Bald Twit Lion

by Spike Milligan, Carol Barker

Genres: Humor

150 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Terence Alan Patrick Seán Milligan, known as Spike, was a comedian, writer and musician. He was of Irish descent, but spent most of his childhood in India and lived most of his later life in England, moving to Australia after retirement. He is famous for his work in The Goon Show, children's poetry and a series of comical autobiographical novels about his experiences serving in the British Army in WWII. Spike Milligan suffered from bipolar disorder, which led to depression and frequent breakdowns, but he will be remembered as a comic genius. His tombstone reads 'I told you I was ill' in Gaelic.

Reviews

[Abi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this for the first time when I was about eleven and I nearly died laughing. It still makes me cry with laughter if I try and read it aloud. If you think this is funny, track down the whole story:

"Once, twice and thrice upon a time there lived a Jungle. It started at the bottom and went upwards till it reached the monkeys, who had been waiting years for the trees to reach them, and as soon as they did the monkeys invented climbing down. Most trees were made of wood, and so were the rest. Trees never spoke, not even to each other, so they never said much (actually one tree did once say "much" but nobody believed him), they never said "fish" either, not even on Fridays. It was a really good Jungle: great scarlet lilies, yellow irises, thousands of grasses all grew very happily, and this Jungle was always on time. Some people are always late, like the late King George V. But not this Jungle.

This Jungle became very, very popular with lots of wonderful animals; there was absolutely no shortage of them and therefore the Jungle was ever so busy. This Jungle was called the Bozzollika-Dowser Jungle. Because. There was no organization there, but everything worked out perfectly. Some scientists tried to make an organized Jungle of plastic, but it didn't improve conditions and the scientists left saying, "Let's go to the moon instead," and as there is nothing on the moon it seemed the best place for them. Men kept coming to the Jungle looking for gold, diamonds, gas and oil. Whereas simple animals could live without the things, brilliant man couldn't, in fact he'd forgotten how to. One thing he never forgot was how to have wars and say, "Oh dear, how sad," when children were killed by bombs. The animals left these things called men alone. In return for this kindness man killed them, cut off their skins and put them on the floor; cut their heads off and stuck them on the walls. But if ever an animal killed a man, it was in all the newspapers.

But this story is a hap-hap-happy story, about animals..."