Spike Milligan by Humphrey Carpenter

Spike Milligan Reviews

• 
  Dave Lefevre

  Spike Milligan is one of my intellectual heroes. He throughly entertained about two generations of people in the U.K. while having to deal with severe manic depression. Overall Carpenter's biography is solid. Carpenter only gets off track, in my opinion, when he tries to imply that Spike was more in control of his mood swings than he wanted us to believe. Carpenter also tries to say at one point that Spike might have been Schizophrenic because of his occasional bouts with auditory hallucinations and his sensitivity to certain noises. Maybe is was a touch of bad research as both are common symptoms reported by those suffering a severe depressive mood. In my depression I've had auditory hallucinations myself, but they are aren't to be confused with schizophrenic "voices" as they usually take the form of crashes, bells, or other random noises; in other words they are just brain cells mis-firing.
  
  Carpenter seems to have the bias of someone who has never been personally touched by depression personally or in his family. Good for him, however he doesn't always have enough sympathy for a problem that often debilitated Spike. The attitude the book takes is very nebulous.
  
  Other than that, this book is very solid.
• 
  Amanda Wells

  A flawed genius, absolutely. A flawed biography? Yes. But I couldn't rate it too poorly as I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know more about Spike through Carpenter's eyes. I felt the treatment of Spike's mental illness was a little lacking, but otherwise came away feeling I understood his life a little better.
  
• 
  Elisa

  Spike Milligan was a difficult, unhappy man. Also one of the most brilliant comedians of all time. This is a thorough memoir of one of my comedy gods.
• 
  Keith CARTER

  A terrific and very interesting read. Being a huge Spike fan I thought I knew almost everything about the man, I didn't, Humphrey Carpenter introduces us to another side to Spike, I will not go into detail as this book should be read. If I could I would give 6 stars.
• 
  Greenockian

  I wanted this book to be insightful, funny and informative - it was none of these. The problem seems to me to stem from the fact that Carpenter is a self-confessed Goons fan and therefore falls into a variety of traps that prevent him from doing a full and honest job of helping us to find out what made Spike tick. The fact that Spike was a racist is simply brushed aside. The fact that his "Q" programmes were dreadful is simply excused on the basis that earlier stuff was funny. The fact that other people wrote lots of the Goon stuff is basically ignored. Carpenter's style is dreadful - asides,pseudo-Milliganese and the most annoying habit of giving an opinion with nothing to back it up. I did the decent thing and read till the end and then left it in the French campsite where I was staying:I wonder what the French will make of it?
• 
  Tracey

  A fabulous biography to read. Spike Milligan was an interesting antagonistic character , but he had a heart of gold. His continuing battle with depression affected his life for a very long time sadly, and this biography by Humphrey carpenter handles that subject matter very carefully and sympathetically.
  One of the best biographies I've read in a while.
• 
  Mathew

  Difficult man to do a biography on. There can be little sympathy for the flawed genius that was Spike. This book does the job perfectly.
• 
  Sarah Sammis

  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.
• 
  Jon

  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.