The last Goon has died. The boy in me relishes the memory of Spike Milligan,Peter Sellers, and Harry Secombe, all of them no doubt ancient of days to readers of Movement. It was not only their zany humour that was a delight,but the puzzled expression on my mother’s and father’s faces: they didn’t get it. Their ears were mystified by what came out of the radio (they probably called it the wireless) as well as by their son’s helpless laughter.

The Goons opened a door to a new,almost tangible, world. They created surrealcharacters, like us but not quite the sameas us. Philip Pullman more seriously doesthe same in his trilogy His Dark Materials,with the different universes inhabited byLyra and Will. I can still hear Spike Milligansinging, ‘I’m walking backwards forChristmas, across the Irish Sea’, and it stillcheers me when I join in (out of earshot).For a few moments I am in another world.Then the song ends. It has been a jolt, adislocation. Terry Wogan once asked Spike Milligan if he ever looked back at his childhood. ‘No’, came the reply, ‘it hurts my neck’.

One of the Marx brothers said he wanted to go to heaven for the climate and to hell for the company. I laugh at that because I recognise the sentiment, reminding me of high-flown but pale pieties and raucous laughter among colourful characters who know they are among life’s failures. Spike Milligan again: ‘Being a Catholic is like ablood group – I can’t change it ... If there is heaven, fine, I’d like to go. But if Jeffrey Archer is there, I’d rather go to Lewisham.’It’s the unexpected Lewisham which makes it distinct from the Marx brothers. And of course you either get it or you don’t. You laugh – or you wonder what on earth this columnist is on about.

Even if we both laugh, and the laugh does us good, the debate is not far behind. Of course, it’s all nonsense really. Is it? Or does humour give us glimpses of another world, not separate from this one, but distinct from it?

The phrase, ‘Turn the other cheek’, troubled me for years. It seemed to me like an impossible demand, even a slight encouragement to masochism and being a doormat. Remember its origin: ‘If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer him the other also.’ (Matthew 5:39) The context is that of a confrontation between imperial power and oppressed peasant. In such a colonial society, and one where notions of honour and shame are deeply embedded, it is shaming if someone, especially one who has power over you, hits you on the right cheek with the back of his (and I mean ‘his’) right hand. This was the conventional and recognised exact way of delivering an insult.So, if the person you have slapped then turns his left cheek towards you, you cannot hit him with the back of your right hand without making a clumsy and ineffective manoeuvre which makes you look foolish.Try it. Briefly it is the more powerful person who is dishonoured. There is a fragmentary exchange of power and the one who has been insulted retrieves a little of his dignity– by being ‘cheeky’. The balance of power is upset, and a new world is glimpsed. It is of course only temporary – the imperial structure is too strong for that. And such systems may change their names, but there are still ‘soldiers’ and ‘peasants’ in this old world of ours.

Back in the 18th century, the story goes,a haughty member of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy found himself separated from the rest of the hunt one afternoon. He stopped an Irish peasant, ‘My man, did the gentry pass this way?’ ‘Now let me see, your honour, I rather think they did.’ ‘How long since?’ ‘About 200 years ago, your honour.

’You can tell who is on the side of the angels if you think of the indignation of the huntsman’s companions when he recounted the story that evening, and the laughter of the peasant’s.

This issue of Movement will be in your hands soon after 1 April, Easter Monday, All Fools’ Day. Toast the Goons – or your equivalent. And if there is truth in that other story, the one of Resurrection, it’s even more world-dislocating and bizarre than any tale that even Spike Milligan told

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GOODBYE SPIKE FROM THE INTERNET INFIDELS DISCUSSION FORUM

[quote]"And God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light, but the Electricity Board said He would have to wait until Thursday to be connected."

Spike Milligan has died. He was one of my favourite comedians and in my opinion a genius. I'll miss him.

[quote]Steve Wright (Radio 2 DJ): You're looking very well, Spike.
Spike: Rubbish, I've been dead for years, and nobody's brave enough to tell me.

*weeps*

Spike Milligan=best comedian ever.

That is all

A hero of mine

Didn't he play the headmaster in Gormanghast? He was great in that role, except it was too short.

Tragic. I spent my childhood listening to Goon records.

In one of his last interviews he was asked what he thought about death.

He replied:

"I'm not scared of dying - I just don't want to be there when it happens".

Also, when asked what he would have written on his gravestone he said he wanted it to say "I told you I was ill".

He was a very funny man.

I hope he really does have "I told you I was ill" on his gravestone. I would consider that cool.