I am too many steps removed from Spike Milligan to fully appreciate this book. The only bit of his work I'm familar with at all is his poetry which I find very amusing. ( )

Biographies are too easy, and too difficult to make spectacular. This is a well written, if uninspired look at a totally inspired, difficult person. Spike Milligan's gift to us was of course the gift of laughter, the gift of outside the box irrational connections and deeply demented characters. Wonderful for us, but torture for him. Always insecure, always bitter, his life was a rollercoaster of the manic depressive. He cranked out five dozen books in addition to all the radio and tv stuff, but he would lock himself away for days on end when in the depressive part of the neverending cycle. More than anything, the biography of Spike Milligan details that torture. The incredible heights were as bad as the miserable lows for him, obsessed as he had to be with writing and creating. This biography could have been much funnier, but Spike has seen to it that we have a full shelf to admire his words. Instead, we see the man, the hypocrite, the devoted family man who had affairs continuously, the deeply religious blasphemer, the ZPG fanatic who fathered (at least) five children, who belittled and insulted his closest friends, family and allies - clearly out of control. That we benefited is not unusual from such mad/genius. To read it in this depth is much more so. ( )

This rather rotten bio is something of a cut-and-paste, and it is obvious that Carpenter didn't have access to the primary sources. Poor. ( )