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An early birth­day present from Avril and Liam: we all went and saw Ying Tong at the Opera House on Thursday evening.

George Orwell asser­ted: “whatever is funny is sub­vers­ive”. In the 1950s, The Goon Show as deeply sub­vers­ive and way before its time.

One con­fes­sion: I love Eng­lish humour, but I am a late bloomer. It was only after my Uncle Phil let me read his Spike Mil­ligan book: “Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Down­fall (1971) ” that I fell in love with this style of humour. Any­one who loves the com­edy of the Pythons, Douglas Adams, Ben Elton, The Beatles, Mag­gie Thatcher and Ricky Ger­vais: all owe Spike a great debt of gratitude.

How­ever, even then — I could not get into The Goon Show. I real­ise now that it was that I couldn’t under­stand what they were say­ing. Now that I’ve heard with older ears — wow. Spike Mil­ligan (as the writer) was mad and bril­liant. My kinda man­age­ment train­ing leader.

Spike’s internal clock was what we call today Bipolar dis­order. Or Manic Depres­sion. Ying Tong, the well writ­ten play, makes the asser­tion that his war­time exper­i­ences triggered these epis­odes in later life.

Spike, lying in a wash­ing machine in some grave­yard some­where. I salute you!