THE TIMES WE LIVED IN:AH, THE GLORY days of political satire. With Meryl Streep's pallid version of the Iron Ladycurrently gracing our cinema screens, it's salutary to remind ourselves that once upon a time, popular commentary came in more spiky varieties.
And few were spikier than Terence Alan Milligan, aka “Spike”; poet, jazz musician, writer, humanitarian and comedian, who was bipolar before anybody had ever heard of the disorder, and who decided in the middle of the 1960s that he was Irish. This, despite a classic colonial childhood in India, a spell of Royal Artillery service that saw him wounded during the second World War, and a healthy if often controversial career on British television.
Having availed of an Irish passport and with strong Irish family connections, he visited Ireland often. In the autumn of 1982, his Dublin show Spike Milligan and Friends was a sellout. He is pictured with one of the “friends”: sadly, the caption doesn’t record the accompanying dialogue, but it’s a safe bet that it isn’t complimentary, politically correct or – heaven forbid – pallid.
The clues are in the expression on the Thatcher puppet’s face and the delightfully dishevelled head of her supposedly ancient “admirer”. A year earlier, Milligan had been castigated for his characterisation of Thatcher – in a play called The Bedsittingroom – as a deceased parrot. For all of these reasons, or perhaps just for lack of space, the photograph wasn’t published at the time. We think it’s high time to bring it out now.
After Milligan died in 2002, a psychologist by the name of Richard Wiseman (don’t you just love it?) conducted a poll of 100,000 people to establish the funniest gag ever written. Milligan came out on top with a typically black gem from a 1950s Goon Show sketch based on two hunters in the woods, an emergency service operator, and a gunshot. Too lengthy to repeat here, but you’ll find it online if you need it. Genius. It never goes out of fashion.
Published on September 20th, 1982 Photograph: Eddie Kelly irishtimes.com/ archive
