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Spike Milligan - Obituary
One of the books most passed around during internment was Spike Milligan's 'Puckoon' which, I was assured when it was given to me, was about Crossmaglen and the Brits. Only later did I discover that it was published in 1960, was about a 'partitioned' village (set in Sligo, I think) and was written before Milligan even set foot in Ireland.
Nevertheless, it brought some light relief back in those days with scenes which certainly anticipated Father Ted. In one, Father Rudden is trying to raise funds to restore the chapel and in desperation tells his congregation that he will perform a miracle and ask God to make fire fall from heaven. The pews are packed with expectant parishioners as the priest says: "I command fire to fall from heaven!" Then a voice comes from an altar boy in the loft: "Just a minute, Father, the cat's peed on the matches!"
Our love of Milligan was simplistic: he was an iconoclast of the British establishment and boasted of his Irish heritage at a time when many other Irish-born comics were anxious for promotional reasons to emphasise how Brit-friendly they were, and weren't a bit behind the doors at performing as 'Paddies' for their British audiences, regardless that such buffoonery reinforced the 'thick Irish' stereotype. Or else, they presented themselves as well-behaved Man Fridays, with avuncular Irish accents, won over to the cultural might of England.
Terence Allan Milligan was born in 1918 to Irish parents in India. His father, who was from Sligo, was a serving British soldier. Young Milligan was educated at convent schools, before moving to London at the age of sixteen when his father retired from the army.
He was a promising jazz trumpeter and got his nickname from British jazz composer and critic Spike Hughes. He told a story that when he was called up during the Second World War he had to be dragged from the house by eight military policemen. Nevertheless, he was proud of his service with the Royal Artillery Regiment. "We beat the [German] bastard, we really give it to them," he said. It was whilst serving that he was blown up and seriously injured by a German mortar. His manic depressiveness dates from that time. After the war he went into entertainment, playing to the troops before making his reputation with the Goon Show on BBC radio, where he pioneered the joke without a punch line. He appropriated the word 'Goon' from a Popeye cartoon, a word he deployed for a lovable, interesting idiot.
He wrote most of the Goon shows and it was the pressure of writing and recording that caused him to suffer four nervous breakdowns, and also the break up of his first of three marriages. He described that period as one of the unhappiest in his life.
One day he went to renew his passport and was told that he wasn't British.
"Some creep there said, 'Do you know you're not supposed to have this passport.' There was a law passed that said that an Irish man whose father was born in Ireland before 1908 was no longer entitled to a British passport.
"So, I went to the Irish embassy and said, 'Can I get an Irish one?' He said, 'Oh Jesus, yes, we're awful short of people.'"
Milligan wrote six volumes of memoirs, including, 'Hitler: My Part In His Downfall', 'Monty: My Part In His Victory'; books for children; poetry (very sad and very mad ones) and even songs. He also wrote a serious book with his psychiatrist, Anthony Clair, 'Depression and How to Survive It'.
On accepting a lifetime achievement honour at the British Comedy Awards in 1994, Milligan, on live television, called Prince Charles "a little grovelling bastard" after the royal had sent his congratulations in a letter. Afterwards, he faxed him saying: "I suppose a knighthood is out of the question now?" He explained his behaviour by saying that he had drunk two bottles of wine, was 'pissed' and didn't know that he was being presented with an award.
Six years later he was given an honorary knighthood, although technically his Irish citizenship forbid him from using the title. At the ceremony Prince Charles tried to convince him to take the oath of loyalty and become a British subject again, pointing out that even he had to do it as Prince of Wales. Spike replied that it was different for Charles because he had to pledge allegiance to his mother as she provided him with bed and board.
Subject to mood swings and on daily doses of lithium, in between stays in psychiatric homes, he could turn abrasive and often preferred the company of animals to humans. He was an environmentalist and animal rights campaigner but I read somewhere that in his dotage he also spoke out against interracial dating, marriage and breeding and advocated compulsory contraception in developing countries. We'll put that down to the shrapnel, rather than allow it blot the entire life of a man who broke the barriers in comedy and entertained many millions of people with his zany comments on the absurdity of existence.
He was at his best when he interviewed the laconic Van Morrison for 'Q magazine' in 1989. Spike, at the age of seventy one, wearing a large, pink, penis-shaped false nose, set down Mr Morrison.
"Van, I must ask you something. Dutch descent? You must be."
Van replied, No.
"No? You're an Irishman?"
"Ivan is my name."
"I see. A Russian! I'm baffled now."
He asked Van was he "a Proddy". Van said that theoretically he was Church of Ireland. Van was emphasising that he kept his private and public lives very separate but Spike wanted to know if he had a wife, a girlfriend "or a bloke?"
Elsewhere, Spike had said that all he wanted out of life was "a long-lasting friendship. Just like I wanted a long-lasting marriage. Just like I wanted to live in one house all my life, the house I was born in. I am a nostalgia freak. I don't know what this yearning for anchorage in my life is."
The best part of the interview is where Spike begins talking about his own past. "My father was born in Sligo, Van. Very Irish working-class family, very poor. He used to live in a romantic world. He loved a drink, he was full of stories… He used to tell the kids all these stories about shooting elephants, strangling giraffes by hand. I said, 'What's all this, Dad? It's all lies, isn't it.'
"He said, 'Oh yes, all lies. But what would you rather have: a boring truth or an exciting lie?'"
So, when we read him back in Long Kesh we suspended our disbelief and pretended he was railing against the partition of Crossmaglen, that he was anti-Brit and anti-royalist, whilst all along he perhaps didn't know who he really was, except that he was himself best when he was making people laugh and not locked away in a dark room, terrified of the world.
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© 2007 Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison