All hail, The Grandfather of modern absurdist comedy, without which would not have followed Monty Python, The Young Ones, Black Adder, Faulty Towers, Black Books… as well as a huge number of comedians and related works till now.
Another of my childhood heroes from the 50s, those Sunday’s with an array of comedies from the BBC Radio with the Goon Show being the high point we’re a regular family lunch ritual.
This is absolutely superb. Just when we thought it might actually be a conventional interview, off he goes, figuratively and almost literally, into Space. I mean, what did they think was going to happen?
I remember Huw Weldon. he was a good interviewer of his time and I should imagine he'd probably never encountered anyone like Spike before! I'd say he coped quite well. Great to see Spike in his heyday rather than just remember him in his old age - to me he was always young even in an older body, and this is how I really remember him. I wonder if Robin Williams ever watched Spike - they had something in common I think.
Classic Milligan: avert searching questions by improvising a five-minute skit about a space mission. The phrase they failed to catch that describes him was “jazz musician”. He may not have played music as much as he did comedy, but at heart he was a brilliant improviser.
Puckoon as a novel is fairly straightforward. Irish govt draws an arbitrary boundary line between Independent and Union Ireland, not realizing it goes right up the high street of a small village. (Puckoon). Chaos ensues and villagers require international passports to cross the street etc. All of the interactions with "the author" by Milligan. The character, absolutely destroy the 4th wall and live squarely in the self-referential world.
That is just utter nonsense. Spike was superb, but there are hundreds of comedians writing outstanding material today, and all this nostalgia nonsense is just that, nonsense!
