IT is hard to imagine anyone other than Spike Milligan calling the future king "a little grovelling bastard" and, not only getting away with it, but enhancing his friendship with the heir to the throne.

Through his comic genius, Spike could cut through every barrier, inspiring laughter among princes and paupers alike - and not giving a hoot if he caused offence along the way.

He found hilarity amid the horror in his books about life and death in the war, and he cut through pomposity, pretension, and every taboo with the power of his wit, most notably with the Goons.

Although he had a gift for the ridiculous, he also had a talent for striking a chord which we could all hear very clearly.

Take, for example, his reflection on heaven: "I'd like to go there. But if Jeffrey Archer is there, I want to go to Lewisham."

In 1996, The Northern Echo contacted Spike, a victim of acute depression, to seek his support for a campaign to erect a memorial on the unmarked graves of hundreds of "forgotten" psychiatric patients at Winterton Hospital, Sedgefield.

He spoke with passion about the value of not only that particular appeal, but also the need for society to be more open in its approach to mental illness.

"It should be talked about more - you can't open up the subject enough," he told our reporter before adding: "Is that it? Right, well f*** off!"

And with that, he slammed down the telephone.

That was Spike Milligan: a unique cocktail of commonsense and nonsense, of patience and intolerance, of seriousness and irreverence, of straight-talking and sheer, wonderful unpredictability.

Given that Jeffrey Archer isn't up there, we hope he finds heaven rather more to his liking than Lewisham.

ANOTHER family in the North-East has had a lucky escape from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Vicky Collins, from Ferryhill, says she owes her life and the lives of her husband and daughters to the detector fitted to her home.

Others have not been so lucky. How many more lives will be lost before the Government fulfills its promise to introduce legislation to force landlords to fit detectors in rented homes?