Spike Milligan

Spike Milligan's Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town (that fills up a line or two) for Ronnie Barker (LWT) was unmistakable, maniacal Milligan. One line was "We must act fast," "I'm acting as fast as I can," which brings me to my moral. I think actors, even when speeded up with silent film technique, are too pedestrian for the pace of Goon comedy. Sight is too slow.

An account of Spike Milligan's nervous breakdown "The Other Spike" took the form of a dream or nightmare or a poem written under drugs. Extraordinarily vivid images and incidents but unconnected. A Siamese cat, sapphire-eyed and sinuous. A moron incessantly whistling an idiot tune.

This is scarcely a trace of a story-line, hence all the gags and lunatic gooneries are without dramatic connection, and situation comedy cannot survive without a plot to supply the situations. The gallery of character can hardly be said to interact with one another; in many cases they exist solely in terms of a single outlandish idea or costume, with little else in the way of discernible personality. In this situation the natural comics Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, Marty Feldman - thrive; the the others however - in particular Michael Hordren, Rita Tushingham and Ralph Richardson - are quite unable to sustain the interest which their predominant postition in the film demands.