Details
- Born: Apr 16, 1918
- Died: Feb 27, 2002
From Wikipedia:
Terence Alan “Spike” Milligan KBE (16 April 1918 – 27 February 2002) was an Irish comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright and actor. The son of an English mother and Irish father, he was born in British India, where he spent his childhood before relocating in 1931 to England, where he lived and worked for the majority of his life. Disliking his first name, he began to call himself “Spike” after hearing the band Spike Jones and his City Slickers on Radio Luxembourg.
Milligan was the co-creator, main writer, and a principal cast member of the British radio comedy programme The Goon Show, performing a range of roles including the characters Eccles and Minnie Bannister. He was the earliest-born and last surviving member of the Goons. He took his success with The Goon Show into television with Q5, a surreal sketch show credited as a major influence on the members of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
He wrote and edited many books, including Puckoon (1963) and a seven-volume autobiographical account of his time serving during the Second World War, beginning with Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (1971). He also wrote comical verse, with much of his poetry written for children, including Silly Verse for Kids (1959). […]
It sounds like one of the jokey stories he would tell in a poem or novel. When a wrecking ball sliced a nearby Victorian block of flats in two, Spike Milligan spotted a grand piano left in a disused apartment. Approaching the foreman of the building site, he bribed him with a fiver to hand over the instrument.
“The money did the trick. The piano was lowered to the floor in a net, another £10 to have it transported to me home – and voila! I had a grand piano.” But a mere work of humorous fiction this was not – it actually happened. And that very 1883 Broadwood Grand, having been established in the Milligans’ home, was played every morning by none other than Paul McCartney, a neighbour in Rye in East Sussex, who would let himself in to wake up his friends by playing the piano.
From Auction reveals the secret life of Spike Milligan | The Independent, November 18, 2008
Recording sessions Spike Milligan participated in
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Recording and mixing "The Inner Light" and "Across The Universe"
Feb 08, 1968 • Songs recorded during this session appear on Lady Madonna / The Inner Light (UK - 1968)
