Humphrey Carpenter's Spike Milligan: The Biography is a brilliantly incisive journey into the life and mind of this mentally tormented comedy genius, and no subsequent book is likely to offer such a striking picture of a unique entertainment life. But one would expect no less from Carpenter, whose biographies of such figures as the composer Britten and the playwright Dennis Potter quickly established themselves as definitive.

Spike Milligan changed the face of British comedy--and many later comedians (notably the Monty Python team) would constantly reiterate their debt to him--and yet he died a bitter man, feeling neglected by the BBC (for which he had done such creative work) and seemingly unable to hear the voices of the younger comedians who sang his praises.

For over 50 years, in every conceivable medium, Spike's quirky surrealistic humour made him among the best-loved of comedy talents in this country--and yet (it was remarked) he was best loved by those who didn't actually know him. His prickliness was legendary, and his career dissatisfaction, combined with the mental problems he suffered for most of his adult life, made it impossible for him to accept his considerable status in his field.

Drawing on Spike's own writing, Carpenter presents a picture of a fascinating and conflicted man. From his unsettling move as a child from India to a grey and cheerless England, Spike struggled with manic depression while still creating the much-loved Goon Show (with the equally troubled Peter Sellers). That period is faultlessly recreated here, along with Spike's acrimonious battles with his BBC bosses.

Revealing new material tells us of the love affairs he conducted during his three marriages, and the children who were the results of those liaisons--these sections are among the most telling in painting a picture of a complex man. Whether you're interested in the history of British comedy or simply want to learn more about a fascinating writer and performer, you'll find Carpenter's biography riveting stuff. --Barry Forshaw --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. 

Dark side of Spike's genius

by Lynn Daly First published on the this is eastbourne website Monday 04 August 2003

A new biography of much-loved comedian Spike Milligan, who lived and died in Sussex, casts him as an embittered philanderer filled with hatred and violence.

A generation of radio listeners laughed its collective socks off at the shenanigans of the Goons.

Peter Sellers' and Michael Bentine's hysterical voices, Harry Secombe's Pickwickian joviality and Spike Milligan's madcap humour produced some of the most original and influential comedy of modern times.

Milligan was credited as the brains behind the show's nine-year success and was warmly embraced by the public as a troubled but loveable genius.

But a new book reveals the clown who created laughs for millions was a bitter, angry man with an enormous capacity for hatred, violence, racism and philandering.

The star, who lived near Rye, alienated his colleagues, insulted his fans and took more than one wounding swipe at his best-known admirer, the Prince of Wales. He was jealous of his co-stars, prone to unprovoked, caustic attacks and was notoriously unpredictable.

He was a serial womaniser and had two illegitimate children by different women while married to his second wife.

Among Milligan's many fans was author Humphrey Carpenter who, as a boy, listened avidly to the Goons and hung on Spike's every word. But in researching his book Spike Milligan The Biography, many of his illusions were shattered.

Carpenter said: "There were aspects of his life I found dispiriting. One is accustomed to hearing that old cliche about the sad clown but Spike wasn't sad - he was angry."

Carpenter said Milligan's rudeness and unpredictable anger spilled over into every area of his life and could erupt into murderous rages.

He twice threatened to kill his co-stars, including Sellers. The pair lived in neighbouring flats and, in a fit of rage, Milligan smashed through Sellers' glass door, screaming: "I have come to kill Peter Sellers". As it turned out, Milligan was armed only with a potato peeler.

He also threatened to shoot Graham Stark, his co-star and rival in the West End play The Bedsitting Room.

Milligan had many spells in psychiatric care. He complained of noises in his head and disturbing hallucinations.

He was once charged with causing actual bodily harm after shooting a 15-year-old intruder in his garden.

And, famously, during the British Comedy Awards, when a glowing tribute from the Prince was read out, Spike retorted: "Oh, the grovelling little bastard'. He went on to poke fun at the Prince at another awards ceremony with a gag involving a sperm bank.

Carpenter said Milligan could not cope with any form of rejection. After being heckled during a live show, Milligan shouted at the audience 'You hate me, don't you? I hope you all get bombed.' He stamped on his trumpet, stormed off and was found in his dressing room. He had a noose around his neck.

Of several apparent attempts at suicide, Carpenter believes only one was genuine.

"After the collapse of his first marriage he took an overdose."

Despite these regular and vicious outbursts, Milligan could be as passionate, sensitive and gentle as he was comically inspired. He was devoted to his children and would spend hours playing games, like writing fairy letters which he hid under stones in the garden for the children to find.

He also adopted causes he believed in, opposing cruelty to animals, nuclear weapons and the destruction of the environment.

Milligan smashed through a gallery window in protest at the planned killing of 60 catfish. Hatred of piped music led him to vandalise a radio station lift.

He once tried to force 28 pounds of spaghetti into the mouth of the Harrods food hall manager to demonstrate how a goose feels when being force fed to make pate de foie gras.

He also detested smoking and frequently raced up to celebrities like Stephen Fry, knocking the cigarette out of their mouths saying: "There. Saved your life!"

Milligan's adult life was blighted by crippling manic depression. His explanation was that it began after being shell-shocked during the Second World War.

Carpenter argues that it may have started much earlier.

Milligan was an only child until he was seven when his brother Desmond arrived in the colonial home. In a bid to retain his mother's attention, the young Spike started playacting.

Carpenter argues he was so wounded, he never really grew up.

He also believes Milligan used his depression strategically.

"Where does depression stop and just being miserable start? Depression is very nasty but sometimes one's patience does get stretched by self-pity. And Spike got worse with age."

Carpenter never met Milligan and when he wrote to him a year before his death to ask if he would co-operate with his book, he received no reply.

"But I don't think there is anything I was burning to ask him. He wore his heart on his sleeve. His unpleasantness and aggressiveness were right on the surface."

Milligan's unstable personality cost him life-long friends, like his services pal Harry Edgington, who is credited as the inspiration for the (Edge) Ying Tong song.

Later in his life, Milligan moved out of London to Sussex.

Carpenter said: "He wasn't the type to go marching over the Downs but he did involve himself with the rugby club in Rye and some local causes."

In writing the book, Carpenter worried he was wrecking people's image of their hero.

He said: "I may have made things worse but you have to be honest about these things. In some ways I would rather not have written it but I have a living to make and a curiosity to satisfy."

And as he says in his book: "I was a Goon fan and I still am; indeed I think that, at their best, the Goons are funnier than anything else in the history of comedy; and when I say 'the Goons', I am really talking about Spike's scripts."

Milligan, who died in February last year aged 83, is buried at St Thomas' Church, Winchelsea. His grave remains unmarked amid rumours of a rift between branches of his family.

Spike Milligan, The Biography, is out today, published by Hodder & Stoughton, priced £20.

A review from the Yorkshire Soul website

Thursday, April 15, 2004

Book Review, Spike Milligan - Humphrey Carpenter ****

Some of the earliest books I can remember reading were Silly Verse For Kids and Milliganimals, weird, surreal, magical stuff, if I may quote.........

"String, string, a marvelous thing,
rope is thicker,
but string is quicker."

Spike's war memoirs also made a big impression on me, they were at the same time hilarious and desperately sad, which also seems to sum up Spike's life.

Spike ended the war badly shell shocked, I don't know whether this acted as the trigger for the depression that would plague him for the rest of his life, but it had a profound effect upon him.

He plunged into the world of entertainment, first as an accomplished jazz trumpeter, then as a comic actor, writer, presenter, radio dj and film actor. Everything Milligan did seemed touched by darkness though, he could seem to be brilliant and full of life and wickedness on stage, but behind the scenes he often withdrew from human contact from days at a time.

Certainly the dark side of Spike's life comes across in Carpenter's biography, the withdrawals, the hospitalisations and perhaps most saddening, the numerous instances in which Spike could find nothing good to say about his co-workers. Spike worked with such luminaries of the entertainment world as John Antrobus, Eric Sykes, Larry Stephens, Michael Bentine, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and many, many more, there is hardly one about whom Spike had not made some scathing remark.

I'm not entirely sure when trying to review a biography whether I'm rating the book, or the subjects life, but on Carpenter's writing, he credits the earlier biography by Pauline Scudamore with such frequency that I was unsure just how much of his own research he has conducted.

Still, for a fan it's an interesting read, it paints a picture of a mentally frail man who was at the same time blessed with an unstoppable imagination, a man who tried hard to be a good father to some of this children, and almost ignored the existence of others. Spike seemed comically hypocritical in most things he did, although supposedly a vegetarian, and involved in a one man protest against foie gras where he tried to force feed 28lbs of spaghetti to the Harrods Food Halls manager, he ate bacon and eggs for breakfast most days.

He moved from London to the south coast, and made comment that it was because of noisy neighbors, but when those same noisy neighbors were interviewed they revealed that Spike would often practice his trumpet in the garden. With Spike it always seemed to be do as I say, not as I do. posted by Yorkshire Soul at 8:16 AM

A review from the Itchy brighton website

Spike Milligan: The Biography
by Humphrey Carpenter

Spike Milligan was such a comedic colossus, bringing so much laughter to so many people, that it's almost impossible to think ill of him. His well-documented depression only added to the romance, fuelling his image as the archetypal tortured genius and unhappy clown.

But behind the impish smile was a truly impossible figure, at least according to this hefty new biography. Here was a man who would turn on his colleagues with murderous intent, an unapologetic racist, a serial philanderer, a sanctimonious hypocrite and a vain, self-absorbed misanthrope with a heavy persecution complex.

His mental condition stemmed from his insufferable nature, rather than vice-versa, biographer Humphrey Carpenter suggests, arguing that Spike's symptoms were those of split personality, rather than of manic depression - and that some of his antisocial behaviour was as much an act as an illness.

Unhindered by his lack of qualifications, the author goes in for a fair dose of such pop psychology. Spike's brilliantly unique outlook on life is variously explained by: his pining for the childhood innocence of India; the lack of a father figure; the fact he was an only child until the age of seven and spent the rest of his life trying to recapture that undivided attention; and his lack of formal education. Good theories, all, if entirely unverifiable.

At one point, Carpenter talks about radio psychiatrist Anthony Clare, who long-studied Spike's mental state. He writes: "If Clare felt that Spike's depressions were not like other people's - that they were chiefly a manifestation of anger rather than sadness, and were more like a schizophrenic's episodes of paranoid delusion, than the low period in the cycle of manic depression - then he said nothing about it." On the other hand, perhaps Clare didn't mention this because he thought nothing of the sort - after all, he only had expert training and close knowledge of the patient to go on.

It isn't surprising that Carpenter seeks to find new angles, as Spike's long and productive life has already been analysed and retold through countless books, many by Milligan himself. When it comes to his war years, especially, it is impossible to better Spike's sublime seven volumes of war memoirs, with their funny, poignant, and honest tales straight from the horse's mouth.

Carpenter- whose previous work includes the rigorous history of Sixties comedy That Was Satire That Was - draws on plenty of other, acknowledged, sources, most notably Pauline Scudamore's comprehensive, if comparatively hagiographic, 1985 biography. Perhaps unsurprisingly, another biographer refused permission to quote him, telling Carpenter to go away and 'write his own book and not draw on anyone else's'. Meanwhile, Spike's long-suffering friend and agent Norma Farnes is currently finishing her first-hand account, but she did have the good grace to allow Carpenter to use whatever of Spike's material he unearthed.

But while the backbone of this book might be little more than a 'cuttings job', it is a remarkably thorough one, raiding a myriad of sources to form a detailed picture of Spike though his life. Carpenter has done his own research, too, and added plenty of flesh to the skeleton.

There are, however, plenty of apocryphal stories, especially from Spike's earlier years, which prove impossible to verify - such as the origin of the word Goons or the nickname Spike. Spike himself took liberties with the facts when he spoke or wrote of his life, as Carpenter often proves - except, that is, in his war volumes, which Milligan ensured were meticulously accurate.

One of the incidents Carpenter casts doubt on is Milligan's well-publicised 1952 attempt to kill Goon Show co-star Peter Sellers, who was living in the same block of flats. Spike snatched a potato knife and smashed through his neighbour's glass front door shouting: "I've come to kill Peter Sellers."

The incident, widely held to be the point of Spike's first breakdown, is not disputed - but the fact he used a blunt knife, referred to Sellers in the third person, and only harmed himself leads the author to conclude this was, at least in part, play acting.

But there is no doubt Spike's fury could erupt violently. When his play The Bed Sitting Room was playing in the West End in 1964, he threatened to kill co-star Graham Stark, the book reveals. He called his wife at home, saying "Tell your husband that if he comes to the theatre tonight I will shoot him." She was left in no doubt he was serious, even though Spike managed to convince the police he wasn't.

This may be strange behaviour from a man who declared himself a pacifist, but nothing comparde to a 1974 case in which Spike - like the Tony Martin of his day - shot a 16-year-old in his back garden after a spate of vandalism. But it was only with an air-rifle, and 'Gunner Milligan' was given a conditional discharge after admitting causing actual bodily harm.

Other unpleasant aspects of Spike's character aren't glossed over either, especially his racism. "I grew up believing that these people, white people, were superior to everyone else" he said when he was nearly 80.

His Q5 series in 1969 contained a number of racist gags, with overt references to "wogs" and Jews, and in the same year even The Sun was aghast at the line, uttered by a 'browned-up' Spike in the Johnny Speight-written Curry and Chips: "I leave Pakistan because there are too many wog. I came to England and there are still too many wog."

Spike even refused to take the oath of allegiance to become a British citizen, despite Prince Charles's nagging, because he didn't want to be lumped in with the "Pakistanis and Jamaicans", and felt that his time in the Army was proof enough of his dedication to the Crown.

Stubborn doesn't even begin to describe Spike's pig-headedness. He couldn't take criticism - going "totally berserk" at any perceived plight, and couldn't bear to share the credit with others, as evidenced by his shoddy treatment of the Goon Show co-writers, whose contribution he has successfully erased from history.

The self-obsession sometimes passed over to the bizarre, such as the time he wrote to Prime Minister Harold Wilson complaining of a burst ballpoint pen that ruined his shirt.

Spike was also vehemently opposed to population growth, though that didn't stop him spreading his own seed, fathering four legitimate and two illegitimate children.

The products of Spike's affairs have been hailed as revelations in some advance publicity about this biography, but they are nothing new - as the reproduction of a 1991 newspaper front page proves.

Carpenter did, however, "after financial terms had been agreed" secure an interview with the illigitimate son, James, and his mother Margaret - though the result tells us more about this pair than it does Spike.

His family are, apparently, still battling over Spike's estate. But his real legacy is his body of work - and whatever your feelings towards this most unlikeable man after reading this comprehensive tome, that will always remain untarnished.

Steve Bennett
August 4, 2003

Humphrey CarpenterI Told You I was Ill

Saturday 20 September 2003 at the Durham Literature Festival

It's not often you get to hear an unauthorised biographer weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of unauthorised status (Against: you don't get full access to the family or the documents. For: you don't have to worry about whether the family like what you've written). On Saturday, the Festival audience had the opportunity to hear Humphrey Carpenter in conversation with David Whetstone, Books Editor of the Journal, about his biography of Spike Milligan.

Humphrey Carpenter, who worked for BBC Radio Durham for 3 months in the 1960s ("at the same time as Kate Adie", he explains) launched his career in biography with a life of J.R.R. Tolkien, in 1977. Since then he has written about Benjamin Britten, Robert Runcie, Dennis Potter and others - but as he and David Whetstone swapped favourite Goon Show moments, it was clear that he had approached the Spike Milligan story as a real fan. He clearly regretted that Spike had not responded to his request to write the biography. His daughter Claire had been luckier, he said: at the age of seven, she had written to ask "Dear Eccles, Why do you go around pretending to be Spike Milligan?" - and had had a reply almost by return!

After a break, Humphrey Carpenter was joined by Margaret Maughan and her (and Spike's) son James Maughan-Milligan. Margaret, who still lives in Hexham, told how she had first met Spike (backstage at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle), and gave an affectionate description of the man who remained the love of her life. The audience was fascinated as the biographer discussed his work with the people who were, in a sense, his source material: did they not mind this examination of their private lives? No, said Margaret, it was always a pleasure to talk about Spike. Nor did they share his qualms that the portrait which emerged from his book was a darker one than he had expected - it was an accurate picture of a complex man.

A lively and informal discussion allowed the audience a glimpse of the complications of writing a biography, and at the same time recalled a man who was much loved both by those who knew him personally and by those who knew his work.