Spike Milligan was a great irish poet, writer and artist who even he was an active musician, he wrote many good famous poems considered to be within the genre of literary nonsense. His poetry has been described by comedian Stephen Fry as absolutely immortal—greatly in the tradition of Lear.

One of his poems, On the Ning Nang Nong, was voted the UK’s favourite comic poem in 1998 in a nationwide poll, ahead of other nonsense poets including Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear.

Spike suffered greatly from depression but soldiered on often in agony.

Somewhere at some time
They committed themselves to me
And so, I was!
Small, but I WAS!
Tiny, in shape
Lusting to live
I hung in my pulsing cave.
Soon they knew of me
My mother –my father.
I had no say in my being
I lived on trust
And love
Tho’ I couldn’t think
Each part of me was saying
A silent ‘Wait for me
I will bring you love!’
I was taken
Blind, naked, defenseless
By the hand of one
Whose good name
Was graven on a brass plate
in Wimpole Street,
and dropped on the sterile floor
of a foot operated plastic waste
bucket.
There was no Queens Counsel
To take my brief.
The cot I might have warmed
Stood in Harrod’s shop window.
When my passing was told
My father smiled.
No grief filled my empty space.
My death was celebrated
With tickets to see Danny la Rue
Who was pretending to be a woman
Like my mother was.

Depression And How To Survive It.

Epitaph on Spike Milligan’s gravestone,

“I told youI was ill”