My Reasons Why I Would Choose That Person
If I could choose anyone to spend a day with, I would choose Spike Milligan.
Spike is well remembered for being the writer of the ‘Goon Shows’, and as I am a great fan of the Goons, I think Spike is great. Before I was born, my mother and father had bought a couple of Goon Show records and so all my life I have heard the Goons. I was about ten years old before I knew the names of the men who played the Goon characters and I was about twelve when I knew who wrote the script for the shows.
I realise that writing the Goon Shows must have been a great mental strain on Spike, because to think of all those jokes must have taken ages, as well as a great sense of humour. I like people with a good sense of humour, or rather, people who have a sense of humour in the same vein as I do. It could probably be said that Spike Milligan was the originator of the humour that has given us Monty Python, Q5, 6 and 7, The Goodies on television, and The Goons, I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again and the Burkiss Way on radio, but that fact is arguable.
Spike, it seems, can be funny almost anywhere, and when he is on quiz shows or other talk programmes, all his humorous comments must be ‘off the cuff’. A good example of this is when Spike was on ‘Quote-Unquote’ and Malcolm Muggeridge said “If you watch television, you’d be a moron!”
And Spike said, “I wondered what went wrong.”
I find Spike extremely funny, and if I was going to spend a day with him, I feel sure I wouldn’t be able to keep a straight face for very long, but I wouldn’t mind that, because I like laughing.
His birthday is on April the sixteenth and on that day, this year, would be the best time to visit him because he is exactly sixty years old that day.
Another reason for going to visit Spike is to talk to him on how to write a funny play. Not subtlely funny plays, nor satirical plays, but zany plays that involve ordinary happenings and sayings given a weird twist. I suppose he would answer ‘You have to have a good sense of humour’, which is, of course, very true. I, and a few of my friends are keen on the insane side of life and enjoy the mad things that go on around, and Spike Milligan is our hero.
Teacher’s Comments
8/10
You would have enjoyed the script he wrote and appeared in on last night’s T.V. show.
(c) M. Robert Gibson
Written 1978-03-19
This is a school essay.
It was written well before the internet. It is full of inaccuracies and assumptions; bad punctuation; bad grammar and a woeful lack of research, but, it is also a first draft. It was also hand-written in an exercise book, none of your fancy electronic gizmos back then.
And don’t forget, it was written by a schoolboy in a time before political correctness.
It is published here for purely selfish vanity reasons, so read it at your own peril and do not expect any great revelations.
M. Robert Gibson 