Spike Milligan has died of liver failure at his home in Sussex, England. He was 83.
The author, poet, playwright and comedian had suffered ill health for sometime and had been nursed by his third wife Shelagh in recent months.
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Spike Milligan
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Ms Norma Farnes, his agent and manager, said: "For 35-years he has been the dynamo in my life and he was my dearest friend and I will miss him terribly."
Milligan, who was born in India but held an Irish passport, was widely considered to be the zaniest, wackiest comic genius of his generation.
The man who dominated the Goon Showhad a unique and audacious sense of fun and could transform a mundane situation into a madcap absurdity, leaving his audience in gales of laughter.
But like the classic clown, his life was beset by manic depression, and he suffered at least 10 complete mental breakdowns.
He liked to regard himself as a misanthrope and once said that most people bored him to death.
But he was the complete performer, as irreverent as he was hilarious. And most of it was off-the-cuff.
But there was more to Spike Milligan than comedy - indeed that was probably the area of his life he cared for the least.
He was an accomplished poet, an author with several volumes of war memoirs which, though riotously funny, contained the bitter after-taste of brutal conflict.
He was also a better than average jazz cornet and trumpet player, with a penchant for Bix Beiderbecke and Louis Armstrong.
Then there were his intense campaigns - against abortion, against vivisection, against factory farming, and, finally his fight against needless noise.
It was the noise of London which drove him from his home to live quietly in Rye, Sussex, from where he still regularly wrote letters to newspapers complaining about how inconsiderate people were with car horns, radios, lawnmowers and the like.
His home was littered with "No Smoking" signs, and a notice on the large front door said: "This door can be closed without slamming it. Try it and see how clever you are."