Terrence Alan "Spike" Milligan (16 April 1918 - 27 February 2002) was a renowned Anglo-Irish comic, poet and surrealist. Widely regarded as the Godfather of British Comedy, he is best known for his work on The Goon Show with Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers. Not so well known is that he was an accomplished jazz trumpeter, until old age forced him to give up the instrument. He toured widely with his shows, made a number of TV series (most notably the Q series) and wrote a veritable plethora of humorous books and poetry for all ages, some containing his own illustrations. He was bipolar and suffered from extreme depression through the course of his life and was tremendously passionate about the environment. When he died from liver disease in 2002 at the age of 83, his self-proclaimed epitaph was "I told you I was ill".