Comedy Archeology - There’s A Lot Of It About

When it comes to silliness and wordplay, there’s one person who has loomed large throughout my comedy archeology. I had books of his ludicrous poetry, I listened to audio tapes of his decades-old radio show and I watched what few repeats there were of his TV stuff (by the time I was really into him, he was more of a staple on the chat show circuit than anything else).

Spike Milligan
Spike Milligna, the well-known typing error (as he often referred to himself), definitely came from a similar mold to that of Groucho Marx as he probably wouldn't belong to a club that would have him as a member either.* Everything could be viewed through the lense of the silly as far as Spike was concerned. Let’s look at some of the things that have had an impact for me.

Poetry - Silly Verse For Kids & A Book Of Milliganimals
These two were particularly well-thumbed, pretty much to the point of disintegration. Not only were they full of flights of extremely daft mental fancy, they were also accompanied by a selection of wonderfully scratchy and bizarrely annotated Spike Milligan drawings. In fact, both Spike and Leo Baxendale (creator of The Bash Street Kids form The Beano amongst others) are responsible for my love of a comedy annotation in a drawing. I you can find somewhere else to stick a gag, do so.

The Goon Show
The BBC started releasing these on cassette in the late eighties/early nineties and I was hooked. The advantage of radio comedy is that the pictures are always better. Radio was an ideal medium for Milligan in that it allowed his conceptually odd humour to be given full reign. Yes, OK, I always used to fast forward the musical interludes but the comedy still stands up.

Q
Milligan’s jump to stream-of-consciousness TV sketch show (just prior to Monty Python launching with the same) contains some absolute gems but does have much that is problematic today. His ideas on race and gender are very much a product of the World War II era (combined with an upbringing in colonial India) and make for some, quite frankly, racist and sexist material (one of the reasons it doesn’t get shown today). However, when it delivers the goods, it really delivers the goods; particular favourites of mine being the Raspberry Song and the Jehovah’s Burglars sketch (“We’re being persecuted for beliefs.” “What are your beliefs?” “We’ve believe you’ve got a lot of money on the premises.”)

So, I’ve been trying to let these flow one into the other but we have reached a branching point where I could talk about audio comedy (as prompted by The Goon Show) or focus more on a love of silly language and the written word. Let’s follow one of those tomorrow and come back to the other...


* In fact, that is true - he was refused a British passport as he wouldn't swear an Oath of Allegiance. Fortunately, due to his ancestry, Ireland stepped in and snapped him up instead.