Nailing Spike [Milligan]
The combination of Spike, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine, with help from deep-dish subversives emerging from their cocoons in the BBC, created an explosion of verbal anarchy that nevertheless flowed from a tradition, combining music hall with Lewis Carroll and the nonsense prose and poetry of Edward Lear. Carpenter does not make enough of this last influence, and a comparison of Lear’s and Milligan’s awkward trawl through life could have proved fascinating.
Guardian Unlimited Books | 20 September 2003