LONDON - Spike Milligan, a founding father of 20th century comedy and a zany genius behind the ground-breaking "Goon Show", has died aged 83.
Milligan, pioneer of the meandering joke without a punchline, turned surreal comedy into an art form, influencing a whole generation of comedians from the "Beyond the
Fringe" team to "Monty Python's Flying Circus".
"He died this morning. I believe it was from kidney failure," his agent, Norma Farnes, told Reuters on Wednesday (British time).
Fellow comedian Eddie Izzard hailed Milligan as "the godfather of alternative comedy." Heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles, one of the Goons' greatest fans, said he had "a great affection" for Milligan.
Broadcaster Michael Parkinson said: "You could make the argument that modern British comedy started with Spike Milligan. He was the godfather of it all."
Along with Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers, Milligan's inconsequential nonsense and silly voices reigned supreme. He took zany humour to new heights of absurdity -- but at a cost.
Secombe admitted that he and Sellers "rode on the thermal currents of (Spike's) imagination" and it was Milligan who wrote all the scripts for The Goon Show - 26 a year from 1951 to 1960.
Michael Bentine was also one of the early members of the Goons but he left in 1952 to pursue a solo career.
For Milligan, the gruelling task of writing the show sparked one of a dozen nervous breakdowns, making him the nation's most celebrated manic-depressive, a comic always on the edge of rage.
"I laugh that I may not weep," was his most likely motto, said Pauline Scudamore, his biographer and a close friend.
Milligan was renowned for his sharp tongue, once calling Prince Charles "a grovelling little bastard" on live television.
Milligan made it up with Charles after that remark by sending him a telegram saying, "I suppose a knighthood is out of the question now?" But it wasn't -- Milligan was given an honorary knighthood two years ago.
He campaigned for animal rights and conservationist issues -- but he was far less patient with humans.
In 1974 Milligan shot a boy of 15 with an airgun for being in his garden, and he was said to have once threatened to kill Sellers with a potato peeler during a Goons rehearsal.
Terence Alan (Spike) Milligan was born in India on April 16, 1918, to an over-possessive mother and a sergeant-major.
As a soldier, Milligan ended World War Two in a psychiatric hospital after being shelled in Tunisia. His experiences were a rich vein of inspiration later for hugely popular war memoirs.
His first marriage to June Marlowe collapsed under the strain of writing Goon scripts. The couple had three children. Second wife Paddy Ridgeway died of cancer in 1978. He married Shelagh Sinclair in 1983 and he also had a son outside marriage.
An Irishman, he was angered by the attitude of the British authorities to his citizenship.
He once said: "I never see myself as Irish, but I am. My father and mother were both Irish and had Irish passports. I had a British passport but when I went to get it renewed and said my father was born in Ireland before 1900, they said I couldn't have a British passport - some bloody law.
"I went to the Irish Embassy and I said: 'My name's Spike Milligan, can I have a passport?' And they said, 'Oh yes! We're short of people.'"
- REUTERS
Spike Milligan's most memorable quotes
LONDON - Spike Milligan, a founding father of 20th century comedy and a zany genius behind the ground-breaking "Goon Show", has died aged 83.
Milligan, pioneer of the meandering joke without a punchline, turned surreal comedy into an art form, influencing a whole generation of comedians from the "Beyond the
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