Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall (Spike Milligan War Memoirs)

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If you have ever watched the Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger classic 'The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp', you would remember the frenetic comic frenzy of the first fifteen minutes, choreographed like a comic interlude. Like now I suppose but with the added knowledge that the person you were shagging might be dead tomorrow.

Yes, that is what some of this book, the first in the series of wartime memoirs by celebrated British comedian Spike Milligan (who was, coincidentally, the inspiration for Monty Python in the first place with his group act 'The Goon Show'), would feel like: hilarious, anarchic, almost brutally sarcastic, bawdy and guaranteed to leave you in splits.

It's like director Norman Cohen was influence by two then recent films, "MASH" and "Oh What A Lovely War", both anti war comic looks at war and what he should have done was a Carry On type of film. During one training deployment, Milligan and others were caught hiding their rifles in a loft, resulting in two weeks detention. The not joining up, the joining up, the band, the chaos of training and preparation, the sex and the boredom. He then plunged into the world of Show Business, seduced by his first stage appearance, at the age of eight, in the nativity play of his Poona convent school. This is a re-read for me; I think I read it for the first time in paperback about a decade ago, but when I saw the Scribd e-library had all seven volumes in audiobook format read by the man himself, I couldn't resist reading them again.

Now, imagine if Monty Python directed this film and expanded the goofball humour of the first fifteen minutes into a full-length feature packed with more gags and brilliant, blistering British wit and wisecracks than you could digest in one go. While there he was given the usual punitive tasks such as shovelling coke into a single pile in pouring rain, but his guards also appreciated his artistic ability, and he was asked to draw Vargas girls for them to hang on the wall. He wrote seven short books about the experience based on his diaries, here's the first one which concerns joining the army, training, starting a jazz band during training, more training, exploits/hijinks/affairs, and finally getting shipped off to Northern Africa, where the book ends. One of the gunners, however, loses a hand when a shell he is pushing into the howitzer's breach explodes.Milligan refers to his first commanding officer as "Leather Suitcase" for the numerous leather patches on his uniform. We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. It featured Milligan narrating the story plus Milligan, John Wells, Graham Stark and Alan Clare acting out some scenes.

There is also Bill Maynard as the sargent and fellow recruits Tony Selby and "Keeping Up Appearences" Onslow, Geoffrey Hughes but they don't do much with them Lowe who know's his character well comes off best of the supporting cast and Dale is wonderfully demented as Spike, but the film doesn't take off. In December 1942, Milligan drinks a toast with his family that will prove to be the last for ten years. A shell from World War I is eventually found and they make strenuous attempts to fire it for practice. Although they are disciplined and made to burn the clubs, it is here that the inspiration for The Goon Show began. June 2nd, 1940, on a summer's day all mare's tails and blue sky we arrived at Bexhill-on-Sea, where I got off.

It is while playing jazz that he meets his lifelong friend, self-taught pianist Harry Edgington, a man "with moral scruples that would have pleased Jesus". I would sugest that people should endevour to get the original version to get an understanding of the total cock- up that he was thrown into in his first few days of the war. The book has a tone of photo's and drawings which are a nice addition to the text, and fit well with the way the book is written.

In this, the first of Spike Milligan's uproarious recollections of life in the army, our hero takes us from the outbreak of war in 1939 ('it must have been something we said'), through his attempts to avoid enlistment ('time for my appendicitus, I thought') and his gunner training in Bexhill ('There was one drawback.Dale was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles for his performance. It must be born in mind that the language and atitudes were those of the common squadie at that time and do not represent those of this society now. There are lighter comic digs made at stiff-upper-lipped authority, the abysmal cooking, the futile marches and camping trails that only amount up to idleness, farce and trivial affairs. Their band has been warned by an officer, that if they smuggle their instruments on board, the instruments will be thrown overboard. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.