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The Essential Spike Milligan
 
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The Essential Spike Milligan (Hardcover)

by Eddie Izzard (Foreword), Spike Milligan (Author), Alexander Games (Editor)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd (4 Nov 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0007155093
  • ISBN-13: 978-0007155095
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 53,985 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #30 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > M > Milligan, Spike

Product Description

Review

George Orwell asserted that 'whatever is funny is subversive', and this was never truer than in the case of Spike Milligan. His absurdist vision was not unique, but with him it perhaps shone the brightest and burnt him the worst, leaving him with a tender mind, often on the cusp of madness, but always brimming with comic, surreal ideas. He was the creative spark of the generation of comics who survived the war and, along with Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe, he created The Goon Show, a mould-breaking radio programme quite unlike anything else austere Britain had heard before. It's often taken as the precursor of Monty Python (and thereby much of post-war British comedy), but a more convincing ancestor would be Milligan's long-running Q TV series or his Running, Jumping, Standing Still film, both of which took his highly skewed world view to new realms of weirdly addictive comedy. As the years took their toll on his mental stability, Milligan's output grew more and more patchy - and elements of casual racism in his later comedies do grate - but his memoirs and children's fiction became more assured instead, and his autobiographies of his war years were especially popular, being comic, poignant and revelatory, and opening his world to a new audience. This marvellous collection is an excellent smorgasbord of the man's prodigious output, with selections and titbits from his prose, his poems and limericks and his scripts. Skilfully gathered together, this is a marvellous testament to a giant of comedy whose brilliance and influence remain with us still. (Kirkus UK)


Chris Power, The Times

Wonderful anthology. A superbly sustained piece of comedy.

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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
5 star:
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 (1)
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Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars brilliantly childish, genius and silly! I luv ya Spike, 3 May 2003
By Andy "Andy B" (UK. N.London) - See all my reviews
Only Spike Milliagan could be so brilliantly childish and observational.... so many try yet cant carry off the innocent yet deep poems and humour in this book.
Although I found reading the Goon show scripts sections a bit hard - and skipped most of them... (they wern't really of my generation, more my dads era....im sure i'll go back and read them later ).... but i really take my time reading the poems and re-reading them as they as genius yet silly and one can get.
A fabulous piece of escapism.... and his biography bits are great too..... a must read! A true eccentric!
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars The Essential Spike Milligan, 27 Feb 2003
By Mr D ASHENDEN (Gravesend, Kent United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
This book is a stroll through the work of one of the most productive comic writters of modern times.This book contains extracts from his many books and scripts of some the most memorable Goon Shows.Also interleaved between these gems are poems ,silly verse for kids and letters he sent and recieved when championing his many causes.
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