The Late Great Spike Milligan Trivia Quiz

Answer: Poona, India

Spike was born to a military family in Poona, India, as his father was serving there as a Regimental Sergeant Major in the Royal Artillery. Spike kept very happy memories of his Indian Childhood, as he told in his autobiographies 'It Ends With Magic' and 'The Family Album'.

Answer: 56th Heavy Regiment, Royal Artillery

Like his father, Spike was a gunner (a British soldier in the Royal Artillery). His war experiences out of the front line were quite a positive experience for him, and helped develop him as both a writer and a musician.

Answer: Trumpet and guitar

Although he had some experience with banjo and saxophone too, Spike was mainly a jazz trumpeter. When, in 1944, he was warned that he could strain his heart by his trumpet playing, he moved to the guitar which he had previously only toyed with. This led on to his comedy jazz act with the Bill Hall Trio, which led in an indirect form to the BBC commissioning his work on 'The Goon Show'.

He didn't play violin, although he always admired violinists; he never, as far as we know, learned the oboe. In 1945, however, he does mention that a crisis caused by home leave scheduling led to the orchestra he also played for being reduced to 'one man banging a dustbin lid and whistling'. It wasn't him.

Answer: Harry Secombe

Spike first met Secombe in 1943, when a gun from his battery recoiled out of its position and bounced down a hill, crashing through the artillery battery at the bottom. Secombe remembers the face of another gunner, Milligan, appearing through the canvas flap of his radio truck and asking 'Has anyone seen our cannon?'
'What colour was it?' replied Secombe.

In 1945, the two were on tour together in Italy as part of the Central Pool of Artists, an Army entertainment unit. When they returned to England they lived in the same area of London and got together with Peter Sellers, who was not long demobbed from the RAF.

Max Geldray, the Dutch harmonica-player, didn't join the team until 'The Goon Show' started in 1949.

Answer: Bluebottle

Eccles (a random idiot based on many Spike met during his war service), Count Moriarty (decayed French count and sidekick of the dastardly Herclules Grytpype-Thynne) and Minnie Bannister (geriatric upper-class gentlewoman and former darling of Skinner's Light Horse - and his heavy one) were all voiced by Milligan.

The hopeless boy detective Bluebottle, usually blown up by the end of the week's episode, was the work of Peter Sellers.

Answer: Oblomov

Goncharev's 'Oblomov' was a novel and later play about a young Russian gentleman, in the time of the Tsars, who decided to stay in bed and, instead of seeking a meaning in life, to just go where it sent him. The fatalism of the main character is said to be a satire on inertia in Russian life. When the dramatised version was revived for the London stage in 1964, Spike volunteered for the main part as a break from strictly comic acting.

First night of the play saw him suffer a bad attack of nerves, made worse by a manic upswing and the effects of his medication. His career as a straight actor didn't survive until the interval. Instead, he more or less ad-libbed his performance for the rest of the play, horrifying the rest of the cast but reducing the audience to tears.

The play was a great success and ran to the same pattern, if not script, every night after for the rest of the run before transferring to London's Comedy Playhouse where it was retitled 'Son of Oblomov'.

Answer: Q5

'Q5' was the first time that true anarchy had ever been allowed on the Beeb. Milligan played with the TV format, having the opening credits in the middle of the programme, breaking the fourth wall and tailing sketches off into nothing or advancing menacingly toward the camera repeating 'What are we going to do now? What are we going to do now?'

The Monty Python's team admitted that when 'Q5' aired a few months before their show, it caused a bout of desperate re-writing as Milligan had inadvertently used a lot of the hooks of their own project. Great minds think alike.

Answer: Robert Graves

Graves, author of the famous 'I Claudius', was impressed by the work Spike did as MC on a BBC poetry programme, 'Muses with Milligan', at Christmas in 1964. The two rarely met in person, but carried on a long correspondence which only ended when Graves died in 1985.

Spike was in awe of the naturally intellectual and Graves was in awe of the comedian. It was a meeting of minds, and the letters make truly interesting reading. After Spike's death, they were donated to St. John's College Oxford, where Graves had been an Honorary Fellow. Some of the letters are reprinted in the book 'Dear Robert, Dear Spike'.

Answer: Three times

Spike was married three times, first to Jean Marchinie (1952 - 1960) which ended in divorce, second to Patricia (Paddy) Ridgeway (1962 - 1978) ended by her death from breast cancer, and lastly to Shelagh Sinclair, from 1983 to his death in 2002.

Answer: I told you I was ill

The Irish phrase is "Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite", or 'I told you I was sick'. The diocese of Chichester would not allow his grave to be marked with the sentence in English as he originally wanted.

In the late nineties, he wrote his own obituary for the local paper, where he summarised his life as 'Wrote the Goon Show and died'. He always wanted to be seen as more multi-faceted than that.