A tribute to Spike Milligan

Written by: Jeremy Stockwell
Published: Friday 3rd August 2018

Jeremy Stockwell and Chris Larner are celebrating British comedy legend Spike Milligan via their Edinburgh Fringe show 'A Sockful of Custard'. In this article for British Comedy Guide, Jeremy pays tribute to the star...

Emerging from post-war Britain a demob-suited generation of Brylcreamed and battle-scared young comics took the country by storm with their barrack-room banter, ready wit, rough wisdom, absurdity, obscenity, irreverence - and rage.

For some, their drive was a need to make sense of a society that had, on the one hand, opened them up to new connections and experiences but had, on the other, robbed them of their innocence and youth. For others there was a relish in the realisation that, for good or bad, society had changed, and that they - these old, young men - had somehow changed too.

The drab black and white world of rationing, bomb sites, and a posh middle-class elite was soon to be challenged and shaken up by a whole new brand of surrealist comedy that held a cracked mirror up to society, blew a collective and extravagant raspberry in the face of authority, and, to the tune of Land of Hope and Glory, dropped its ill-fitting demob trousers, all in the name of a bright new tomorrow.

At the very epicentre of this comic explosion was Spike Milligan, the Royal Artillery Gunner who, in his own words, got blown up and never came down.

Spike's comic genius was tempered by a post-war lifetime of bipolar disorder. I sometimes wonder if his success was despite, or because of this. Or, possibly, it was due to both.

Milligan's big break occurred in the 1950s with The Goon Show - a far-out and surreal radio series he created for the BBC. In The Goon Show, Spike (along with Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine) transformed the face of British comedy. The radio series fizzled with the erratic brilliance of a careless match in a box of fireworks. And it is absurdly funny to this day.

The fall out of that post-war comedy explosion still echoes across the decades. The likes of Vic & Bob, The Mighty Boosh, Monty Python, Robin Williams and Eddie Izzard all recognise the profound and lasting influence Spike has had on them - and on society as a whole.

Growing up in London in the 1960s and '70s I recall how Spike had us seeing the world in different ways. On TV you never knew what he was going to do next. He kicked against the establishment. He was like a loose hand-grenade with the pin pulled out. He turned a black-and-white world into colour.

Spike was also an environmentalist, a passionate supporter of human rights and animal rights, of ecological awareness, and other 'green issues' - long before it was ever fashionable to be so. He was an anarchist, vegetarian, Jeremy Corbyn-cap-wearing maverick. He was a prolific writer, broadcaster, and clown. He was a one-off comic genius, and without a doubt, a man of his time.

For me there are obvious parallels between repressed, post-war austerity Britain and the Britain of today.

On the one hand the internet, media, and the commercial world open up prospects of great delight and wonder beyond the dreams of avarice. We've never had it so good! On the other, we are constantly reduced, exploited, spied upon, polluted, and kept in our place - more than ever in my lifetime - by governments and leaders hell-bent on the exploitation of the populace for their own glorification and gain.

Spike would have loathed this, and encouraged dissent and awareness through the most unique, outrageous and provocative comedy he could muster. No political correctness. No sacred cows. No fear of offence or reprisals. Just good, absurd, authentic, and generous, honest fun.

Spike Milligan died in 2002, and this year marks the centenary of his birth. His legacy of lunacy lives on in the simple notion that nonsense is our only route back to sanity. And that once in a while we might stop, come together in theatres and bars, and laugh out loud at the absurdity of it all.

His sign-off was simply "Love, Light, and Peace". We could surely do with some of that now.