"The Funniest Joke in the World" is a Monty Python comedy sketch revolving around a joke that is so funny that anyone who reads or hears it promptly dies from laughter. Ernest Scribbler, a British "manufacturer of jokes", writes the joke on a piece of paper only to die laughing. His mother also immediately dies laughing after reading it, as do the first constables on the scene. Eventually the joke is contained, weaponized, and deployed against Germany during World War II.
Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan was an Irish comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright and actor. The son of an English mother and Irish father, he was born in British Colonial India, where he spent his childhood before relocating in 1931 to England, where he lived and worked for the majority of his life. Disliking his first name, he began to call himself "Spike" after hearing the band Spike Jones and his City Slickers on Radio Luxembourg.
Eric Sykes was an English radio, stage, television and film writer, comedian, actor and director whose performing career spanned more than 50 years. He frequently wrote for and performed with many other leading comedy performers and writers of the period, including Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan, Tommy Cooper, Peter Sellers, John Antrobus and Johnny Speight. Sykes first came to prominence through his many radio credits as a writer and actor in the 1950s, most notably through his collaboration on The Goon Show scripts. He became a TV star in his own right in the early 1960s when he appeared with Hattie Jacques in several popular BBC comedy television series.
Jim Dale is an English actor, composer, director, narrator, singer and songwriter. In the United Kingdom he is known as a pop singer of the 1950s who became a leading actor at the National Theatre. In British film, he is now one of the last surviving actors to appear in multiple Carry On films.
Windsor Davies was a British actor. He is best remembered for playing Battery Sergeant Major Williams in the sitcom It Ain't Half Hot Mum (1974–1981) over its entire run. The show's popularity resulted in Davies and his co-star Don Estelle achieving a UK number-one hit with a version of "Whispering Grass" in 1975. He later starred with Donald Sinden in Never the Twain (1981–1991), and his deep Welsh-accented voice was heard extensively in advertising voice-overs.
Downfall is a 2004 German-language historical war drama film directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel from a screenplay by its producer, Bernd Eichinger. It is set during the Battle of Berlin in World War II, when Nazi Germany is on the verge of defeat, and depicts the final days of Adolf Hitler. The cast includes Alexandra Maria Lara, Corinna Harfouch, Ulrich Matthes, Juliane Köhler, Heino Ferch, Christian Berkel, Alexander Held, Matthias Habich, and Thomas Kretschmann. The film is a German-Austrian-Italian co-production.
Jim Norton is an Irish stage, film and television character actor, known for his work in the theatre, most notably in Conor McPherson's The Seafarer, and on television as Bishop Brennan in the sitcom Father Ted.
Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, has been represented in popular culture ever since he became a well-known politician in Germany. His distinctive image was often parodied by his opponents. Parodies became much more prominent outside Germany during his period in power. Since the end of World War II representations of Hitler, both serious and satirical, have continued to be prominent in popular culture, sometimes generating significant controversy. In many periodicals, books, and movies, Hitler and Nazism fulfill the role of archetypal evil. This treatment is not confined to fiction but is widespread amongst nonfiction writers who have discussed him in this vein. Hitler has retained a fascination from other perspectives; among many comparable examples is an exhibition at the German Historical Museum which was widely attended.
Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzard's 1996 performance, which was released on VHS and later on DVD. It was recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre. Both, recordings cover topics such as The Italian Job, Pavlov's dogs and European languages.
Michael Sheard was a Scottish character actor who featured in many films and television programmes, and was known for playing villains. His most prominent television role was as strict deputy headmaster Maurice Bronson in the children's series Grange Hill, which he played between 1985 and 1989. He appeared as Admiral Ozzel in The Empire Strikes Back (1980).
Donald Marland Hewlett was a British actor who was best known for his sitcom roles as Colonel Charles Reynolds in It Ain't Half Hot Mum and Lord Meldrum in You Rang, M'Lord?, both written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft. He also had other roles in British film and television productions.
Edward William Welch is an English songwriter, composer, conductor and arranger.
A saluting trap was a form of officer harassment practised by conscripts in the British Army during and after World War II.
Brian Todd, known professionally as Bob Todd, was an English comedy actor, mostly known for appearing as a straight man in the sketch shows of Benny Hill and Spike Milligan. For many years, he lived in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, published in 1971, is the first volume of Spike Milligan's war memoirs. The book spans the period from Britain's declaration of war on Germany to when Milligan lands in Algeria as a part of the Allied liberation of Africa.
What a Whopper is a 1961 British comedy film directed by Gilbert Gunn. It was written by Terry Nation, from a story by Jeremy Lloyd and Trevor Peacock. Pop singer Adam Faith stars as a writer who travels with some friends to Scotland to fake a sighting of the Loch Ness Monster.
Spike Milligan's fourth volume of war memoirs, Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall, spans the landing in Salerno, Italy on 23 September 1943 to his being invalided. While this is only four months, the text is nearly as long as the three earlier volumes together. Although the humorous writing is similar, there are no ersatz communiques and almost no sketches; the photographs are fewer and smaller.
Goodbye Soldier is Spike Milligan's sixth volume of autobiography. While he began writing it immediately after finishing Where Have All the Bullets Gone? in 1985, he finished it in a manic two week period in early 1986.
Norman Cohen was an Irish film director and producer, best known for directing two feature films based on television comedy programmes, Till Death Us Do Part (1969) and Dad's Army (1971). He was also a director of several of the Confessions of... sex comedy series: Confessions of a Pop Performer (1975), Confessions of a Driving Instructor (1976) and Confessions from a Holiday Camp (1977).
Hitler is a collection of two volumes by Volker Ullrich. Jefferson Chase translated both volumes into English.
