Almanac of Story Tellers: Spike Milligan

   Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of April 16th

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    It is the 106th day of the year, leaving 259 days remaining in 2022. 

    On this date in 1918, the writer, comedian, and actor Spike Milligan was born in Ahmednagar, India, while it was under British rule. 

 

    Milligan is perhaps best remembered for perfecting the form of the absurdist, surreal comedy skit show, debuting Q... in March 1969 with co-writer Neil Shand. The show was a major influence on the work of the members of Monty Python's Flying Circus. 

    Q... itself was an expansion of The Goon Squad, a BBC radio show that Milligan wrote and starred in.    

    In addition to his radio and television comedy sketches, Milligan was a poet, novelist, and playwright. He also wrote a seven-volume memoir about his years serving in the British military in World Was II, titled Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall.

    The memoirs are unusual, including tales of his war wounds, a nervous breakdown and transfer to a lesser job, excepts from his diaries, comedy sketches, and absurd memos from high Nazi officials. He was criticized that some of the material was false; Milligan scoffed at the notion, saying it was obvious which parts were true and which were made up.

    He responded, in part, by titling one of the volumes, Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall.

    He also wrote the play, The Bedsitting Room, the novel, Puckoon, about an Irish village that was split when the border with Northern Ireland was drawn, and nonsense poems such as On the Ning Nang Nong, voted the UK's best nonsense poem, ahead of writers such as Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear.

    Milligan died in 2002 in East Sussex, England.