Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [20]
“Gracie Fields,” I guffawed, “she’s as funny as a steam roller going over a baby.”
“You must be bludy thick, she’s a scream.”
“Yes, I scream every time I hear her sing.”
“Ooo do you think is foony then?”
“W. C. Fields, Marx Brothers.”
“Oooo?”
He’d never heard of them.
“I bet they’re not as foony as Gracie, you put ‘em next to her and she’d lose ‘em.”
The mind boggled, Gracie Fields meets the Marx Brothers! Help! I tried to demonstrate to him how Groucho walked.
“Wot ee walk like that fur? It looks bludy daft.”
“It’s supposed to, you Nana, look! North Country humour is all bloody awful, all Eeeee bai Gum, flat hats and boiled puddens. I mean, you must be all simple to think George Formby’s funny, I get the same feeling from him as if I’d been told my mother was dead.”
The onslaught silenced him, then he spoke. “Milligan? That’s Irish isn’t it.”
“Yes, well I’m half Irish.”
“That’s bludy truble…that’s what keeps you simple minded.”
“Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde were Irish.”
“What bludy good did they do?”
“They were recognised as great writers.”
“Not by me, fook ‘em.”
“Listen, mister, the worst thing in life I can think of is being tied to a post and forced to listen to George Formby…”
“Alright, ‘oo do you think is a gud singer?”
“Bing Crosby.”
“‘Im? ‘ee sounds like ‘ee’s crapped ‘imself and it’s sliding down wun leg.”
“Yes…he would sound like that to you; I suppose you think Gigli is a load of crap as well.”
“Gigli? Who’s she?”
“He’s a great opera singer.”
“Gracie Fields could sing opera standing on her head.”
“If she did, it would be the first time I’d laugh at her.”
Arguments like this were frequent, there seemed to be a love-hate relationship between the North and South, the South loved themselves and the North hated them for it. Percival had been down with sandfly fever like myself.
“Were you on the landings?”
“Nay, we cum in ten days after to lay Sumerfield Track for fighter planes ter land on, but ship with the stoof on were soonk by Jerry radio-controlled bomb.”
Percival had once brought me to the verge of tears; one night, he came in pissed as usual.
“Ever seen a white-eared elephant?” he said.
No, I hadn’t. Whereupon he pulls the linings of his two trouser pockets out, opens his flies and hangs his willy out. I cried with laughter, who in God’s name invented these tricks? and all the others like the swan flies East, sausage on a plate, sack of flour, the roaring of the lions, there was a touch of obscene genius about them all.
Life at this camp was very cushy, but I discovered that there was no guarantee of me getting back to my Battery and this really shook me. I wrote to Major Jenkins saying if I wasn’t taken back soon, I’d desert. Back came a letter from the Battery Office. “Don’t desert, truck on way.” Signed Bdr. Hamer (Battery Clerk). One morning after roll-call, I was exploring the environs of the camp when I discovered the remains of what had been a large bonfire. The surviving pieces were interesting: Fascist uniforms worn by school-children during indoctrination training, Bambini della Lupa (Children of the Wolf), and along with them were little wooden rifles and kindergarten books praising Mussolini, Il Duce nostra Buona Padre…etc. etc. How in God’s name can adults do this to children? To pervert their minds, and yet even today the indoctrination goes on. China. Russia. Our own democracies corrupt with pornography and Media Violence. As my father once said, “It will only last for ever.” Among the ashes are numerous erotic photos of pictures of statues from Pompeii and Herculaneum. Altogether a very strange mixture.
OCTOBER 17, 1943
Nice sunny day, not too hot. Roll-call at 7.30. Good breakfast. EGGS!!! It was this day Lance-Corporal Percival says, “Ah feel like a shag, I got an address of a safe place, do you fancy a nibble.”
“Not me,” I said, “I don’t fancy a bird that half the 5th Army has been through.”
“It’ll do you gud, lad, loosen yer braces and stiffen yer socks.”
I decline. “We’ll come and wait, then we can go for some grub in