Sanjeev Bhaskar reads Spike Milligan's hilarious letter home during WWII
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 ธ.ค. 2023
- During World War II, Spike Milligan famously served as a signalman with the Royal Artillery. He wrote home often, and in September 1943, secretly stationed in Italy, he sent the following letter to his family.
Sanjeev Bhaskar joined us at the Letters Live 10th anniversary show in November 2023 at the Royal Albert Hall in London to read it.
© Spike Milligan Productions, 1978 - บันเทิง
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"the bloody germans know where it is" 🤣🤣🤣🤣
the king lives on 😁
Sanjeev Bhaskar read this so well, Spike would have been proud!
Looking off to his left repeatedly is piss-poor. How not do deliver material to a big room.
@pennyjaquet8433 agreed great timing
@@heraldeventsandfilms5970 He wasn't delivering to a big room. He was delivering to the people in it. They seemed to enjoy his delivery.
My mother was Spikes housekeeper for a while, she called it a long while, but most of the while she was looking for Spike. He would leave a note in the hallway telling mum he was in the kitchen and in there would be another note saying he'd left for the drawing room. The notes would continue around the house. So, mum sorted out the problem the next morning, after letting herself into the house, she let out a yell at the top of her voice. Spike where the bloody hell are you???????
Brilliant! 😂😂
Brilliant 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
How wonderful! I have a feeling your mother was a good match for Spike. Bless her.
Spike’s mum lived in Woy Woy, Australia.
When he visited he said the town was so small every time he plugged in his electric toothbrush, the streetlights dimmed.
RIP Spike.
Spike asked "If you can call Wagga Wagga, Wagga why can't you call Woy Woy, Woy?"
That may not have been a joke but merely an observation.
@@itsamindgame9198 Billy Connolly would see no difference in the two :D
@@davey1602 Spike either, to be honest. Maybe I should have just said it was likely no exaggeration.
He was told that Woy Woy meant Deep Water in the local Aboriginal language. But he could never work out which Woy meant Deep, and which one Water.
having read Spike's war books i can honestly say they are the funniest thing i have ever read.
the man was a genius.
Compared to that bloody awful Warsaw concerto anything's a genius.
@dave_h_8742 Ahhh a true fan!😅😅😅
Bloody big steps! My favourite line.
Funniest tale (for me) was Spike returning home on a train for R & R.
Unfortunately suffering from Dysentery. Went through all his clothes
Except a jumper ...... legs down the sleeves.
Aggghh "tackle hanging out the neck hole"
Think he had a railway carriage to himself !
I was sitting in a pizzeria in Capri sometime in the 1980s and, to my great joy noticed a gorgeous plaque on the wall stating that Spike had eaten there some time in 1943 (l can't remember exactly when). I was quite stoked that he was apparently famous enough in ltaly that they would put up a plaque.
Oh, so that's where he was! (spaghetti)
@@taiyoqunno, pizza
Spaghetti!
😂😂😂@@taiyoqun
"Honey get the enigma machine out. Our boy sent us a coded letter."
Throat: "Okay Honey!"
Spaghetti
he wants more cigarettes fruitcake and pile ointment
Lord, I miss Spike. His humour was just perfect.
"the crabs outbreak in the crew of monkey2" as told by Gunner Edgington is downright devasting 😁😆🤣🤣🤣🤣
He told us he was ill. I miss him too.
"Standing in a hole on sentry duty, bored, so I tried counting my nose". Surreal genius.
You can almost guarantee that his drill Sargent said,"I suppose you think you're some kind of comedian don't you private Milligan" or shouted it
He was in the Royal Artillery so it would have been "Gunner Milligan" (or for a while, "Bombadier Milligan")
Blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light. Genius.❤
"Silence when you speak to an officer!"
"Now pay attention! The Major 'ere is goin' to give you a talk about Keats... and I bet half of yew ignorant bastards don't even know wot a keat is".
@@ftumschk Ah, but is it Tropical Kit? I love that woman!
This is eerie. I had genuinely just been reading the pages in Spikes fourth book ("Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall") which features this letter. I put it down, having finished my cup of coffee, walked into my study, fired up YT and there in the page of recommendations was this Letters Live feature with Sanjeev reading the letter which I'd read just minutes ago!
I was (and still am) a HUGE fan of the Goons and the three blokes who formed them. I've read all of Spikes books on his war experiences (and after) so all I can think of is that Spike somehow prodded me from across time and space and said "Now you've read it, go and listen to it!"
That's brilliant. I love it when things like that happen.
4 blokes, you missed out Bentine.
@@oldfatbastad6053 I have had the somewhat dubious pleasure of meeting all of the Goons, except Sellars, Spike Milligna, (the well know typing error) was quite certifiable, a very funny man, Seagoon was exactly how you would expect him to be, and a glorious tenor, but Bentine was a most pleasant modest and approachable man, lovely bloke!
O Spike, you are a hero for the ages!
His headstone reads. " I told you I was sick "
The local council wouldn't allow it in English, so the family got it translated into Irish which got past the censor.
I love Sanjeev, he is brilliant. love from Australia 🇦🇺 ❤
As I swam towards shore I dried myself off to save time when I landed!
-The wise words of Neddy Seagoon.
Next morning my breast pocket phone rang!
"I swam on my back, side, front and knees, but... I just couldn't get off to sleep"
@@ftumschk That's the line!
"Mr Secombe? Minnie's been hit . . mnk, mnk, mnk . . . will another batter pudding!"
@@josefschiltz2192 Minnie had been hit with a cold batter pudding, he must be losing interest in her.
Spike Milligan was (is) one of the greatest poets, wits, authors, humanitarians, playwrights and comedy writers of the 20th century. I loved Spike. I met him once at a poetry reading. It was one of the highlights of my life. He had us all in stitches. I grew up with his books and films and watched him on TV.
When that day came as it had to that he died, something special left us. For us his fans the world became colder. His memoirs should be required reading at school. Funny, sad, heartbreaking and simply mad. Spike Milligan the godfather of comedy.
Fus149hammer, that was a beautiful tribute. Glad you got to meet him.
Never heard of milligan before, so not that famous.
Loved the Goon Show on 1950's radio. Spike with Peter Sellers, Harry Seacombe and Michael Bentine.
I can also still remember some of his daft poems:
"I must go down to the sea again,
The lonely sea and the sky,
I left my vest and socks there,
(I wonder if they're dry?)
Regarding Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square...
"It's due to pigeons that alight
on Nelson's hat that makes it white."
The man was priceless!
Don't forget Scorflufus!😂
My brother and I met Spike in Sydney in the late 1970s. We took a few books down for him to sign. One of them wasn’t his! I don’t think he noticed. He picked up one book and said to me “what’s your name?”I said Hugh so he wrote “to Hugh.” Then I said it wasn’t my book. So he crossed it out. And gave it a score - 3/10! Hysterical.
If you don't understand this or don't know who Spike Milligan was, you have a lot to learn, and boy, will you enjoy finding out! Listen to the Goon Show, read his books, and take a deep dive into all things Milligan. He was a true genius and oh, how I miss him!
Don’t get it.
Fx: Screams, yelling, boots running off into far distance:
Ned: "Mm. Was it something we've said?"
Comic genius. 😊
Comic genius. 😊
Eight year old me strongly recommends his story 'The Bald Twit Lion'.
Thanks for this. Well read by Sanjeev, rip Spike, greatly missed.
This was so well done. What a funny letter made even more so by the excellent reading thereof. Thank you so much. 🌹🇨🇦🌹
Loved Spike. Funniest man who ever lived! I still watch him!
Not having known of or about Spike Milligan prior to this letter reading, it in no way kept me from fully appreciating the fun. I just thought it was a son having fun with his parents about being stationed in Italy, and I enjoyed it.
Now, having read up on who Spike Milligan was, I have a more comprehensive understanding, but I can't say I enjoyed it any better than when I took it at face value. It was clever and fun.
You really should read his war memoirs, starting with "Adolf Hitler, my part in his downfall." They are hilarious.
It was North Africa
@@howardcroft3748 - Doesn't matter if it was the North Pole. It is funny for how it is written, and read.
Woah there! How do you know he was stationed in Italy? He said it was top secret to everyone and only the bloody nazis knew where it was!
@@pomx2900or listen to his reading of his books, which are bloody hilarious
My all time comedy hero, I still read and reread his books and after 40 years, still laughing
"Miligan, how does Highland Laddie go? He goes by bus sir." 🤣🤣🤣
What a genius Spike M. was!!!
This was perfect! I bloody miss Spike. What a genius❤
My dad got me hooked on the Goons. We used to listen every Saturday at noon. The first book I read was Puckoon. I would read it in the train on the way to work when I was an apprentice. I could not stop laughing. I was asked what I was reading that was so funny and about a week later I heard other people in the carriage laughing out loud. You can guess what they were also reading. Been a huge fan ever since as both my sons are.
One anecdote which displayed his love of his family involved his India based, ex army dad in London when The Crystal Palace caught fire...His dad was a cowboy nut, he would put on shows with his six shooter guns etc... he pointed to the flames and in a grave western voice simply said. "Navaho"...
50yrs ago,after accident,smashed up leg in traction,a "mate" brought me a copy of Adolph Hitler,my part in his downfall...laughing was so painful,had to read small passages at a time!!!
Terence 'Spike' Milligan cracked a joke when landing from a ship in Italy that serves as the prototype for pretty much everything that came after.
Looks over side of ship, sees large ship with 'B4' on the side. Holds microphone to his mouth.
'Hello B4, hello B4. calling B4'.
'Hello B4, calling B4, can you hear me, B4?'
High, squeaky voice. 'Oh, hello, yes, I can hear you!'
'Why didn't you answer B4?'
'I didn't hear you B4... '
Wasn`t that a Seagoon/Bluebottle gag at one point?
A quote I remember from one of his 'Army life' books said " It was a proud day for my parents when the Military Police dragged me out screaming from under my bed"
i had the privilage of meeting spike, during his last tour, my brother won a family vip ticket and we got to go backstage after the show. whish i had been a bit older i would remember more than the song
I was tasked with writing an essay for an RE exam about “my hero”. Having just finished reading through his war memoirs, I chose to write about Spike Milligan and his service during the war, including some ripe quotes.
I’ve never been prouder of failing an exam in my life 😂
Brilliant 😂😅😂
What I find funniest is the thickness of the audience who fail entirely to perceive the wicked humour of the funniest bits of Spike's letter!
Spike Milligan World Champion Mind Painter. The way he wrote you could PICTURE it all in your head.
One of my favourite lines from the Goon Show was Harry Secombe saying " And there, lying face down on his back, was a dead contortionist".
There are SO many. The time they saw a mirage of a house in the desert and when they realised it was a mirage you heard the sound of Eccles saying 'Aaaaaahhhh' and then 'Thump! They asked Eccles what happened and he said he was upstairs.
It is a wonderfully Spike Milligan letter and Sanjeev Bhaskar reads it so well. Both the letter and the reading are brilliant.
Ahhh Spike/Terrance what a genius of observational comedy... Long may his comedy tickle out hearts... RIP
Thank you Sanjeev. I love ‘Milliganese’ humour, especially the war diaries. I enjoyed your reading very much.
Sanjeev channeled Spike so well while reading that letter, I'm surprised that he didn't channel Spike's Goon Show characters. Like Mini Bannister and The Famous Eccles. Good job, buddy!
He would have ..but you can't get the wood, you know!
@@vacuumdiagram No, no. That's Henry Crumb. Peter Sellers did him, not Spike.
@@PrinceoftheAbyss I'm remembering an episode...well, half remembering would be more accurate! Where, I thi j they were in Australia..? And they were both in a house , and there was something about a cooker, and neither of them could get the wood, as it were. I'm sure that all made perfect sense! 😅
@@PrinceoftheAbyss * Henry Crun... close, but no cigar, Minnie :)
@vacuumdiagram that sounds like it's from The Siege of Fort Night. Ned flies to Australia by submarine to find Henry Crun the inventor - to ask him to inventory and build a waterproof gas stove that will work underwater. 😂
This is because the monsoon will break in a matter of days, the river will rise and the Fort will be 9 feet under water.
My favourite books and Audiobooks read by Spike himself, they get a read / listen every couple of years and still make me laugh out loud. Of course Spike is not the only comic genius in these memoirs, it's the men who made the Army itself, most of course, Working Class lads. In many ways it's a tribute to them all of which Spike was just one. - Brilliant, mad, full of compassion and love for his mates. No doubt hits a chord with the Aussies, Kiwi & Canadians too...
I totally agree.... Fell asleep last night listening to one😂😂
@@craiglightowler8922 Italian Curried grass...🤣🤣
One time when Spoke was visiting here in Australia, he had just finished being interviewed on the radio when a newsreader came in to the studio to read the news and Spoke realised the microphone in front of him was still turned on.....
Look up Spike Milligan interrupts Australian news 🤪
One time when Spoke was visiting here in Australia, he had just finished being interviewed on the radio when a newsreader came in to the studio to read the news and Spoke realised the microphone in front of him was still turned on.....
Look up Spike Milligan interrupts Australian news 🤪
One time when Spoke was visiting here in Australia, he had just finished being interviewed on the radio when a newsreader came in to the studio to read the news and Spoke realised the microphone in front of him was still turned on.....
Look up Spike Milligan interrupts Australian news 🤪
Early on in H, MPIHD, This has had me chortling ever since the book was first published. Hope you chortle too….
Spike initially ignored his call-up papers. When eventually brought before the recruiting sergeant his opening remark was “Milligan…you’re late”. Spike retorted “sorry sir, I’ll make up the time, I’ll fight nights. “
Spike Milligan was one of a kind, few realize how much he wrote under pseudonyms for comedy shows, including Monty Python.
Can't remember which of his books it was from, but I recall him saying he wrote "love letters" home for a camp orderly who was dyslexic. "My dearest, I miss you terribly, I picture your face every morning as I sprinkle quick lime in the latrines !" 😂
It was shit house orderly Liddell who was illiterate but didn’t know that because he couldn’t read or write.
It was a letter to his girlfriend.
“It’s your dear face I see as I sprinkle the quick lime over the crap..”
She never wrote back.
Brilliantly read.
In the 70's and 80's, Spike Milligan and I shared the same accountant. The accountant told us that once in a while, he would get an envelope through the post from Spike containing a load of confetti, along with a note saying, "Enclosed, latest insanity packet from the Inland Revenue." I certainly miss him. I used to be laughing myself silly before he even opened his mouth, just from his facial expressions.
"In the 70's and 80's, Spike Milligan and I shared the same accountant"
and a lot of bloody good it did you
😁😆🤣
This is wonderful.
Only read two of Spike Milligan’s books. Puckoon and AH: My Part in his Downfall. To this day still the funniest, laugh out loud, coffee snort through the nose inducing reads. What a gift he was.
😂 😂 classic Spike Milligan - much needed laughs at the end of a busy day
How on earth did I bump into this tonight? Just made my day! Love and peace from Kaapstad.
Brilliant. So very, very Spike. And read so well, I could see Spike grinning and giggling as he wrote it. Bravo.
Absolutely superb!
Bloody good job Sanjeev!
I find myself reciting Milligan’s silly verses to myself most days. Somehow, he communicated the absurdity of life without directly pointing it out. I miss the lunacy.
i watch this time to time and never tire of it. makes me smile when i'm feeling blah.
Brilliant!
As a teenager I read all of Spike's war memoires. Anybody else remember their boot camp activity called 'drooling' ?
Thwack!! groan, Thwack!! groan...
i dont remember drooling but i do remember someone trying to fart through the keyhole, and dung rissoles for jumbo jenkins. i do however never forget the "crabs outbreak in the crew on monkey2" as told by Gnr Edgington.
One minor quibble - people who send messages between military units are "signallers". "Signalmen" work on the railways.
I kept waiting for the next "spaghetti". 🍝
Spike really was a classic comic.
Good one!
One of my absolute favorite actors 👍
But the magic, Anna, is that he wasn't acting.
True, such a great actor!❤ Greetings from Sweden!🇸🇪
Also such a funny letter in the midst of war an all!
Legend!
Spaghetti!!! Spike was my Dad's favourite Goon in fact they're both goon but not forgotten! Merry Christmas 🎄
Brilliant! :P
Spike was a comedy genius. Well read Sanjeev
dear god Spike's sense of humor was just "I've spontaneously combusted"
Christmas Day, in the desert, Spike queuing for his Christmas dinner.
“Something that went ‘splush’, landed in my mess tin”.
Spaghetti??
bloody superb spike sense of the non persuation
Spagetti!
❤
Spike was a very complex person. And that is the abbreviated version.
@markmuldoon805 Would it be correct to say that the Milligan family understood their Terence to some degree? And accepted the complexity that you refer to?
Funniest guy I've even known.
A humour genius
Great delivery of a very witty letter. Spaghetti.
I remember this in his war memoirs.
Explain it to me ‘cos I’m totally baffled.
@@susannefitzpatrick9955 In the 1970s Milligan wrote a series of war memoirs about his period serving with the Royal Artillery.
The titles were "Hitler, my part in his downfall", "Rommel, gunner who?", "Monty, my part in his victory" and "Mussolini, his part in my downfall".
@@scottblack5549 Thanks, must look for them.
Was not aware he did get to write "Goodby soldier", I saw him on the telly sayig this was a project of his but I never knew he got it finished.
Ta
“Mother, I think our boy is down in the Boot. Or the fever’s knocked it all loose up there.”
"spaghetti". Spike playing at getting his eggs turned twice inside."??? Best I can do.
this letters live thing seems wonderful
is there more??
Spike I still miss you and your irreverent sense of humour ❤
All these years later spike you still make me think twice and laugh at your ridiculous humour who else could have been so formative to a child's humour some of us miss you still
totally spike !
Not the first time I have watched this, or the second... Hilarious
Spike Milligan was off the bloody wall, as was his Humor
Here son, have these Passing Cloud cigarettes. I know you wanted Woodbines, but we're fancier than that.
And that was SM being serious.
There's a clue in there somewhere...
I think he keeps saying spaghetti as a way to bypass the censors so his family knows he is in Italy!
Hilarious 😂.
Omnes: "Pasta Goon at twilight!
When the lights are low!
Spike: "Bang!"
Ned: "Bang? Quick. Take cover!
They're shooting real bullets!"
My favourite story about military mail censorship is from Joseph Heller's novel 'Catch 22' set in Italy during WW2 where Pilot Captain Yossarian has to censor air force mail as a duty. Bored stiff with this he starts mucking around. As a joke, he blacks out all but salutation "Dear Mary" from a letter, and at the bottom wrote, "I yearn for you tragically, A.T. Tappman (who was the chaplain at the air force base, about the only person there that Yossarian quite liked) This and various other petty acts of administrative sabotage by Yossarian lead the CID (the military version of the FBI) to interrogate the chaplain at some length.
You see plainly where Monty Python came from.
Yes... But see also Much Binding in the Marsh.
@@lomax343 Goodness. Some of us go back a long way, don't we?
@@alanc6781 Well not quite. I never heard the Goons or Much Binding on first broadcast; I was introduced to them by my father. He also introduced me to Flanders and Swann.
@@lomax343 when I was growing up, listening to The Goons was de rigeur. Never missed one. But I am only 21. Again.
Everytime we drive towards WoyWoy I think of Spike.
"If they can call Wagga Wagga, Wagga, why can't they call Woy Woy, Woy?" - Spike
He was a genius but after reading his books and his description of his nervous collapse during WW2 in Italy it's clear he was seriously damaged by it and the effects never left him.
I told you I was ill………
I was just remembering that. I too am a hypochondriac. I had cystitis and my friend said ‘you can’t have got down to the S’s already. 🤣🤣
Spike Milligan was a master
If he had waited a few years he could have been a mistress.
Spike Milligans books were very manic, entertaining but exhausting to read..,, he did write a book called Puckoon.,. which very much enjoyed, basically one long Irish joke (he was Irish) very funny and like his other writings still very human, vulnerable and retrospective , one of Puckoons characters is in an argument about abortion.. , being told.. "its a fetus..its not a baby".. replys "if its not a baby whats all the fuss about ?"... meaning if its not a baby, why are you getting rid of it ??.. which to me is a very solid argument and always springs to mind on any abortion issue , .. put in a book thats genuinely hilarious, that was Spike Milligan to me
"Spaghetti"
Must've been code for something..
scotland
What a wonderful reading of this letter. How did it get past the censors?
Do you think we'll ever know where he was when he wrote that?
Somewhere with a lot of spaghetti, I reckon.
It's somewhere pasta Gibraltar.
@@charlieross-BRM Perhaps a short flight from Malta in a certain direction?
Spike's group adopted a stray dog, and named him "Havelock", after a brand of tobacco. The dog was killed by a stray bullet, and this was carved on his tombstone. Here lies the body of Havelock the dog... Shot in the head and dropped like a log.
According to the book (I think it's "Monty - My Part In His Victory"), the dog was named after Havelock Ellis, the English rival to Kinsey.