Michael Bentine was a comedian, comic
actor, and member of the Goons.
Bentine was born in Watford, of Anglo-Peruvian parentage
and grew-up in Folkestone, Kent. He was educated in
Eton College. In World War II he served as an RAF Intelligence
officer, and took part in the liberation of Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp.
He had acted before the war, and
afterwards he decided to become a comedian, specialising
in off-the-wall humour, often involving cartoons and
other types of animation. For example, a prominent
feature of his series, It's a Square World, was the
imaginary flea-circus. He was also a television presenter
and writer.
He appeared in the Goon Show film Down Among the
Z Men, and at the time seemed perhaps the most comfortable
of the cast in working in a visual medium.
During the 1960's he also took part in the first
Hovercraft expedition up the Amazon river.
In later life, his interests included parapsychology.
This partly arose as a result of the premature death
of his son. |
