BAFTA-winning director Ray Butt (Only Fools and Horses) takes the helm for the final two series of Spike Milligan s anarchic sketch show, recorded in front of and occasionally featuring a wide-eyed studio audience. Qs 8 and 9 were made in quick succession in 1979 and 1980 after the BBC initially delayed re-commissioning the series until the Monty Python team departed TV-land. This was despite the impact the original Q5 of 1969 had on the world of alternative comedy. At a time when Kenny Everett and Not the Nine O Clock News were further testing the limits of TV comedy, the former Goon leads a cast of co-performers including John Bluthal, Bob Todd, Julia Breck, Alan Clare and a self-parodying David Lodge in yet more surreal, outrageous and determinedly under-prepared sketches. Running gags and familiar tropes prevail, with Adolf Hitler, Arab sheiks, idiot Boy Scouts and the Royal Family subject to scattergun ridicule, while musical interludes from Spike, pianist Ed Welch and occasional guest singers age the shows a little more harshly than the main man s virulently anti-PC humour. Review Bracing and baffling, but never boring, Q8 and Q9 are further examples of the skewered genius of Spike Milligan. Whatever era of British comedy you love, you re bound to get something out of this set so, like Q Volume 1, it's an essential purchase. -- About the Actor Terence Alan Milligan KBE (16 April 1918 27 February 2002) was a British-Irish comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright and actor. The son of an Irish father and an English mother, his early life was spent in India where he was born. The majority of his working life was spent in the United Kingdom. He disliked his first name and began to call himself Spike after hearing a band on Radio Luxembourg called Spike Jones and his City Slickers. Milligan was the co-creator, main writer and a principal cast member of The Goon Show, performing a range of roles including the popular Eccles and Minnie Bannister characters. Milligan wrote and edited many books, including Puckoon and his seven-volume autobiographical account of his time serving during the Second World War, beginning with Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall. He is also noted as a popular writer of comical verse much of his poetry was written for children, including Silly Verse for Kids (1959). After success with the groundbreaking British radio programme, The Goon Show, Milligan translated this success to television with Q5, a surreal sketch show which is credited as a major influence on the members of Monty Python's Flying Circus. He was the earliest born, longest lived and last surviving member of the Goons. Milligan's 1960 application for British citizenship and 1961 application for a British passport were blocked by his refusal to pledge an oath of allegiance to the United Kingdom, his adopted home for most of his adult life. When the Commonwealth Immigrants Act removed Indian-born Milligan's automatic right to British citizenship in 1962, he promptly became an Irish citizen, exercising a right conferred through the automatic retroactive Irish citizenship of his Irish-born father.
