A book of letters…kinda made me want to write letters…
I picked this up based on "funny books" though I'm really not sure how I landed on this book. I know, sort of, Spike Milligan's work, but only from TV. I didn't know he was an author, particularly from funny war stories so I missing considerable context. Arguably I'm not sure why I read this book.
The back cover quotes appeared almost immediately at the start of the book and it was pretty clear that this read like a bottom-of-the-barrel book, just printing every letter that could be found. There was the odd occasion that the correspondence was funny, but unfortunately not laugh-out-loud-funny, just a bit of a snicker.
In the last part of the book (part 4: words of support), the letters are about mental health (dating back to the late-60s), which was interesting to read as it feels like in the real world we've only started to talk openly about mental health in the last decade or so. Milligan would write letters offering support to others, and would often talk about how the NHS support was missing the love and understanding and rather delivered pills (which he says helps, but only as a band-aid).
It was these last group of letters, mostly about sending out love and positivity to the world that brought this up from 2 stars to 3. It definitely made me want to actually write words down to people rather than the usual email, and it was nice to see some silly humour throughout his decades.
9 Highlight(s)
P. S. There must be two Gods because I got pissed with one the other night and he’s never been on a bus.
I am not interested in yesterdays, for like my first and second wives they have gone for good.
I know that the Socialist Party is a good idea and has good ideas, but as Hamlet said ‘a good idea must give way to a better one
17 December 1998 Dear Mr President, You can’t do it! You can’t torture the Iraqis with sanctions and then on top of that bomb them. Whoever is advising you is an idiot.
appalling musical dysentery called Muzak
The Pope says God has no beard, if he knows that would he tell us what the rest of him looks like.
P. S. Don’t bother to reply to this letter, I know you are very busy - if you are not you should be
They look at youth in horror - and say ‘They are having a revolution’, but what do they want. I say they don’t know what they want, but they know what they don’t want, and that is, the repetition of the past mistakes, towards which the adult old order is still heading. War - armistice - building up the pre war standards - capitalism - labour - crisis - war and so on.
I might point out that in the new public toilets at Shepherds Bush they have music which comes on as you enter, music to defecate to must be the final insult to the composer.