Spike Milligan’s Pakistani Dalek Family

The Grumpy Vegan’s nascent humor was nurtured by the insane genius of Spike Milligan. Too young to appreciate BBC Radio’s The Goon Show of the 1950s (but now enjoyed on BBC Radio 7), Spike came to my attention a decade or two later when I read his only novel, Puckoon — a glorious satire of Britain’s imperial misadventure with Ireland. Who else but Spike could imagine that the border separating Northern Ireland from Eire was drawn by adversaries clutching the same pen and dragging it across a map in a room above a pub while hurling accusations at each other that you’re pulling the pen too strongly in the direction you want? Brilliantly, Spike ridiculed the human folly of war, which he also did in his autobiographies, including Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall. You Tube makes available to the world the treasured memory of a sketch he did for his innovate Q television series. Even Spike’s own theme music for Q is sheer joy. But that sketch, that sketch of the 1969 Pakistani Dalek family is, well, the imaginative work of a pure — OK, I can’t find any other appropriate word — genius. Move over Monty Python you’re nothing but a derivative of Q5, Q6, Q7 et al.