76 Facts About Spike Milligan

Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan was a British then, from 1962, Irish comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright and actor.

Spike Milligan was the co-creator, main writer, and a principal cast member of the British radio comedy programme The Goon Show, performing a range of roles including the characters Eccles and Minnie Bannister.

Spike Milligan was the earliest-born and last surviving member of the Goons.

Spike Milligan took his success with The Goon Show into television with Q5, a surreal sketch show credited as a major influence on the members of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Spike Milligan wrote and edited many books, including Puckoon and a seven-volume autobiographical account of his time serving during the Second World War, beginning with Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall.

Spike Milligan wrote comical verse, with much of his poetry written for children, including Silly Verse for Kids.

Terence Alan Spike Milligan was born in Ahmednagar, BCI on 16 April 1918 during the British Raj, the son of an Irish father, Leo Alphonso Spike Milligan, MSM, RA, a regimental sergeant-major in the British Indian Army, and English mother, Florence Mary Winifred.

Spike Milligan spent his childhood in Poona and later in Rangoon, capital of British Burma.

Spike Milligan was educated at the Convent of Jesus and Mary, Poona, and later at St Paul's High School, Rangoon.

Spike Milligan joined the Young Communist League to demonstrate his hatred of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, who were gaining support near his home in South London.

Spike Milligan acquired a double bass, on which he took lessons and would strum in jazz sessions.

Spike Milligan describes training with these guns in part two of Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, claiming that, during training, gun crews resorted to shouting "bang" in unison as they had no shells with which to practise.

Spike Milligan was appointed lance bombardier and was about to be promoted to bombardier, when he was wounded in action in the Italian theatre at the Battle of Monte Cassino.

Spike Milligan played the guitar with a jazz and comedy group called The Bill Hall Trio, in concert parties for the troops.

Spike Milligan returned to jazz in the late 1940s and made a precarious living with the Hall trio and other musical comedy acts.

Spike Milligan was trying to break into the world of radio, as a performer or script writer.

Spike Milligan was the primary author of most of the scripts, although he co-wrote many scripts with various collaborators, most notably Larry Stephens and Eric Sykes.

Spike Milligan wrote most of Series 4 but from Series 5 and through most of Series 6, he collaborated with Eric Sykes, a development that grew out of his contemporary business collaboration with Sykes in Associated London Scripts.

In late 1952, possibly exacerbated by suppressed tensions between the Goons' stars, Spike Milligan apparently became irrationally convinced that he had to kill Sellers but when he attempted to gain entry to Sellers's neighbouring flat, armed with a potato knife, he accidentally walked straight through the plate-glass front door.

Spike Milligan was hospitalised, heavily sedated for two weeks and spent almost two months recuperating; fortunately for the show, a backlog of scripts meant that his illness had little effect on production.

Spike Milligan later blamed the pressure of writing and performing The Goon Show for both his breakdown and the failure of his first marriage.

Spike Milligan married for the first time and began a family.

Spike Milligan made several forays into television as a writer-performer, in addition to his many guest appearances on interview, variety and sketch comedy series from the 1950s to the 2000s.

In early 1969, Spike Milligan starred in brownface in the situation comedy Curry and Chips, created and written by Johnny Speight and featuring Spike Milligan's old friend and colleague Eric Sykes.

Spike Milligan was involved in the ill-fated programme The Melting Pot.

Director John Goldschmidt's film The Other Spike dramatised Milligan's nervous breakdown in a film for Granada Television, for which Milligan wrote the screenplay and in which he played himself.

Spike Milligan later complained of the BBC's cold attitude towards the series and stated that he would have made more programmes, had he been given the opportunity.

Spike Milligan later voiced the highly successful animated series Wolves, Witches and Giants, which aired on ITV from 1995 to 1998.

Spike Milligan wrote verse, considered to be within the genre of literary nonsense.

Spike Milligan included it on his album No One's Gonna Change Our World in 1969, to aid the World Wildlife Fund.

Spike Milligan wrote comedy songs, including "Purple Aeroplane", which was a parody of the Beatles' song "Yellow Submarine".

Spike Milligan was the narrator for Lamont's Sherlock Holmes Suite, commissioned by the City of London to commemorate the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes in The Strand magazine.

Tiring of comedic roles, Spike Milligan sought out more serious material.

Spike Milligan had read Ivan Goncharov's Oblomov and felt a kinship with the title character, who declines to leave his bed to face the world.

Spike Milligan refused to be serious when questioned about his motives.

Spike Milligan decided to identify with his character, and told disbelieving reporters that he thought it would be a nice comfortable rest for him.

Spike Milligan was actually intrigued with Oblomov and had read a translation of Ivan Goncharov's novel.

Spike Milligan had long nurtured hopes of transitioning from comedy to serious drama.

Spike Milligan quickly began making up things to say to the cast, turning the drama into an impromptu improv session.

Spike Milligan's antics included starting the play while sitting with the audience, yelling for his castmates to entertain him.

Cues and lines became irrelevant as Spike Milligan verbally rewrote the play each night.

Once back in bed with co-star Joan Greenwood, Spike Milligan spent the rest of the performance poking fun at the Queen for bringing her son to such a racy play.

The play ended with Spike Milligan unsheathing a katana on stage and asking the Queen to knight him for his efforts that night.

In 1959 Ken Russell made a short 35 mm film about and with Spike Milligan entitled Portrait of a Goon.

In 1971 Spike Milligan played a humble village priest in Russell's film The Devils.

Spike Milligan was interviewed live on air and remained in the studio for the news broadcast that followed, during which Milligan constantly interjected, adding his own name to news items.

Spike Milligan ad-libbed the commentary for it and it was perfect.

Spike Milligan contributed occasional cartoons to the satirical magazine Private Eye.

In 1967, applying a satirical angle to a fashion for the inclusion of Superman-inspired characters in British television commercials, Spike Milligan dressed up in a "Bat-Goons" outfit, to appear in a series of television commercials for British Petroleum.

Spike Milligan requested that his fee was paid to ASH: Action on Smoking and Health.

Spike Milligan was the youngest contributor, describing his life in India when it was under British rule.

In 1988, whilst visiting his mother in Woy Woy, Spike Milligan composed and orchestrated a Grand Waltz for Brisbane Water and gave it to the symphony orchestra of nearby Gosford.

Spike Milligan married his first wife, June Marlow, in 1952; Peter Sellers was best man.

Spike Milligan had bipolar disorder for most of his life, having several serious mental breakdowns, several lasting over a year.

Spike Milligan spoke candidly about his condition and its effect on his life:.

Spike Milligan was born in the British Empire to an English mother and felt that he was thus entitled to British citizenship, especially after having served in the British Army for six years.

Spike Milligan was agnostic, saying that he "sometimes prayed in moments of desperation on the off chance that somebody might be listening, but he always felt that he was talking to a void".

Spike Milligan was raised Catholic and expressed the view that "someone raised a Catholic was always a Catholic", referring to himself as a Catholic throughout his life.

In 1974 Spike Milligan was arrested for shooting a trespasser with an air rifle.

Spike Milligan defended himself in court and was given a conditional discharge.

When Spike Milligan received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the British Comedy Awards in 1994, the prince sent a congratulatory message to be read out on live television.

In reality, he and the prince were very close friends, and Spike Milligan had already been made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1992.

Spike Milligan was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2001.

Spike Milligan was a strident campaigner on environmental matters, particularly arguing against unnecessary noise, such as the use of "muzak".

In 1971, Spike Milligan caused controversy by attacking an art exhibition at the Hayward Gallery with a hammer.

Spike Milligan was a staunch and outspoken scourge of domestic violence, dedicating one of his books to Erin Pizzey.

Spike Milligan died from kidney failure, at the age of 83, on 27 February 2002, at his home near Rye, Sussex.

Spike Milligan lived for several years in Holden Road, Woodside Park, Finchley, at The Crescent, Barnet, and was a contributing founder and strong supporter of the Finchley Society.

Spike Milligan's old house in Woodside Park is demolished but there is a blue plaque in his memory on the block of flats on the site.

Spike Milligan was portrayed by Edward Tudor-Pole in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.

In one interview, which was widely quoted at the time, John Cleese stated "Spike Milligan is the Great God to all of us".

Spike Milligan's mother lived the rest of her long life in the coastal town of Woy Woy on the New South Wales Central Coast, just north of Sydney.

Spike Milligan wrote several books including Puckoon during a visit to his mother's house in Woy Woy.

Spike Milligan named the town "the largest above-ground cemetery in the world" when visiting in the 1960s.

Spike Milligan's mother became an Australian citizen in 1985, partly in protest at the circumstances which led to her son's ineligibility for British citizenship; Spike Milligan himself was reportedly considering applying for Australian citizenship at the time as well.

Spike Milligan contributed his recollections of his childhood in India for the acclaimed 1970s BBC audio history series Plain Tales From The Raj.