He was neurotic, rude and a manic depressive - but he was also a comic genius and the inspiration of The Goons. Nick Morrison looks at the legacy of Spike Milligan.

HE was the zaniest, wackiest comic genius of his generation. Spike Milligan dominated the Goon Show, with his audacious sense of fun and absurdity. From his classic radio scripts, to the books on his wartime exploits, from his television programmes to his poetry, he was the consummate clown, combining an ability to shock with a bizarre humour.

But his life was also blighted by manic depression, and he suffered from at least ten complete mental breakdowns. And Milligan, who died of kidney failure yesterday at the age of 83, was also well known for his unpredictability, which left many a TV producer anxiously waiting for an unscripted outburst.

His death closes the book on the Goons, probably the most influential comedy group Britain has ever produced. Milligan was the last surviving member, following Sir Harry Secombe's death last year, and he was undoubtedly the heart of the team, according to Bill Horsman, chairman of the Goon Show Preservation Society.

"He wrote the scripts - without him they would not have existed," says Bill, who lives in Newcastle. "They were his creation in a way."

The team of Milligan, Secombe, Peter Sellers and Michael Bentine first performed together in a pub in central London in the late 1940s. In 1951, they made their first radio appearance, with a series called Crazy People, before becoming the Goons, after a phrase Milligan had seen in a comic. Their surreal sense of humour struck a chord and the programme developed a huge and loyal following, and by the time their radio series came to an end in 1960, they had made a total of 243 programmes.

"The humour was so unique, it stood logic on its head," says Bill. "And it caught on - kids at school and people in the street used to go around doing the voices."

But Milligan's involvement with the Goons also took a toll on his life. Even though it was a hilarious success, Milligan, who was the writer and chief Goon, found that it changed his life, not always for the better. "I wasn't happy with the Goon shows, but I suppose they made people laugh,'' he once said. "I was so ill when I was writing them that I was in a mental home three or four times, and they broke up my first marriage.

''I had to write a new show every week for six months. If Hitler had done that to someone it would be called torture. I was in such a state of hypertension that I was unapproachable by human beings, and I became a manic depressive.''

Terence Alan Milligan was born in India on April 16, 1918. He was 16 when he was brought to Britain. His Irish father was an Army captain, and Spike adopted his nationality after immigration laws declared him ''stateless'' in 1960, even though he had spent seven years as a gunner on active service in the British Army.

He was sacked from his first job as a mechanic in a nuts and bolts factory at 13 shillings a week because he continually fused the lights, he said. During the war he was injured on active duty with the Royal Artillery, and suffered a series of nervous breakdowns.

His first marriage, to an actress called June, ended in divorce in 1961 after nine years. They had three children, Laura, Sile and Sean. A year later, in 1962, he married Patricia Ridgeway, 16 years his junior. They had a daughter, Jane, but Paddy died from cancer in 1978. His third marriage, in 1983, was to Shelagh Sinclair, 27 years his junior. They fell in love after she did secretarial work for him.

He also had a son, James, now 25, although his existence was kept secret from the comic's family until James was 16. James's mother, Margaret Maughan, from Hexham in Northumberland, who had a nine-year relationship with Milligan, said yesterday: "Spike was the love of my life. We had a special connection and I feel privileged to have had his son, who is like Spike in many ways. Now I feel that I have lost someone very special and the world has lost a true genius."

Milligan was made an honorary CBE in 1992, and last year received an honorary knighthood from the Prince of Wales, a long-standing fan.

As well as his comic work, he was also a tireless campaigner, taking up issues including factory farming and excessive noise. In 1996, he backed The Northern Echo's campaign to build a memorial for hundreds of psychiatric patients given paupers' funerals at Winterton Hospital, near Sedgefield.

But there is no doubt that it was his work with the Goons that has secured him a leading place with the greats of British comedy, according to Ian Inglis, senior lecturer in sociology at Northumbria University.

"They influenced all sorts of comedy that came afterwards, including the four most important moments of British comedy," he says. "Beyond the Fringe, That Was the Week That Was, the formation of Private Eye and Monty Python, all stem directly from Milligan and the Goons.

"One of the interesting things about the Goons was that it could be enjoyed on a number of different levels. On one level it was simply knockabout zaniness and funny voices, but on another, it was making some quite radical comments and using comedy as a vehicle.

"It was a new style of comedy, of satire and surrealism and subversiveness, and that helped define the course of British comedy for the next 40 or 50 years."

He may have been their inspiration, but after the end of the Goons, it was Milligan who found it hardest to find a new role. While Sellers became a film star and Secombe a singer and family entertainer, Milligan was unable to repeat the success of the radio show.

"He did make a number of successful radio and television shows, but in some cases, he made dreadful errors," says Mr Inglis. "There was a TV series called Curry and Chips, where he played a Pakistani shopkeeper, and it was offensively racist and cancelled after one series.

"While Secombe and Sellers were successful and became international celebrities, Milligan found it a bit more difficult to find a niche for himself."

But despite the occasional failures, and the unpredictable mood swings, Milligan has undoubtedly earned his place in the history of comedy, according to Bill Horsman, who met him several times.

"He came across to me as a neurotic. He was never a hail-fellow-well-met, and it could be very hard to make conversation with him," he says. "But he will stand as the genius of modern comedy. There will not be another like Spike Milligan."