Goons, which was perhaps reflected in the Beatles' own sense
of the absurd.
However much pleasure it brings, madness usually has a
dark side. Milligan's obsessive urge to rewrite the rules
of comedy, throughout the 1950s, led to repeated nervous
breakdowns, a suicide attempt and the end of his first marriage.
For years afterwards, he was infamous for being miserable
and unstable.
A fellow Goon, Sir Harry Secombe, recalled that he and
others "were able to go off and do our own thing...
and The Goon Show was a bit of fun on the Sunday. But for
Spike it wasn't a bit of fun on a Sunday, it was a long
hard slog. He really suffered."
Perhaps it stemmed from his infancy, which he recalled
with some bitterness. Though he acknowledged his parents'
love, he felt that they had left him intellectually and
socially deprived.
Until his later years, most of his life story was shrouded
by his humour. In 1973, when featured in the British version
of This is Your Life, he continually interrupted his life
story with denials. ("And then you met Harry Secombe."
"No I didn't. Never met him in my life.")
Only later did he open up to interviewers. Born Terence
Alan Milligan in an army depot near Bombay, he moved to
Myanmar and Sri Lanka with his family, before returning
to London in 1933. He had a troubled childhood, and was
not known for his humour; instead, his first creative talents
to be recognised were in art and music. Becoming a singer
and musician with the Harlem Club Band, he renamed himself
after either jazz trumpeter Spike Hughes or comedian Spike
Jones, depending on the story.
His comic talents were not revealed until World War II,
when he served in the British Army, performing with Secombe
in military revues.
Though he would later write five volumes of wartime memoirs,
recalling (or inventing) scores of humorous anecdotes, his
service was not all fun and games. Battle fatigue left him
a manic depressive. For many years, journalists - attempting
to interview him - would often find him unresponsive, staring
blankly out of a window. After five decades, his condition
stabilised, and he later became patron of the Manic Depressive
Society, making him "the head lunatic in England".
He made his radio debut in 1949, on the talent show Opportunity
Knocks. Two years later, he teamed up with Secombe, Peter
Sellers and Michael Bentine for a new BBC show, largely
written by Milligan.
After a few name changes, they would eventually settle
on The Goon Show. Much has been written about this series,
and similar adjectives - subversive, irreverent, crazy,
hilarious - are often used. The BBC, now very proud of the
show, was shocked at the time, and it was almost cancelled
on many occasions. As the other Goons would happily admit,
the Goons' world was primarily Milligan's domain.
His contribution did not end with the writing. Though
Sellers was the Goon most famous for his voices, Milligan
was not far behind, inflicting on the world such appealing
idiots as Eccles, Moriarty and the only female regular,
Miss Minnie Bannister. Eccles in particular, whose entrance
would be greeted with loud applause, reflected Milligan's
sense of illogical logic. In one episode, when his friend
Bluebottle (Sellers) is run over by a taxi, Eccles says,
"You must be rich... I can only afford to be run over
by buses."
Television followed, with The Idiot Weekly and A Show
Called Fred (both 1956), which introduced surrealist humour
to the medium. Both were hastily cancelled by bemused BBC
programmers.
It was partly his anger with the BBC - "an idiot
organisation run by idiots, for idiots" - that persuaded
Milligan to come to Australia in 1958 when invited by the
ABC to make another series of Idiot Weekly, with a cast
including John Ewart, Ray Barrett and Al Thomas. Though
reviews were cautious, it was allowed to run for a few seasons.
Milligan felt a strong tie to Australia, visiting several
times over the years. His parents had migrated in 1950 and
lived in the town of Woy Woy, north of Sydney. Several times,
he announced his own desire to migrate, but never did so.
"[It's] because I make more bloody money in England
than I do here," he explained in 1998. "Here you
go on television; they can't pay you!"
He even considered becoming an Australian citizen, but
was unwilling to declare allegiance to the Queen. His strong
anti-authority stance extended to the Royal Family, often
souring his friendship with Prince Charles. The comedian
was never more unpredictable than the time his most regal
fan offered him a glowing tribute on television, and he
responded by calling him "a grovelling little bastard".
After the broadcast, he sent a telegram to Buckingham Palace
saying, "I suppose a knighthood is out of the question?"
Though an Irish citizen, Milligan was finally offered
an honorary knighthood at the end of 2000, and surprised
many people by accepting it, albeit while exclaiming "Help!"
While working in Australia in 1959, he announced, "I
don't want to write for television or radio any more. I
think it's pointless. There's no art in it." Instead,
he published his first book of children's poetry, written
for his own children. Puckoon, his first novel, followed
in 1963, with its own selection of one-liners. ("Money
couldn't buy friends but you got a better class of enemy.")
From that time on, Milligan would churn out books at an
alarming rate. According to Norma Farnes, his long-time
secretary, he spent even more time writing letters: at his
peak, roughly 200 per week. "I'm an addictive writer,
I suppose," admitted Milligan. "Like Van Gogh.
He just couldn't stop."
Meanwhile, he expressed frustration that his work was
not well-regarded by literary scholars. "I'm not one
of those very grey people, very dour and serious about their
art form," he said in 1976. "And it must break
their bloody hearts that I'm the best-selling poet in England."
In 1999, his nonsense verse Ning Nang Nong was voted Britain's
favourite comic poem.
An ardent workaholic, he even returned to television during
the sixties, with shows such as Milligan's Wake (1963),
Q5 (1965) and the controversial Curry and Chips (1965),
written by Johnny Speight, in which he was 'blacked-up'
to play a Pakistani.
Amongst the humour, he tried the occasional serious work,
including the pop song "Will I Find My Love Today"
(1958), his only serious vocal recording; and a slim volume
of poetry, Small Dreams of a Scorpion (1972). "There
comes a time in every man's life when he stops laughing,"
said Milligan. "I decided the only way to save my soul
was to cleanse it with some serious verse which would take
the police off my back and stop them searching me for funny
poems."
In 1976, he read some of his more sombre poems at an Adelaide
stage show. The audience burst into laughter. They might
have been aware of his more serious side, but to them, he
was hopelessly funny.
In truth, Milligan took many things seriously, and much
vitriol was directed against subjects ranging from smoking
to pornography. Most of all, he was a self-proclaimed "total
environmentalist", a committed vegetarian, actively
involved with groups such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife
Fund, rallying tirelessly against whaling, battery hens
or nuclear power. During a 1957 journey to Sydney, he made
a television appeal to save the cottage of poet Henry Kendall
- part of a grander desire to save important pieces of history.
No subject aroused him so much as overpopulation, which
he considered the root cause of environmental ruin. His
concern extended to criticising The Vatican (he himself
was "a bad Catholic, probably the best kind")
and even his own guilt over fathering four children.
His comments, dismissed as fanatical diatribe during the
seventies, were later taken more seriously. At the 1991
Earth Summit, The Vatican, along with the United States
and Japan, was singled out for its role in environmental
damage. Perhaps Milligan the ecologist was as visionary
as Milligan the comedian.
Whatever the case, the comedian has left his mark. Though
he saw himself more as a writer, Milligan the performer
was no slouch. In his movie roles, he upstaged those who
seemed impossible to upstage: Raquel Welch in The Three
Musketeers (1974), the Monty Python team in Life of Brian
(1979); even the Muppets (on TV) would surrender to his
high-energy performance.
Milligan the writer, of course, was a genius who changed
the face of humour in literature, radio and television.
"When we first saw Q5," recalled John Cleese,
"we were very depressed because we thought it was what
we wanted to do and Milligan was doing it brilliantly."
Since The Goon Show, few important humorists in Britain
or Australia have not been influenced by Milligan to some
extent. After all, as he might suggest, his own world was
not necessarily much crazier than this one.
Milligan's first marriage ended in divorce in 1959. His
second wife, actor and singer Patricia Ridgeway, died of
cancer in 1977. He is survived by his third wife, Shelagh;
three children - Laura, Sean and Silé - from his
first marriage; a daughter, Jane, from his second marriage;
another son, James (from an affair with Margaret Maughan);
and his brother, Desmond.
He has six children: Laura, Sean and Sile with his first
wife, June; a daughter, Jane, with his second
wife, Paddy, a daughter with a Canadian journalist, and.
He is now a supporter of environmental issues and vegetarianism.
