Few people can claim to have changed the course of history. Spike Milligan simply rewrote it. With his lightning-quick wit, unbridled creativity and his ear for the absurd, Milligan revolutionised British comedy by turning everything he encountered on its head. Whether on radio, on screen, on the page or in person, his clowning antics and cut-throat quips left in his wake a trail of outrage, bewilderment and total hilarity, as well as a legacy of influence that stretches from Monty Python's Flying Circusto the work of self-confessed acolytes such as Eddie Izzard and Stephen Fry today. Throughout his life, Milligan wrote prolifically - scripts, poetry, cartoon sketches, parodies and fiction, as well as several volumes of memoir, in which he took an entirely idiosyncratic approach to the truth. In this ground-breaking work, Norma Farnes, his long-time manager, companion, counsellor and confidante, gathers together the loose threads, reads between the lines and draws on the full breadth of his writing to present his life in his own words- an autobiography - of sorts. From his childhood in India, 'where every day was like a Kipling story', through his early career as a jazz musician and sketch-show entertainer, his spells in North Africa and Italy with the Royal Artillery, to that fateful first broadcast of The Goon Showand beyond into the annals of comedy history, this is the autobiography Milligan never wrote. As he put it, 'I was determined to pursue the matter to its illogical conclusion.' Milligan's Meaning of Lifedoes exactly that.