A great man' Stephen Fry Spike Milligan was one of the greatest and most influential comedians of the twentieth century.īorn in India in 1918, he served in the Royal Artillery during WWII in North Africa and Italy. Filled with bathos, pathos and gales of ribald laughter, this is a barely sane helping of military goonery and superlative Milliganese.'The most irreverent, hilarious book about the war that I have ever read' Sunday Express 'Desperately funny, vivid, vulgar' Sunday Times 'Milligan is the Great God to all of us' John Cleese 'The Godfather of Alternative Comedy' Eddie Izzard 'That absolutely glorious way of looking at things differently. No ammunition') to the landing at Algiers in 1943 ('I closed my eyes and faced the sun. 'In this, the first of Spike Milligan's uproarious recollections of life in the army, our hero takes us from the outbreak of war in 1939 ('it must have been something we said'), through his attempts to avoid enlistment ('time for my appendicitus, I thought') and his gunner training in Bexhill ('There was one drawback.
I searched every compartment, but he wasn't on the train. gave me a travel warrant, a white feather and a picture of Hitler marked "This is your enemy".
Yet the comedy prevails, of course, and it’s difficult not to leave with a smile on your face.Adolf Hitler: My Part on His Downfall is volume One of Spike Milligan's outrageous, hilarious, legendary War Memoirs.'At Victoria station the R.T.O. It’s become a cliche now that the British are stoical in the face of difficulties and deal with difficult situations by turning it into comedy, and Milligan’s memoirs are an excellent example of that he doesn’t pretend it wasn’t difficult, sometimes horrible, but instead he makes a joke of his fear, whilst not diminishing the horror of war.
The play tells its tale through a mixture of sketches which are done in an “entertaining the troops” style, songs (some funny and some popular contemporary tunes), and explanations from Milligan himself, played by Sholto Morgan (and apparently it was his first professional lead, played with remarkable assuredness). In this clever adaptation, the roots of Milligan’s Goon Show humour are apparent in the absurd (and often delightfully daft) comedy, but this light side is juxtaposed with the darker side of war, the deaths of fellow soldiers as well as the fighting, for which Milligan and friends appear deeply unprepared. As you might expect, these aren’t your usual war memoirs there is fighting, but there is also music and humour too. Last week we went to Birmingham Rep to see Spike Milligan’s “Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall”, the first part of Milligan’s six-book war memoirs.
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