Spike Milligan

“It's all in the mind, you know.”

“A bird in The Strand is worth two in Shepherds Bush”

“The night before Tilbury, the Cordon Bleu gourmet dinner turned out Cordon Brown. Six out of ten to the chef for trying and ten out of ten to us for eating it.”

“My father was my greatest inspiration. He was a lunatic.”

“We reach a secondary road and - here comes the bonus - we pass the Temple of Neptune and Cerene, at Paestum, both looking beautiful in the sunlight. Strung from the Doric columns are lines of soldiers' washing. At last they had been put to practical use. If only the ancient Greeks had known.”

“For ten years Caesar ruled with an iron hand. Then with a wooden foot, and finally with a piece of string.”

“I shook hands with a friendly Arab. I still have my right arm to prove it.”

“Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.”

“May 8th 1943. Deluge. The rain not only fell mainly on the plain in Spain; it also fell mainly on the back of the bloody neck, dripping down the spine into the socks where it came out of the lace-holes in the boots.”

“You couldn't enclose people in institutions or hospitals or almshouses in the way the Victorians managed to do. India was too big. Seeing the suffering people was terrible, but I think I was more distraught at the needless cruelty to so many animals.”

“The experience of being in the Army changed my whole life; I never believed that an organization such as ours could ever go to war, leave alone win it. It was, as Yeats remarked of the Easter Rising, 'A terrible beauty.'”

“Is there anything worn under the kilt? No, it's all in perfect working order.”

“I have the body of an eighteen year old. I keep it in the fridge.”

“On the Ning Nang NongWhere the Cows go Bong!And the Monkeys all say Boo!Theres a Nang Nong NingWhere the trees go Ping!And the tea pots Jibber Jabber JooOn the Nong Ning NangAll the Mice go Clang!And you just cant catch em when they do!So its Ning Nang Nong!Cows go Bong!Nong Nang Ning!Trees go Ping!Nong Ning Nang!The mice go Clang!What a noisy place to belong,Is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!”

“Are you going to come quietly, or do I have to use earplugs?”

“Said Hamlet to Ophelia,I'll draw a sketch of thee.What kind of pencil shall I use?2B or not 2B?”

“Unbeknown to me, my manager, under my very nose (in a crouching position) has all these years been secretly compiling a book from my correspondence. I often wondered what she was doing in my office. She never did a stroke of work for me. All the time, I have been working for her.”

“Life is a long agonized illness only curable by death.”

“My father being a soldier, every time I saw soldiers marching - 'Well,' I thought, 'my father's that,' and these soldiers were always looking magnificent. And I thought they were powerful; they were all-powerful. I knew that they were an elite in India.”

“My parents always threw everything out, gave everything away. I'm surprised they never threw me away. That's why I've always kept my children's things. My parents had no feelings for belongings.”