Spike Milligan Quotes

Said Hamlet to Ophelia, I'll draw a sketch of thee. What kind of pencil shall I use? 2B or not 2B?

Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.

Money can't buy you friends, but you do get a better class of enemy.

All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy.

I have a body of an eighteen year old. I keep it in the fridge.

My father had a profound influence on me. He was a lunatic.

If I could write words Like leaves on an autumn forest floor, What a bonfire my letters would make. If I could speak words of water, You would drown when I said "I love you.

I thought I'd begin by reading a poem by Shakespeare, but then I thought, why should I? He never reads any of mine.

(On his gravestone): "I told you I was ill".

Contraceptives should be used on every conceivable occasion.

General: Where are you from? Spike: London. General: Which part? Spike: ... Well, all of me.

Many people die of thirst but the Irish are born with one.

A sure cure for seasickness is to sit under a tree.

After Puckoon I swore I'd never write another book. This is it

Patience, thought Milligan, that word was invented by dull buggers who couldn't think quick enough.

Life is a long agonized illness only curable by death.

A bird in The Strand is worth two in Shepherds Bush

Life wasn't too bad. The trouble with Man was, even while he was having a good time, he didn't appreciate it. Why, thought Milligan, this very moment might be the happiest in me life. The very thought of it made him miserable.

What is a Bongaloo, Daddy?" A Bongaloo, Son," said I, Is a tall bag of cheese Plus a Chinaman's knees And the leg of a nanny goat's eye

My father was my greatest inspiration. He was a lunatic.

The width of neck and shoulder suggested a rugby player, the broken nose confirmed it. Which shows just how wrong you can be as he never played the game in his life.

The clock in the church tower said 4.32, as it had done for three hundred years. It was right once a day and that was better than no clock at all.

Author? Author? Did you write these legs?' 'Yes." 'Well, I don't like dem. I don't like 'em at all at all. I could ha' writted better legs meself.

Waiting for the operation, there was a gentle tap on the door. In came a strapping nurse. 'Good morning', she shrilled, whipped back the bedclothes, upped with his nightshirt, grabbed his willy, lathered furiously around it till it looked like the Eddystone Lighthouse in a storm, then shaved the whole area till it looked like an oven-ready chicken. 'Excuse me, nurse', said Looney, 'why did you knock?

Professor Milligan will now play his tree! The composition is in A Minor, the tree is in A garden.

A family man from Siberia As a father was very inferior But one operation Revised the situation And now he's Mother Superior

On the Ning Nang Nong Where the Cows go Bong! And the Monkeys all say Boo! Theres a Nang Nong Ning Where the trees go Ping! And the tea pots Jibber Jabber Joo On the Nong Ning Nang All the Mice go Clang! And you just cant catch em when they do! So its Ning Nang Nong! Cows go Bong! Nong Nang Ning! Trees go Ping! Nong Ning Nang! The mice go Clang! What a noisy place to belong,Is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!

With a roof over his head he had ceased to work, living off his [war] pension and his wits, both hopelessly inadequate.

Well, he thought, you can fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time, which is just long enough to be President of the United States, and on that useless profundity, Milligan himself pedalled on, himself, himself.

Come, come, come? I'm not asking for hundreds of pounds, just a little to start with. Will someone say ten shillings?' 'I can say it, Father' said Milligan, 'but I haven't got it.' 'I've got it,' thought Dr Goldstein, 'but I'm not going to say it.

The die was cast. It was a proud day for the Milligan family as I was taken from the house. "I'm too young to go," I screamed as Military Policemen dragged me from my pram, clutching a dummy. At Victoria Station the R.T.O. gave me a travel warrant, a white feather and a picture of Hitler marked "This is your enemy." I searched every compartment, but he wasn't on the train. At 4.30, June 2nd, 1940, on a summer's day all mare's tails and blue sky we arrived at Bexhill-on-Sea, where I got off. It wasn't easy. The train didn't stop there.

How long was I in the Army? Five foot eleven.

Everybody has to be somewhere!

Pakistani Dalek: Put him in the cur-ry

Busty’ Roberts had joined the Royal Artillery in 1914 and since then had steadily risen to the rank of Gunner. Now the crunch: someone with a perverted sense of humour made him a Lance Bombardier. Roberts went insane with power. The war now consisted of two people, him and Hitler.

They're all the rage, Cab Calloway wears one.

Author, author, did you write these legs?( The Milligan- Puckoon

Actually, I was glad when we left, I couldn't have kept up this non-stop soldier-all-day - lover-all-night with only cups of tea in between.

Some people live a nothing life: the most important thing they ever do is die. Thank God for eccentrics! Take Gunner Octavian Neat. He would suddenly appear naked in a barrack room and say, “Does anybody know a good tailor?”, or “Gentlemen – I think there’s a thief in the battery.” He was the bane of the Regiment.

My sister Laura's bigger than me And lifts me up quite easily. I can't lift her, I've tried and tried; She must have something heavy inside.

R.I.P. Tom Conlon O'Rourke. Not Dead, just Sleeping.

You must be rather new out here." "Yes sir, new out here, but old everywhere else.

Killing of civilians was an outrage I couldn’t swallow on any basis, on any side. In the end there were no sides. Just living and dead.

...Roberts had joined the Royal Artillery in 1914 and since then had steadily risen to the rank of Gunner. Now the crunch: someone with a perverted sense of humour made him a Lance Bombardier. Roberts went insane with power. The war now consisted of two people, him and Hitler.

The youngest member of this ageing community was ex-variety artiste, Patrick L. Balls. Fifty-nine now, he spent out his remaining years pulling a rope lift and bottling fruit. He had once whistled Ave Maria for Queen Victoria. She wasn't present at the time, but nevertheless that's who he was whistling it for.

Everything I am is based on this ugly building on its lonely lawn—lit up during winter darkness; open in the slashing rain—which allowed a girl so poor she didn’t even own a purse to come in twice a day and experience actual magic: traveling through time, making contact with the dead—Dorothy Parker, Stella Gibbons, Charlotte Brontë, Spike Milligan. A library in the middle of a community is a cross be-tween an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold, rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen, instead. A human with a brain and a heart and a desire to be uplifted, rather than a customer with a credit card and an inchoate “need” for “stuff.” A mall—the shops—are places where your money makes the wealthy wealthier. But a library is where the wealthy’s taxes pay for you to become a little more extraordinary, instead. A satisfying reversal. A balancing of the power.

Keep talking Milligan. I think I can get you out on Mental Grounds.’ ‘That’s how I got in, sir.’ ‘Didn’t we all.

Money! Father Rudden had tried everything to raise funds to repair the church, he even went to the bank. 'Don't be a fool, Father!' said the manager, 'Put that gun down.' Money!

We were drunk last night, We were drunk the night before, We’re going to get drunk tonight If we never get drunk any more. The more we drink The merrier we shall be For we are the boys of the Royal Artillery.

The die was cast. It was a proud day for the Milligan family as I was taken from the house. “I’m too young to go,” I screamed as Military Policemen dragged me from my pram, clutching a dummy. At Victoria Station the R.T.O. gave me a travel warrant, a white feather and a picture of Hitler marked “This is your enemy.” I searched every compartment, but he wasn’t on the train.

You saved my life, Holmes,' said the baronet. 'We all make mistakes,' said Holmes. 'Are you strong enough to stand?' 'Give me another mouthful of that brandy, and I shall be able to stand anything.' He drank the bottle and collapsed. He tried to stagger to his feet and passed out, but he was still ghastly pale and trembling in every limb. We helped him to a rock. He wouldn't eat it.

runner-cum-slave

Most trees were made of wood, and so were the rest.

Life is a long agonised illness only curable by death

It’s a dark night, a heavy dew; the order rings from the Tannoy Speaker. ‘Fire.’ Daddy Wilson echoes ‘Fire!’ A colossal roar, gunners lean away to avoid the blast, some with hands over ears, the earth shakes, the momentum of the crew carried them automatically to put another shell in, to discover the great gun was missing. They stood, nit-like, poised for action. ‘The bloody thing’s gone.’ It had indeed, bouncing backwards, over a cliff and crashing 50 feet below, just missing the tent of a sleeping Gunner Secombe of 321 Bty, 132 Field Regt. Like the Nazarene, the Sergeant, carrying an oil lamp was given to going among 25 Pounder gunners ‘and he sayeth “Blessed are they that have seen 7.2?” “What colour was it?” And he hitteth them.

The influence of the mid-to-late-Sixties English counterculture is clearer in The Beatles’ music than in that of any of their rivals. This arose from a conflux of links, beginning with their introduction by Brian Epstein to the film director Richard Lester, continuing with McCartney’s friendships with Miles and John Dunbar, and culminating in the meeting of Lennon and Yoko Ono. Through Lester and his associates - who included The Beatles’ comedy heroes Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers - the group’s consciousness around the time of Sgt. Pepper was permeated by the anarchic English fringe theatre, with its penchant for Empire burlesque (e.g., The Alberts, Ivor Cutler, Milligan and Antrobus’s The Bed Sitting Room). This atmosphere mingled with contemporary strains from English Pop Art and Beat poetry; the ‘happenings’ and experimental drama of The People Show, Peter Brook’s company, and Julian Beck’s Living Theatre; the improvised performances of AMM and what later became the Scratch Orchestra; the avant-garde Euro-cinema of Fellini and Antonioni; and the satire at Peter Cook’s Establishment club and in his TV show with Dudley Moore, Not Only . . . But Also (in which Lennon twice appeared). From the cultural watershed of 1965-6 onwards, The Beatles’ American heroes of the rock-and-roll Fifties gave way to a kaleidoscopic mélange of local influences from the English fringe arts and the Anglo-European counterculture as well as from English folk music and music-hall.

the modern social pattern of unending change and movement

It was a memorable night of riotous jollity. Princess Margaret attached a balloon to her tiara, Prince Andrew tied another to the tails of his dinner jacket while royal bar staff dispensed a cocktail called “A Long Slow Comfortable Screw up against the Throne.” Rory Scott recalls dancing with Diana in front of the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and embarrassing himself by continually standing on Diana’s toes. The comedian Spike Milligan held forth about God, Diana gave a priceless diamond and pearl necklace to a friend to look after while she danced; while the Queen was observed looking through the programme and saying in bemused tones: “It says here they have live music”, as though it had just been invented. Diana’s brother, Charles, just down from Eton, vividly remembers bowing to one of the waiters. “He was absolutely weighed down with medals,” he recalls, “and by that stage, with so many royal people there, I was in automatic bowing mode. I bowed and he looked surprised. Then he asked me if I wanted a drink.” For most of the guests the evening passed in a haze of euphoria. “It was an intoxicatingly happy atmosphere,” recalls Adam Russell. “Everyone horribly drunk and then catching taxis in the early hours, it was a blur, a glorious, happy blur.

Time now for what I told you was the ‘Leg Cocking’; this is an English officer gyration. The man assumes the position for a Highland Reel, and then at the sound of 2/4 or 6/8 tempo, he raises his right leg and leaps all over the room with one hand up in the air and one on his hip. We played ‘Highland Laddie’; at once the floor became a mass of leaping twits all yelling “Och! Aye!

Lady Diana melted my heartstrings in her dirty white dress. She even helped an old man up the aisle. I thought it was very kind of her considering it was her wedding day. Loads of dead famous people were there. Nancy Reagan, Spike Milligan, Mark Phillips, etc., etc. The Queen looked a bit jealous. I expect it was because people weren’t looking at her for a change.

Is it because with the future unknown, the present traumatic, that we find the past so secure?

Any room for one more?’ I said. ‘Sorry old boy, this is a one-man trench.’ I dived in head first as fresh shells landed. ‘Well now it’s a bloody two-man trench.’ I tell you! They are willing to let you die rather than move over! The shelling stopped. I got out and returned to duty – more shells – I found a small depression in the lee of some rocks. ‘Where are you,’ shouted a voice. ‘I’m in a depression,’ I said. ‘Aren’t we all,’ was the reply.

God Made Night but Man Made Darkness

I used to worry about growing up happy and comfortable. Maybe I wouldn't be funny enough to make it. Most of my comic heroes had it tough in their early years. Chaplin grew up in Dickensian poverty, Keaton with an alcoholic and violent father, Sellers a suffocating mother; Spike Milligan was even blown up by a mortar! All I had was my stupid loving family and a childhood where nothing horrible ever happened.

In the corner of the field under some walnut trees, a heavily camouflaged cook-house is operating, and by the screams they are operating without an anaesthetic.

An officer present, Noel Burdett, hearing Teske and me stating that we must have actually fired at each other that day, said, “Your survival indicates you must both be bloody awful shots.” Later Hans Teske dispelled the belief that Germans had no sense of humour by inscribing my menu “Dear Spike, sorry I missed you on February 26, 1943.

Smiling is infectious, you catch it like the flu, when someone smiled at me today, I started smiling too. I passed around the corner and someone saw my grin. When he smiled, I realized, I’d passed it on to him. I thought about that smile, then I realized its worth. A single smile, just like mine could travel round the earth. So, if you feel a smile begin, don’t leave it undetected. Let’s start an epidemic quick, and get the world infected”! Spike Milligan

It's not often we had been detailed to: - 'Clean up that mess of French Colonial Piano

At Victoria Station the R.T.O. gave me a travel warrant, a white feather and a picture of Hitler marked “This is your enemy.” I searched every compartment, but he wasn’t on the train. At 4.30, June 2nd, 1940, on a summer’s day all mare’s tails and blue sky we arrived at Bexhill-on-Sea, where I got off. It wasn’t easy. The train didn’t stop there.

Temperatures fluctuated. You went to sleep on a warm evening, by dawn it dropped to freezing. We had to break our tents with hammers to get out. Dawn widdles caused frost bitten appendages, the screams! ‘Help, I’m dying of indecent exposure!’ We solved the problem. I stuffed my Gas cape with paper and made a mattress. Gunner Forest wrapped old Daily Mirrors round his body, ‘I always wanted to be in the News,’ he said, and fainted. Others dug holes to accommodate hips and shoulders.

The smell of 500 newly kitted rookies could only be likened to an open Hindu sewerage works on a hot summer night by Delius. To try and ‘cure’ my B.D. I salted it and hung it outside in thunderstorms, I took it for walks, I hit it, in desperation, I sprayed it with Eau de Cologne, it made little difference, except once a sailor followed me home.

Be careful of strong drink my sons,” he warned. “Bear in mind it excites the sexual appetites, therefore if you see a comrade drunk, bring him home and bathe the parts in cold water.” It was great to know how to be a Christian, all you needed was an erection and a bucket of cold water.

Outside a seedy white Gendarmerie, an unshaven seedy off-white gendarme slumbered in a chair. ‘He’s pretending there isn’t a war on,’ said Mr Budden. I shouted ‘Ai Meisu! le Gendarme? Où est la Guerre Mondiale Nombre Deux?’ He pointed up the road. ‘Avante siese mille kilo.’ He grinned and fell back to sleep.

We haven't got a plan, so nothing can go wrong! Spike Milligan

If a robin redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage, How feels heaven when Dies the billionth battery hen?